World / Health & Beauty
Patient Voice Improving GP Access, UK
16.07.2008 09:13
medicalnewstoday.com
The Government welcomed the results of the second annual GP Patient Access Survey which reveals improvements in patient satisfaction and experience. The results, published by The NHS Information Centre, reflect the important role patient feedback plays in shaping and improving NHS services. The Access survey, the biggest patient survey of its kind in the UK, involved almost two million patients in January-March this year.
World
Critical Care Medicine & Anesthesiology
Medical Homes Might Improve Quality Of Care, Reduce Costs, USA Today Reports
16.07.2008 09:13
medicalnewstoday.com
Medicare, states and private health insurers have launched pilot programs to test whether medical homes -- in which primary care physicians receive extra payments to oversee and coordinate care for patients -- can help improve the quality of care and reduce costs, USA Today reports.
World
Critical Care Medicine & Anesthesiology
Kids Protected From Asthma By Stomach Bug, NYU Study Finds
16.07.2008 09:13
medicalnewstoday.com
A long-time microbial inhabitant of the human stomach may protect children from developing asthma, according to a new study among more than 7,000 subjects led by NYU Langone Medical Center researchers. Helicobacter pylori, a bacterium that has co-existed with humans for at least 50,000 years, may lead to peptic ulcers and stomach cancer. Yet, kids between the ages of 3 and 13 are nearly 59 percent less likely to have asthma if they carry the bug, the researchers report.
World
Infectious Diseases
South Florida Program Aimed At HIV-Positive Youth Loses Funding
16.07.2008 09:13
medicalnewstoday.com
Treasure the Children, a program in Royal Palm Beach, Fla., that aims to empower HIV-positive young people and reduce stigma surrounding the disease is at risk because it is losing a large amount of funding, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports.
World
HIV/AIDS
Decisions Under Pressure: It's All In The Heart Beat
16.07.2008 09:13
medicalnewstoday.com
A person's heart rate can reveal a lot about how they make decisions when feeling stressed, a Queensland University of Technology academic says. Economics Associate Professor Uwe Dulleck, from the QUT Business Faculty, said stress in the workplace wasn't necessarily a bad thing, because it was, in fact, a natural reaction that had been given a negative connotation.
World
Depression
Fortina Spa Resort: there's the rub
16.07.2008 09:11
telegraph.co.uk
The Fortina Spa resort in Malta offers guests a dizzying array of treatments - from therapeutic spa bedrooms to cosmetic surgery. Johanna Leggatt tries to keep up
Great Britain
Health & Beauty
Gene variants that may help predict sickle cell disease severity identified
16.07.2008 08:26
b4uindia.com
A new collaborative study by scientists at Children''s Hospital Boston and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI), Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, has cited the discovery of five gene variants that could potentially be helpful in predicting sickle cell disease severity. While sickle cell disease is a single-gene disorder, its symptoms are highly variable and this latest feat may even lead to better treatment approaches in the future. The scientists highlighted that the gene variants influence blood levels of fetal haemoglobin (HbF), which are known to affect symptom severity in sickle cell disease, which may cause some patients to experience frequent, severe pain crises and organ damage, while others are scarcely aware of their disease. "Our study is a first step towards a better understanding of foetal haemoglobin regulation in patients with sickle cell disease. But further validation experiments are needed before these findings can become useful in the clinic," said Guillaume Lettre, PhD, of the Broad Institute and Children''s Hospital Boston, and co-first author on the paper. "Eventually, understanding the factors giving rise to heterogeneity in HbF levels might allow us to take severely affected patients and make them more like those with more benign symptoms," added Vijay Sankaran, co-first author on the paper with Lettre and an MD-PhD student in the laboratory of Stuart Orkin, MD. In sickle cell disease, a single genetic mutation results in the production of an abnormal type of haemoglobin molecules that tend to form long chains, causing red blood cells to become stiff and sickle-shaped. The distorted cells have difficulty passing through blood vessels and can block the smaller vessels, resulting in severe pain and eventual organ damage as tissues are robbed of their blood supply. The sickle-shaped red blood cells also have a very short lifespan, causing patients to be chronically anaemic. In earlier studies it was found that by retaining high levels of another type of hemoglobin—HbF, found at high levels in the foetus—it is possible to improve sickle cell disease symptoms. Also, population studies in Saudi Arabia and parts of India had identified groups of sickle cell patients with very high levels of