Home exercise may aid heavy heart failure patients
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A home-based exercise program for overweight or obese patients with advanced heart failure results in significant weight loss after six months, researchers in California report.
It’s well established that exercise is important for long-term weight control for overweight people, Dr. Lorraine S. Evangelista, of the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues point out. “However, little evidence exists confirming such findings in patients with advanced heart failure.”
To look into this, the researchers assigned 99 heart failure patients, classified as at least overweight, to a low-level, home-based exercise program or to a comparison “control” group. The participants’ average age was 53 years, and most were male, white and married, according to the report in the American Journal of Cardiology.
Spain sizes up real women to fight anorexia
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Spain has launched a study into the size of average women compared with models used by the fashion industry in a bid to stop the use of ultra-thin advertising images blamed for eating disorders like anorexia.
Spain’s government hopes to show real women do not fit the fashion industry’s skinny ideals and oblige leading retail brands to display bigger sizes in shop windows and magazines.
“This ideal is impossible for most people to achieve and can end up hurting people’s health,” Health Minister Elena Salgado said in a statement this week at the launch of the study.
Australian scientists tackle deadly Q fever
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Scientists at James Cook University have taken the lead in developing a new vaccine against a highly infectious cattleyard disease caused by a bacteria which has the potential to be developed as a bioterrorist weapon.
JCU’s Infectious Diseases and Immunopathogenesis Research Group, within the School of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences, has secured a $300,000 grant from the Defence, Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) in Melbourne to conduct research into Q fever over three years.
Research associate Ray Layton is one of a small team of scientists working on the groundbreaking project at JCU.
Research puts something extra in your grapes
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Researchers at the University of Adelaide have discovered a potential way to increase the amount of Vitamin C in grapes.
Senior lecturer Dr Christopher Ford and postgraduate student Seth de Bolt from the University of Adelaide’s School of Agriculture, Food and Wine have made the significant breakthrough, in collaboration with their US colleagues at the University of California.
The researchers have identified an enzyme in grapes that helps convert Vitamin C, or ascorbic acid, into tartaric acid. Tartaric acid accumulates in grapes as they ripen and contributes greatly to taste, tartness and aging potential.
Corticosteroids do not improve survival in patients with late-stage ARDS
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Corticosteroids do not improve survival in patients with late-stage acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), according to new results from the ARDS Clinical Research Network of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of the National Institutes of Health.
The study is the first multi-center randomized clinical trial to evaluate the effects of moderate doses of steroids in ARDS patients when treatment is started 7 days or more after the onset of the condition.
ARDS is a sudden, life-threatening lung condition that affects about 150,000 people in the United States each year. ARDS develops in patients who are critically ill with other diseases such as pneumonia or sepsis (severe and widespread bacterial infection), or who have sustained major injuries that result in severe fluid building up in both lungs, leading to breathing failure. An estimated 30 percent to 50 percent of ARDS patients die. Results of the Late Steroid Rescue Study appear in the April 20, 2006, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Seven Cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Associated with Transplanted Human Tissue
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Seven cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) associated with transplanted human tissue have occurred in the UK over a period of 33 years, reveals a study published ahead of print in the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery and Psychiatry.
The seven cases of the fatal neurodegenerative disease were reported to the UK CJD surveillance system.
This monitors all cases of CJD arising sporadically, genetically, and as a result of infection from contaminated food products (variant form) or surgery (iatrogenic).
Drowsy driving risks surprise US researchers
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Drowsiness behind the wheel is a more significant safety problem on U.S. roads than previously thought, although cell phone use is the most common distraction for drivers, new research showed on Thursday.
Driver distraction was the cause of most auto crashes and near crashes in a year-long study of 241 drivers in the Washington, D.C., area conducted for federal safety regulators by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute.
The most surprising finding, researchers said, was the accident rate among drowsy drivers. They were at least four times more likely to crash or narrowly escape an accident than rested motorists, the data showed.
China confirms 12th human bird flu death
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A man in central China has died of bird flu, the official Xinhua news agency said on Thursday, reporting the country’s twelfth H5N1 virus death since November.
There have been more than 30 outbreaks in poultry in a dozen provinces over the past year in China, making it one of the countries worst-hit by a virus that has spread with surprising speed this year, with outbreaks in more than 30 countries.
Epidemiologists fear that bird flu could mutate to a form where it could pass easily among humans, potentially triggering a pandemic in which millions could die.
Alzheimer’s up on 2004 list of US death causes
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Americans are living longer, healthier lives and only the mortality rate from Alzheimer’s disease is increasing among the top 10 causes of death, the U.S. federal government reported on Wednesday.
