Group urges heart test before kids get ADHD drugs
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Children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder should get their hearts checked before starting treatment with Ritalin or other stimulant drugs, experts recommended on Monday.
The American Heart Association called for these children to undergo an electrocardiogram, a test that detects and records the heart’s electrical activity, before taking such drugs.
The group said it is not clear that these medications increase a child’s risk of sudden cardiac death, but issued the new recommendations out of an abundance of caution.
Large waist may raise death risk for women
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Women with large bellies may die earlier of heart disease and cancer than other women, regardless of their weight, a large U.S. study suggests.
The findings, reported in the medical journal Circulation, add to evidence that when it comes to health risks, overall weight is not as important as where a person carries the fat.
Past studies have found that “apple-shaped” people appear to be at particular risk of clogged arteries, high blood pressure and diabetes. Abdominal obesity has also been linked to certain cancers, such as kidney cancer and colon cancer.
Exercise may reduce risk of preterm birth
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Women who are physically active during pregnancy may lower their chances of delivering prematurely, according to findings from a Danish study,
Using the Danish National Birth Cohort database, Mette Juhl, of the National Institute of Public Health, in Copenhagen, and colleagues analyzed physical activity information reported by 87,232 pregnant women between 1996 and 2002.
Overall, about one-third of the women said they participated in physical exercise, such as swimming, or low-impact leisure time activity such as aerobics, dancing, walking or hiking, bicycling, and yoga during early pregnancy.
Skipping breakfast may mean your baby is a girl
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Women on low-calorie diets or who skip breakfast at the time of conception are more likely to give birth to girls than boys, British scientists said on Wednesday.
New research by the universities of Exeter and Oxford provides the first evidence that a child’s sex is associated with the mother’s diet, and higher energy intake is linked to males.
“This research may help to explain why in developed countries, where many young women choose to have low-calorie diets, the proportion of boys born is falling,” said Fiona Mathews of the University of Exeter.
Laser dissection of depression
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Chinese investigators from Hefei and Dutch researchers in Amsterdam have collaborated using for the first time a combination of new elegant methodology in Depression research. They used postmortem human brain tissue that was donated to the Netherlands Brain Bank for research purposes and investigated a region in the basal part of the brain, the hypothalamus, that is known to be of crucial importance for the development of symptoms of depression. This region is 6 mm3 large and is called the Paraventricular Nucleus (PVN) since it is situated along the third ventricle of the brain. This brain area is central in the regulations of our normal stress response, while a too high activity of the PVN is a pivotal characteristic of depression. The hypothalamus consists of a large number of very small specialized cell groups that all have different functions and should thus be studied separately, hence the necessity of the application of the methodology used.
2 types of image are better than 1 for analyzing tumors
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Doctors treating individuals with cancer would find a noninvasive method to determine the amount of oxygen in a tumor very useful, because low levels of oxygen in a tumor have been linked to a poor outcome. A new method to do this and to image the surrounding organs and tissues at the same time has been developed and used to image tumors in mice by Murali Krishna and colleagues, at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda. The importance of this technical advance for furthering our understanding of tumor development in pre-clinical studies is discussed in an accompanying commentary by Mark Dewhirst and colleagues, at Duke University, Durham. As are some of the challenges that need to be overcome to develop the approach for use in the clinic, where it could be used diagnostically to determine the best treatment approach for tumors and other diseases as well as to monitor responses to treatment.
Myocardial infarction: Mortality for women not higher than for men
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The risk of dying in Germany of a myocardial infarction is not higher for women than for men. In the current issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2008; 105(15): 279-85), PD Dr. Günther Heller et al. describe how they disproved this widely held view.
Primary driver of stomach cancer development identified
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In a discovery that could lead to the development of new treatments for gastric cancer, scientists at the Melbourne Branch of the international Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (LICR) have discovered what appears to be the primary driver of tumor development in the stomach. Results published today on-line in the Journal of Clinical Investigation show that inhibiting the signaling cascade initiated by the IL-11 protein prevented the development of inflammation, hyperplasia (an abnormal increase in the number of cells) and tumor formation in pre-clinical models of gastric cancer.
Gastric cancer is the second most common cause of cancer-related deaths around the world, and has been shown previously to be correlated with chronic inflammation. Persistent activation of the Stat3 protein, which is known to play roles in inflammation-associated carcinogenesis, is commonly found in gastric and many other types of cancer. Until now, however, the underlying cause of hyperactive Stat3 was unknown.