HbF and relatively benign forms of the disease, and additional epidemiologic studies led by Orah Platt, MD, chief of laboratory medicine at Children''s, showed that HbF is an ameliorating factor. "The more you have, the better off you are," said Sankaran. In the current study, the researchers analysed 1600 patients with sickle cell disease, and found that previously identified DNA sequence variants in three chromosome locations (small regions on chromosome 2, 6, and 11) were linked with high or low HbF levels. After adding these five variants to a model previously designed by Platt to predict disease severity, which also factors in age, sex, degree of anaemia and HbF levels, the model''s predictive ability was enhanced. While the results need to be validated in large, prospective clinical studies, the researchers are hopeful about the possible future clinical implications of their work. "As we find gene variants that regulate HbF levels or predict severity, we might eventually want to genotype patients for these variants, to get more predictive information on their disease," said Sankaran. And when the study will finally be validated, the knowledge of how these variants actually affect HbF levels might someday lead to new drugs that do the same thing. "If we can gain better insight into what these variants are doing, we may eventually have better, more targeted therapies for sickle cell disease," added Sankaran. The study was published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. (ANI)
India
Health & Beauty
40-minute daily walk cuts disability risk in older adults
16.07.2008 08:26
b4uindia.com
A 40-minute daily walk can cut disability risk in older adults, suggests a new study. During the study, 26 low-income adults aged 60 and older were randomly assigned to either a walking exercise group, which met three times a week for four months, or a nutrition education control group At the beginning of the study, the group would walk for 10 minutes continually, but as the weeks progressed, they increased their walking time to 40 continuous minutes. It suggested that elderly could decrease their risk of disability and increase their likelihood of maintaining independence by 41 percent. “Our study found that walking offers tremendous health benefits that can help older adults stay independent,” said study co-author M. Elaine Cress, professor of kinesiology and researcher in the UGA Institute of Gerontology. Trudy Moore-Harrison, the lead author of the study and a former UGA doctoral student, said the researchers focused their study on low-income individuals because people with fewer financial resources are less likely to be physically active and are more likely to have chronic health conditions and lack health care coverage The team from University of Georgia also measured the aerobic capacity of the participants using a treadmill test and found that while the control group saw an 9 percent decline in aerobic capacity over the four-month study period, the aerobic capacity of the walking group increased by 19 percent over the same time period. The walking exercise group also improved their physical function by 25 percent. While the control group saw their risk of disability increase over the four-month period, the walking exercise group saw their disability risk go from 66 percent to 25 percent – a decrease of 41 percent in just four months. “We know that walking is good for you, but too many people still aren’t doing it,”. “This study shows that just walking on a regular basis can make a huge impact on quality of life,” Moore-Harrison said. The study appears in the current issue of the Journal of Geriatric Physical Therapy. (ANI)
India
Health & Beauty
Indian-origin scientist claims to uncovering Achilles Heel of HIV
16.07.2008 08:26
b4uindia.com
An Indian-origin researcher studying Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston claims that his team has uncovered the Achilles heel in the armour of the HIV virus. Sudhir Paul, Ph.D., has found that this weak spot is hidden in the HIV envelope protein gp120. This protein is essential for HIV attachment to host cells, which initiate infection and eventually lead to Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome or AIDS. Normally the body’s immune defences can ward off viruses by making proteins called antibodies that bind the virus, but no HIV preventative vaccine that stimulates production of protective antibodies is available. The Achilles heel, a tiny stretch of amino acids numbered 421-433 on gp120, is now under study as a target for therapeutic intervention. “Unlike the changeable regions of its envelope, HIV needs at least one region that must remain constant to attach to cells. If this region changes, HIV cannot infect cells. Equally important, HIV does not want this constant region to provoke the body’s defense system. So, HIV uses the same constant cellular attachment site to silence B lymphocytes - the antibody producing cells. The result is that the body is fooled into making abundant antibodies to the changeable regions of HIV but not to its cellular attachment