Alzheimer’s disease moved to seventh place from eighth place among the leading causes of death in 2004, passing influenza and pneumonia, the National Center for Health Statistics reported.
“The life expectancy of Americans in 2004—77.9 years—is the highest it has ever been,” the NCHS said in a statement.
Multifaceted quit-smoking program works well
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A comprehensive smoking cessation program involving counseling, support and a tailored medication regimen can help even highly stressed individuals quit, new study findings show.
The program, the New York City Fire Department’s “Tobacco Free with FDNY,” was offered free-of-charge to FDNY rescue workers and family members in the aftermath of the 2001 World Trade Center collapse.
Its effectiveness suggests that “medication alone is not as effective as medication with a social support mechanism,” study author Dr. David J. Prezant, chief medical officer of the New York City Fire Department’s Office of Medical Affairs, told Reuters Health.
Many people with arthritis skip exercise
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People with arthritis are even less likely than the average American to get enough—or any—exercise, a large U.S. study shows.
Among more than 27,000 adults in a national health survey, those with arthritis were less likely to be exercising at levels recommended by health experts: at least 30 minutes of moderate activity, like brisk walking, or 20 minutes of more vigorous exercise, on most days of the week.
“People with arthritis are not meeting physical activity recommendations made at the federal level and by experts in the arthritis field,” study co-author Dr. Jennifer Hootman, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, said in a statement.
Preeclampsia a risk factor for future stroke
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Pregnant women who develop preeclampsia—a condition that includes abnormally high blood pressure—are known to run the risk of having a stroke during pregnancy, but researchers at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now report that preeclampsia is also a risk factor for stroke in the future.
Dr. David W. Brown and colleagues in Atlanta used data from the Stroke Prevention in Young Women Study to assess the association of preclampsia with stroke in women between the ages of 15 and 44. The team identified 261 cases of stroke among nonpregnant women in the study group and compared them with 416 randomly chosen “controls” who had not had a stroke.
There was a history of preeclampsia in 15 percent of the women with stroke and in 10 percent of controls, the investigators report in the medical journal Stroke.
Signs of long-term problems seen in teens’ dieting
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Teenagers who go on diets or take unhealthy measures to lose weight may end up gaining pounds in the long run, according to a new study.
What’s more, researchers found, these teens seem likely to get trapped in a pattern of unhealthy eating, extreme weight-loss tactics and, in some cases, overt eating disorders.
Among more than 2,500 teenagers in the study, those who said they were trying to control their weight were three times more likely than their peers to be overweight five years later. They were also at greater risk of having a binge-eating disorder, or to be vomiting or using diet pills, laxatives or diuretics in an effort to lose weight.
Study shows results of tight glucose control
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Here’s what we know about controlling blood glucose (blood sugar) in people with diabetes: It’s not easy, but it can be done. It requires vigilance and resolve. And it can save your life.
A recent study by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has answered one of the most important questions about diabetes: Can glucose control lower the risk of heart attacks and strokes? The answer is yes - intensive glucose control can reduce the risk by more than half. From 1983 to 1989, the NIH-sponsored Diabetes Control and Complications Trial (DCCT) randomly assigned a large number of people with diabetes to an intensive or conventional treatment group. Those in the intensive group were held to a stricter level of glucose control and were required to self-monitor their own glucose levels throughout the day. The DCCT ended in 1993 after conclusively demonstrating that intensive control better protected against damage to the eyes (retinopathy), kidneys (nephropathy), and nerves (neuropathy).
New guidelines for treating severely injured patients
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If someone is injured in an automobile collision or is severely burned, emergency room physicians across the country would probably take similar steps to stabilize each condition. But subsequent treatment in the intensive care unit or operating room is less well established and may vary significantly.
That is likely to change based on the work of an interdisciplinary team of dozens of scientists and physicians funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS). Drawing from the best available evidence, the team is developing a series of standard procedures for the care of severely injured patients. The guidelines will describe how to implement the most successful treatment protocols in the clinic and will include summaries of each procedure ready to print on 3-by-5 index cards for quick bedside reference.
The team’s first article—on mechanical ventilation—appeared in the September 2005 issue of the Journal of Trauma: Injury, Infection, and Critical Care. Planned future topics will cover resuscitation, prevention and treatment of venous blood clots, diagnosis of ventilator-associated pneumonia, blood sugar control, nutritional support, transfusion thresholds, and sedation. The team chose to cover aspects of care for which practices vary the most and those that have the greatest potential to influence patient outcomes.
