Researchers develop innovative imaging system to study sudden cardiac arrest
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A research team at Vanderbilt University has developed an innovative optical system to simultaneously image electrical activity and metabolic properties in the same region of a heart, to study the complex mechanisms that lead to sudden cardiac arrest. Tested in animal models, the system could dramatically advance scientists’ understanding of the relationship between metabolic disorders and heart rhythm disturbances in humans that can lead to cardiac arrest and death, and provide a platform for testing new treatments to prevent or stop potentially fatal irregular heartbeats, known as arrhythmias.
The research is supported in part by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of the National Institutes of Health.
The design and use of the dual camera system is described in the Nov.1 issue of Experimental Biology and Medicine. Additional support for the project has also been provided by the Vanderbilt Institute for Integrative Biosystems Research and Education (VIIBRE), the American Heart Association, and the Simons Center for Systems Biology at the Institute for Advanced Study.
New Type 1 Diabetes Research Center and Elam Discovery Wall Dedicated
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The La Jolla Institute for Allergy & Immunology, an international leader in immunology research and San Diego’s only research institute focused solely on immune-mediated diseases, today will dedicate its new Elam Discovery Wall and Type 1 Diabetes Center, which will focus on research into novel immunological-focused approaches to type 1 diabetes.
The discovery wall, a technologically advanced and visually stunning scientific research and education tool, is being dedicated in memory of William N. Elam, Jr., M.D., a longtime family physician and stepfather of Rancho Santa Fe resident and Institute friend Kevin Keller. During the dedication event, guests will be treated to powerful cellular images of type 1 diabetes activity via the Elam Discovery Wall, while speakers discuss the goals of the Institute’s new Center for type 1 diabetes research.
Led by Matthias von Herrath, M.D., one of the world’s top type 1 diabetes researchers and recipient of the American Diabetes Association’s prestigious 2008 Outstanding Scientific Achievement Award, the Center will accelerate research toward new therapies to better treat, prevent or cure type 1 diabetes.
$20 Million Stem Cell Grant for UC San Diego Cancer Research
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Researchers led by Moores UCSD Cancer Center Director Dennis A. Carson, MD, professor of medicine, and Catriona Jamieson, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine and director of the Cancer Stem Cell Research Program at the Moores UCSD Cancer Center have been awarded $20 million over four years to develop novel drugs against leukemia stem cells.
CIRM’s 29-member Governing Board voted to approve funding to 14 multidisciplinary teams of California researchers. The four-year grants mark the first CIRM funding explicitly expected to result in FDA approval for a clinical trial. The Disease Team Research Awards fund research teams that include basic scientists, clinicians and industry. These collaborations speed the process of establishing clinical trials by avoiding mistakes being discovered late in the process and insuring that clinically relevant issues are considered early.
“This award will fund a team – including researchers from disparate disciplines and key industry-academic partners – to develop novel therapies targeting leukemia stem cells, with the goal of moving to clinical trials in the shortest possible time frame,” said Jamieson, who was involved in a unique partnership between industry and academia that, in 2008, led to human clinical trials of a new drug for a rare class of blood diseases in just one year’s time.
Research shows Tai Chi exercise reduces knee osteoarthritis pain in the elderly
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Researchers from Tufts University School of Medicine have determined that patients over 65 years of age with knee osteoarthritis (OA) who engage in regular Tai Chi exercise improve physical function and experience less pain. Tai Chi (Chuan) is a traditional style of Chinese martial arts that features slow, rhythmic movements to induce mental relaxation and enhance balance, strength, flexibility, and self-efficacy. Full findings of the study are published in the November issue of Arthritis Care & Research, a journal of the American College of Rheumatology.
The elderly population is at most risk for developing knee OA, which results in pain, functional limitations or disabilities and a reduced quality of life. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) there are 4.3 million U.S. adults over age 60 diagnosed with knee OA, a common form of arthritis that causes wearing of joint cartilage. A recent CDC report further explains that half of American adults may develop symptoms of OA in at least one knee by age 85.
For this study, Chenchen Wang, M.D., M.Sc., and colleagues recruited 40 patients from the greater Boston area with confirmed knee OA who were in otherwise good health. The mean age of participants was 65 years with a mean body mass index of 30.0 kg/m2. Patients were randomly selected and 20 were asked to participate in 60-minute Yang style Tai Chi sessions twice weekly for 12 weeks. Each session included: a 10-minute self-massage and a review of Tai Chi principles; 30 minutes of Tai Chi movement; 10 minutes of breathing technique; and 10 minutes of relaxation.
Genes key in compulsive urge to hoard
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People who have a compulsive urge to collect and clutter their homes with junk can partly attribute their problem to genes, a new study confirms.
In a twin study, researchers found that genetic predisposition explained a large amount of the risk for compulsive hoarding—a mental health problem in which people have an overwhelming desire to accumulate items normally considered useless, like old newspapers or junk mail.
Of the more than 5,000 twins in the study, roughly 2 percent showed symptoms of compulsive hoarding. And genes appeared to account for half of the variance in risk.
Diabetics with Alzheimer’s have slower memory loss
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People who have both Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes have slower rates of memory loss than people who just have Alzheimer’s disease, French researchers said on Tuesday.
They studied 600 Alzheimer’s patients for four years and found those who had both Alzheimer’s and diabetes—about 10 percent of the total—scored far better on twice yearly memory and thinking tests than those with Alzheimer’s who did not have diabetes.
“This result was surprising,” said Dr. Caroline Sanz of the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research, whose study appears in the journal Neurology.