site. Immunologists call such regions superantigens. HIV’s cleverness is unmatched. No other virus uses this trick to evade the body’s defenses,” said Paul. Paul is the senior author on a paper about this theory in a June issue of the journal Autoimmunity Reviews. Additional data supporting the theory are to be presented at the XVII International AIDS Conference Aug. 3-8 in Mexico City in two studies titled “Survivors of HIV infection produce potent, broadly neutralizing IgAs directed to the superantigenic region of the gp120 CD4 binding site” and “Prospective clinical utility and evolutionary implication of broadly neutralizing antibody fragments to HIV gp120 superantigenic epitope.” Paul’s group has engineered antibodies with enzymatic activity, also known as abzymes, which can attack the Achilles heel of the virus in a precise way. “The abzymes recognize essentially all of the diverse HIV forms found across the world. This solves the problem of HIV changeability. The next step is to confirm our theory in human clinical trials," Paul said. He stressed that abzymes degrade the virus permanently unlike regular antibodies. A single abzyme molecule inactivates thousands of virus particles. Regular antibodies inactivate only one virus particle, and their anti-viral HIV effect is weaker. Usually, the abzymes are derived from HIV negative people with the autoimmune disease lupus and a small number of HIV positive people who do not require treatment and do not get AIDS. “We discovered that disturbed immunological events in lupus patients can generate abzymes to the Achilles heel of HIV. The human genome has accumulated over millions of years of evolution a lot of viral fragments called endogenous retroviral sequences. These endogenous retroviral sequences are overproduced in people with lupus, and an immune response to such a sequence that resembles the Achilles heel can explain the production of abzymes in lupus. A small minority of HIV positive people also start producing the abzymes after decades of the infection. The immune system in some people can cope with HIV after all,” said Stephanie Planque, lead author and UT Medical School at Houston graduate student. Carl Hanson, Ph.D., who heads the Retrovirus Diagnostic Section of the Viral and Rickettsial Disease Laboratory of the California Department of Public Health, has shown that the abzymes neutralize infection of human blood cells by diverse strains of HIV from various parts of the world. Human blood cells are the only cells that HIV infects. “This is an entirely new finding. It is a novel antibody that appears to be very effective in killing the HIV virus. The main question now is if this can be applied to developing vaccine and possibly used as a microbicide to prevent sexual transmission,” said David C. Montefiori, Ph.D., director of the Laboratory for AIDS Vaccine Research & Development at Duke University Medical Center. The abzymes are now under development for HIV immunotherapy by infusion into blood. They could also be used to guard against sexual HIV transmission as topical vaginal or rectal formulations. The journal article is titled “Catalytic antibodies to HIV: Physiological role and potential clinical utility” and is published in the latest issue of the journal Autoimmunity Reviews. (ANI)
India
Health & Beauty
How vitamin A promotes cancer growth
16.07.2008 08:26
b4uindia.com
A new study from Georgetown University Medical Centre has found that vitamin A can push breast cancer cells to form blood vessel, thus promoting tumour growth in patients. The researchers found that vitamin A, when applied to breast cancer cells, triggers genes that can push stem cells embedded in a tumour to morph into endothelial cells. These cells can then build blood vessels to link up to the body''s blood supply, promoting further tumour growth. They showed that in cancer cells, vitamin A seems to turn on cancer stem cells, allowing them to form the blood vessel tissue, needed most as tumours develop. The team said that the new find is a proof of principle of the new vasculogenic mimicry theory, proposing that, as needed, tumours build their own blood pipelines. This is very different from the well-known role of tumour angiogenesis, when tumours send signals to blood vessels to grow toward the cancer. "Finding that vitamin A may cause some breast cancer cells to form blood vessels brings up the rather disturbing notion that treatment with these drugs may actually stimulate tumour growth," said study''s senior author, Stephen W. Byers, Ph.D., a professor of oncology and cell biology at Georgetown''s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Centre. "None of this means that people should avoid foods rich in vitamin A, or should refuse to take their vitamins," he said. "What led us to this study is that previous research on retinoids implied that they may be effective in a preventative setting, but may actually have a negative effect after tumour initiation and during progression," he added. During the study, the researchers found that treating the cells with retinoic acid triggered 81 genes that are associated with endothelial cells, such as vascular endothelial (VE) cadherin, which plays a role in binding endothelial cells together into a structure. When they mixed the treated cancer cells with endothelial cells taken from human umbilical cord blood, structures similar to blood vessels developed within the tumour masses grown in culture. “What this study tells us is that treating stem cells that have retained the ability to become cell types other than breast with differentiating agents such as vitamin A may cause an inappropriate cell to develop - in this case potentially promoting tumor vasculogenesis and growth, which is not a desired effect," said Byers. The findings are published in the July 16 online issue of PLoS ONE. (ANI)
