Medicare may broaden obesity surgery payment
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The U.S. Medicare program may expand reimbursement for bariatric surgery for the obese, in light of a study that found the treatment can help reverse diabetes, the agency said on Monday.
Recent research found the surgery can completely reverse type 2 diabetes, a metabolic condition spurred by weight gain and suffered by millions of Americans.
Medicare, the government health plan for the nation’s 44 million elderly, “will assess the nature of the scientific evidence supporting surgery for the treatment of diabetes,” the agency said on its Web site.
Heart condition in those awaiting a kidney an ominous sign
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The presence of an often silent heart condition—systolic dysfunction, or decreased pumping action of the heart—nearly doubles the risk of death for patients on kidney transplant waiting lists, according to a study appearing in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology for June.
“This study identifies a subset of chronic kidney disease population at significantly higher risk for death while awaiting transplantation, where the role of medical interventions and devices such as implantable cardiac defibrillators and pacemakers should be studied,” Dr. Angelo M. de Mattos, from the University of California in Sacramento, and colleagues write.
Widely available tests could be used to help identify those patients with chronic kidney disease who have systolic dysfunction, they add.
Diabetics’ blood pressure often inadequately controlled
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Uncertainty about a patient’s “true” blood pressure (BP) is the chief reason why doctors fail to intensify BP-lowering treatment when a diabetic patient has high BP (hypertension), investigators report.
“Several studies have suggested that ‘clinical inertia’—the failure by providers to initiate or intensify therapy n the face of apparent need to do so—is a main contributor to poor control of hypertension,” Dr. Eve A. Kerr and colleagues explain in a report in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
To identify factors that underlie “clinical inertia,” Kerr at the Veterans Affairs Ann Arbor Healthcare System in Michigan and her team studied 1,169 diabetic patients with hypertension seen by 92 primary care doctors at 9 VA facilities.
Combination therapy more effective in early RA
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In the treatment of early rheumatoid arthritis (RA), a combination of anti-RA drugs is superior to methotrexate alone, UK researchers report.
“Our study,” lead investigator Dr. Ernest H. Choy told Reuters Health, “confirmed that there is a window of opportunity in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis.”
Choy of King’s College School of Medicine, London and colleagues randomly assigned 467 patients with early RA to treatment with methotrexate alone or with the addition of another “disease-modifying antirheumatic drug” (cyclosporine) or the steroid prednisolone, or both, for 9 months.
New analysis boosts drug’s prostate cancer value
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A new analysis of data from a key prostate cancer study has strengthened the view that a drug that is now sold as a generic may be a valuable weapon to prevent prostate cancer, researchers said on Monday.
The drug is finasteride, formerly sold by Merck and Co as Proscar to treat enlargement of the prostate and now available generically. The drug affects male hormone levels.
The men in the study were taking the drug in a dose of 5 milligrams. In a one milligram dose, finasteride is sold by Merck as the baldness remedy Propecia.
Statins might cut Parkinson’s disease risk
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People who use cholesterol-lowering statin drugs may have a lower risk of developing Parkinson’s disease, a study suggests.
The study, reported in the journal Neurology, found that people who had used statins for at least five years had about one-third the risk of Parkinson’s as non-users did. However, while the findings point to an association between statins and Parkinson’s, they do not prove that the cholesterol drugs help prevent the neurological disorder.
“Although our study findings suggest the very interesting possibility that statins may protect against Parkinson’s disease,” lead investigator Dr. Angelika D. Wahner told Reuters Health, “these findings are preliminary and must be confirmed by additional, well-designed studies.”
Childhood anxiety may worsen anorexia
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Anorexic women with a history of childhood anxiety may have particularly severe symptoms of the eating disorder, a study suggests.
It’s known that anxiety disorders, like social phobia and obsessive compulsive disorder, are far more common among people with anorexia than in the general population. Often, these anxiety disorders appear before the eating disorder does.
In the new study, published in the International Journal of Eating Disorders, researchers looked at whether a history of childhood “overanxious disorder” was related to the severity of women’s anorexia.
Obesity contributes to global warming: study
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Obesity contributes to global warming, too.
Obese and overweight people require more fuel to transport them and the food they eat, and the problem will worsen as the population literally swells in size, a team at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine says.
This adds to food shortages and higher energy prices, the school’s researchers Phil Edwards and Ian Roberts wrote in the journal Lancet on Friday.
Green tea may shield brain from sleep apnea effects
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Compounds found in green tea may help ward off the neurological damage that can come with the breathing disorder sleep apnea, a new animal study hints.
Researchers found that when they added green tea antioxidants to rats’ drinking water, it appeared to protect the animals’ brains during bouts of oxygen deprivation designed to mimic the effects of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).