Stem cells grow into heart muscle cells
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Dutch researchers at University Medical Center Utrecht and the Hubrecht Institute have succeeded in growing large numbers of stem cells from adult human hearts into new heart muscle cells. A breakthrough in stem cell research. Until now, it was necessary to use embryonic stem cells to make this happen. The findings are published in the latest issue of the journal Stem Cell Research.
The stem cells are derived from material left over from open-heart operations. Researchers at UMC Utrecht used a simple method to isolate the stem cells from this material and reproduce them in the laboratory, which they then allowed to develop. The cells grew into fully developed heart muscle cells that contract rhythmically, respond to electrical activity, and react to adrenaline.
“We’ve got complete control of this process, and that’s unique,” says principal investigator Prof. Pieter Doevendans. “We’re able to make heart muscle cells in unprecedented quantities, and on top of it they’re all the same. This is good news in terms of treatment, as well as for scientific research and testing of potentially new drugs.”
Seniors, Minorities To Have Largest Impact on Tomorrow’s America
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The demographic patterns of older Americans and certain ethnic groups will have greater effects on the country’s socioeconomic outlook than previously thought, according to the latest issue of Public Policy & Aging Report (PPAR). In particular, the Baby Boomer generation and residents of Hispanic and Asian backgrounds will have a noticeable impact as their populations swell.
The entire issue is authored by cutting-edge demographer William H. Frey. He is currently a senior fellow with Metropolitan Studies Program at the Brookings Institution and is a research professor at the University of Michigan and a senior fellow of the Milken Institute in Santa Monica, CA.
Pregnancy is possible after cancer treatment
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It has been reported for the first time in Germany that healthy ovarian tissue has been taken from a non-pregnant woman with cancer and then re-implanted after cancer therapy. The patient is now 32 years old and could become pregnant as a result. This case is described by Ralf Dittrich and his colleagues from Erlangen University Hospital in the current issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2008; 105[15]: 274-8).
Each finger can be moved separately
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A new prosthetic hand is being tested at the Orthopedic University Hospital in Heidelberg / Grip function almost like a natural hand
It can hold a credit card, use a keyboard with the index finger, and lift a bag weighing up to 20 kg – the world’s first commercially available pros-thetic hand that can move each finger separately and has an astounding range of grip configurations. For the first time worldwide a patient at the Orthopedic University Hospital in Heidelberg has tested both the “i-LIMB” hand in comparison with another innovative prosthesis, the so called ”Flu-idhand”. Eighteen-year-old Sören Wolf, who was born with only one hand, is enthusiastic about its capabilities.
Ground-breaking new insight into the development of Alzheimer’s disease
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Leuven, Belgium ¨C According to estimates there are 85,000 Alzheimer patients in our country and approximately 20,000 new cases every year. This spectacular increase is due to the increasing ageing population. Unfortunately it is still unclear precisely which ageing process forms the basis of this spectacular rise in the occurrence of the disease. VIB scientists affiliated to K.U.Leuven have discovered an important molecular link between Alzheimer’s disease and the development of the typical plaques in the brains of Alzheimer patients. This discovery is an important breakthrough in the fundamental research into the cause of Alzheimer’s disease.
Scientists identify novel way to prevent cardiac fibrosis
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In a study that points to a new strategy for preventing or possibly reversing fibrosis – the scarring that can lead to organ and tissue damage – researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have determined that a molecule called Epac (Exchange protein activated by cAMP1), plays a key role in integrating the body’s pro- and anti-fibrotic response. The research will be published in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) the week of April 21.
Inflammation is the body’s response to injury in tissues, prompting healing that leads to scars, whether on the skin, or in organs such as the heart, liver or lungs. Such scarring has beneficial properties, but there’s also the risk of excessive scarring, or tissue fibrosis, that can lead to organ damage and loss of function.
The UC San Diego researchers looked at cardiac fibrosis, which can occur in patients who have suffered an infection of the heart muscle or a heart attack. Such fibrosis causes the heart to stiffen so that it cannot adequately fill with blood and then empty itself, a condition known as diastolic dysfunction.
OHSU Cancer Institute researcher identifies protein that helps predict prostate cancer survival
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An Oregon Health & Science University Cancer Institute researcher has identified a protein that is a strong indicator of survival for men with advanced prostate cancer. The C-reactive protein, also known as CRP, is a special type of protein produced by the liver that is elevated in the presence of inflammation.
“This could mean that a simple blood test that is already available could help in clinical decision making and patient counseling. Patients and doctors would know better what to expect from the prostate cancer they are facing,” said Tomasz Beer, M.D., director of the Prostate Cancer Research Program at the OHSU Cancer Institute, associate professor of medicine (hematology/medical oncology), OHSU School of Medicine.
Beer’s research will be published online in the journal Cancer on Monday, April 21.