India
Health & Beauty
Bumblebees go ‘off-color’ when ill
16.07.2008 08:26
b4uindia.com
Like humans, bumblebees too are not at their most astute when they are ill, says a new research, which found that the bees go ''off colour'' and can''t remember which flowers have the most nectar when they are feeling under the weather. The study from the University of Leicester has been published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters. Lecturer in Animal Biology at the University of Leicester Dr. Eamonn Mallon, who lead the research group, said: "Disease can influence different behaviours including foraging, mate choice, and predator avoidance. Several recent papers have shown reduced learning abilities in infected insects. “However, it is difficult to separate the effects of the immune response from the direct effects of the parasite. That was the purpose of our study" In the research, bees were divided into a control group and a group that were injected with lipopolysaccharide, a substance that stimulated an immune response without a need for the bee to be infected with a disease. Bees were offered the choice of blue and yellow artificial flowers only one type of which contained sugar water. An individual''s flight was recorded over ninety visits to these flowers. Eventually the bees spent almost all of their time going to the rewarding flowers, but it took the immune stimulated bees longer to reach this point. The research, ''Immune response impairs learning in free flying bumble-bees'', was conducted in the Department of Biology, in collaboration with the Department of Genetics, at the University of Leicester. Dr Mallon added: "This work has two important applications. Firstly, there is a lot of interest in the connections between the immune system and the nervous system in human biology. The Mallon lab was the first to show that these interactions also exist in the much more experimentally tractable insects. "Secondly, there is concern about both the decline in wild bumble-bee species and the effects of disease on the honeybee industry. It has been shown that learning is vitally important to how well a colony prospers. This effect of immunity on learning highlights a previously unconsidered effect of disease on colony success." (ANI)
India
Health & Beauty
Thank You For Smoking On International Flights
16.07.2008 08:16
medicalnewstoday.com
The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) is concerned that Qantas has reintroduced tobacco sales on board its international flights. The sale of tobacco products will begin at the end of July. Despite restrictions preventing Qantas from advertising cigarettes in the on-board shopping catalogue, the airline is allowed to display these products on the duty-free trolley in the cabin.
World
Smoking
Children's Moral Development Affected When Growing Up Amid War
16.07.2008 08:16
medicalnewstoday.com
Colombian children living in war zones exhibited an understanding that stealing or hurting others is wrong. But when asked to consider revenge as a motive, many said it is acceptable to steal or hurt others for revenge. These vulnerabilities were more pronounced among teenagers. Those are the findings of a new study conducted by researchers at the University of Utah.
World
Children Diseases
The Epigenetics Of Increasing Weight Through The Generations
16.07.2008 08:16
medicalnewstoday.com
Overweight mothers give birth to offspring who become even heavier, resulting in amplification of obesity across generations, said Baylor College of Medicine researchers in Houston who found that chemical changes in the ways genes are expressed - a phenomenon called epigenetics - could affect successive generations of mice. "There is an obesity epidemic in the United States and it's increasingly recognized as a worldwide phenomenon," said Dr. Robert A.
World
Weight Correction
Electrifying Mind Matter Part Of New UQ Research
16.07.2008 08:15
medicalnewstoday.com
For suffers of neurological disorders such as Parkinson's disease daily trembling and shaking can be unbearable however, new UQ research could assist in helping patients regain control. A team of UQ researchers is using their skills from across a number of different disciplines to help improve the success rate of Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) surgery.
World
Neurology
English