The findings suggest that green tea compounds should be further studied as a potential OSA therapy, the researchers report in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
People with obstructive sleep apnea at risk for cardiac stress on airline flights
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People with severe obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) on commercial airline flights may have a greater risk of adverse events from cardiac stress than healthy people, according to new research to be presented at the American Thoracic Society’s 2008 International Conference in Toronto on Sunday, May 18.
The researchers compared oxygen levels and ventilation of healthy people and people with severe OSA during simulated flight conditions replicating the oxygen and pressure levels of typical commercial flights that have “cabin altitudes” (a measure of the air pressure and oxygen) ranging from 6,000 feet and 8,000 feet—the maximum allowed, even if the airplane is flying at 30,000 feet. This is the first study to use these measurements to assess fitness to fly without supplemental oxygen.
“It is normal for the rate of breathing to increase when air pressure falls. We predicted that patients with OSA would have a much sharper fall in oxygen levels because they might not increase their breathing as much,” said Leigh Seccombe, M.Sc., senior scientist in the Department of Thoracic Medicine at Concord Repatriation General Hospital in Sydney, Australia. “And in fact, we found that patients with OSA do have a lower blood oxygen level before and during aircraft cabin condition stimulation, but that the change in oxygen was similar. We also found that their breathing intensity increases at about the same rate as it does in healthy people.”
Neural cell transplants may help those with Parkinson’s disease
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The current issue of CELL TRANSPLANTATION (Vol. 17:4) features a number of publications by researchers seeking new ways to treat Parkinson’s disease (PD), a neurological disease characterized by muscle rigidity, tremor and slowed physical movements related to insufficient levels of dopamine (DA) in the basal ganglia of the brain, by using primate models to examine the potential therapy role of transplanted cells.
One research team looked at the ability of human neural progenitor cells (hNPCs) as a potential therapy when hNPCs were engineered to produce glial derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) in the brain following hNPC transplants.
“Localized delivery is essential for aiming therapeutic molecules when treating neurodegenerative disorders,” said Maria Emborg, PhD, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “There are currently a number of clinical trials underway using direct gene therapy approaches to deliver potent trophic factors throughout the basal ganglia.”
Fibroids Common, but Women Have Options
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Small fibroids located just beneath the lining of the uterus (submucosal) are more likely to move to the endometrial cavity after uterine artery embolization (UAE) but usually don’t cause major complications, according to a new study.
The study included 49 patients with 140 fibroids who underwent an MRI examination before and after UAE. The study found that 39 of these were submucosal. Of these, 33% migrated to the endometrial cavity after UAE, said Sachit Verma, MD, lead author of the study. “At the beginning of our study, we suspected that all submucosal fibroids became endocavitary following UAE irrespective of their area of contact with the endometrium (ID ratio),” said Dr. Verma. “By further analyzing our results we realized that submucosal fibroids with an ID ratio greater than 0.55 at pre-procedural MRI have a higher risk of becoming endocavitary following UAE,” he said
Bone drug could help prevent the spread of breast cancer
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Maintaining bone density could be a key to decreasing the spread of cancer in women with locally advanced breast cancer, according to research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
Bones are common sites for the spread, or metastasis, of breast cancer. Scientists here found that women treated for stage II/III breast cancer who also received a bone strengthening drug were less likely to have breast tumor cells growing in their bones after three months. The bone-strengthening drug used was zoledronic acid, a drug that decreases bone turnover and reduces bone fractures in patients with osteoporosis.
The findings will be reported June 3 at 11 a.m. CT at the 2008 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting in Chicago.
Disabling mouse enzyme increases fertility
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Changing the sugars attached to a hormone produced in the pituitary gland increased fertility levels in mice nearly 50 percent, a research group at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has found. The change appears to alter a reproductive “thermostat,” unveiling part of an intricate regulatory system that may one day be used to enhance human fertility.
“To adjust for the right amount of key reproductive hormones such as estrogen and testosterone, we may someday alter the sugars that are added to this hormone or others like it,” says the group’s leader, Jacques Baenziger, M.D., Ph.D., professor of pathology and immunology and of cell biology and physiology.
The report appeared recently in The Journal of Clinical Investigation.
Boyfriend’s gang membership boosts pregnancy risk
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Teen girls whose boyfriends are in a gang are nearly twice as likely to get pregnant as their peers whose boyfriends aren’t gang-involved, a new study from San Francisco demonstrates.
“The significant role of partner’s gang membership in increasing pregnancy risk highlights the importance of addressing the reproductive health needs of gang-involved youth,” Dr. Alexandra Minnis, of RTI International in San Francisco, and her colleagues report.
The rate of teen pregnancy among Latinas is significantly higher than it is among African Americans and whites, and while the birth rate for U.S. adolescents overall fell between 1994 and 2004, the decline was smallest among Latinas, Minnis and her team point out in the May 1 issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology.