Andre Agassi admits taking drugs and lying to ATP
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Eight times grand slam winner Andre Agassi has admitted using the recreational drug crystal meth and lying to the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) to escape a ban.
In his forthcoming book, which is being serialized in The Times, the American candidly describes being introduced to the drug in 1997 by his assistant and the moment later that year when he was informed he had failed a drug test.
The International Tennis Federation (ITF) president Francesco Ricci Bitti said he was “surprised and disappointed” by Agassi’s revelations that have stunned tennis.
Patient First in North Texas to Receive Newest-generation Heart Failure Device
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UT Southwestern Medical Center patient Michael LeBlanc, 40, is the first in North Texas to receive the newest generation of a mechanical device designed to improve heart function. It will be his lifeline while he awaits a heart transplant.
Called a left-ventricular assist device (LVAD), its purpose is to help a patient’s weakened heart pump blood throughout the body. For Mr. LeBlanc, it will help his ailing heart continue to pump until the Irving resident receives a new heart. UT Southwestern is the only medical facility in North Texas implanting the HeartWare Ventricular Assist System as part of a national clinical trial testing the effectiveness of the device.
The HeartWare Ventricular Assist System is a little smaller than a hockey puck and two and half times smaller than the earliest versions of LVADs.
Economic impact of H1N1 less in crisis: German study
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The H1N1 swine flu virus will have less impact on Germany’s economy than previously expected, a study by Allianz insurers and the RWI economic research institute showed on Tuesday.
The study said swine flu would cost Europe’s biggest economy between 10 billion euros and 40 billion euros, equivalent to 0.4 and 1.6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) respectively, depending on the gravity of the global flu pandemic.
The transport, hospitality and culture sectors would suffer most, said the study.
South Korea stem cell scientist guilty of fraud
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A South Korean court Monday found disgraced stem cell scientist Hwang Woo-suk guilty of fraud and handed down a suspended sentence in a case that sent shockwaves throughout the global scientific community.
Hwang, once a scientist with rock-star like status for bringing South Korea to the forefront of stem cell studies, had faced trial on charges of fraud, misusing state funds and violating bioethics laws.
“He was guilty of fabrication,” the Seoul court said in a verdict in the trial that stretched more than three years and included painstaking details about the scientific work Hwang and his team had performed at Seoul National University.
Heart attacks up for women, but survival is too
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The good news: Younger women’s survival after heart attack has improved substantially over the past decade, according to a new report in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
The not-so-good news: Women younger than 55 are still less likely to survive a heart attack than their male counterparts, Dr. Viola Vaccarino of Emory University in Atlanta and her colleagues found. And another study in the same journal found heart attacks are becoming more common among women 35 to 54 years old.
Vaccarino and her team first reported a major gender difference in heart attack survival in people under 60 in 1999, a finding other investigators have since confirmed. To investigate whether things might have gotten better, they looked at a registry of more than 900,000 people hospitalized for a heart attack from 1994 to 2006.
Healthcare system wastes up to $800 billion a year
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The U.S. healthcare system is just as wasteful as President Barack Obama says it is, and proposed reforms could be paid for by fixing some of the most obvious inefficiencies, preventing mistakes and fighting fraud, according to a Thomson Reuters report released on Monday.
The U.S. healthcare system wastes between $505 billion and $850 billion every year, the report from Robert Kelley, vice president of healthcare analytics at Thomson Reuters, found.
“America’s healthcare system is indeed hemorrhaging billions of dollars, and the opportunities to slow the fiscal bleeding are substantial,” the report reads.
Deadly Stomach Infection Rising in Community Settings
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Mayo Clinic researchers have found that a sometimes deadly stomach bug, Clostridium difficile, is on the rise in outpatient settings. Clostridium difficile is a serious bacteria that can cause symptoms ranging from diarrhea to life-threatening inflammation of the colon. These findings were presented today at the 2009 American College of Gastroenterology (ACG) Annual Meeting in San Diego.
VIDEO ALERT: Additional audio and video resources are available on the Mayo Clinic News Blog.
Clostridium difficile, often called C. difficile or “C. diff”, is a bacterium that is resistant to some antibiotics and is most often contracted by the elderly in hospitals and nursing homes.
Feelings of Stigmatization May Discourage HIV Patients from Proper Care
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The feeling of stigmatization that people living with HIV often experience doesn’t only exact a psychological toll —new UCLA research suggests it can also lead to quantifiably negative health outcomes.
In a study published in the October issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine, researchers from the division of general internal medicine and health services research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA found that a large number of HIV-positive individuals who reported feeling stigmatized also reported poor access to care or suboptimal adherence to antiretroviral therapy (ART).
In fact, individuals who experienced high levels of internalized stigma were four times as likely as those who didn’t to report poor access to medical care; they were three times as likely to report suboptimal adherence to HIV medications.
Iron Overload: Treatment for Common Genetic Disorder
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Absorbing and storing too much iron can cause an array of health problems—for starters, joint pain, fatigue, weakness and loss of interest in sex. This condition, called hemochromatosis, is the most common genetic disorder in the United States, most frequently occurring in people of Northern European descent.
The October issue of Mayo Clinic Health Letter provides an overview of hemochromatosis, including its genetic cause, subtle early symptoms, potential health risks and treatment.
When people have hemochromatosis, their bodies absorb and store too much iron from their normal diet. Over decades, the iron levels can build up in various organs, most often the liver and heart. Without treatment, iron levels accumulate to 20 times that of a person without the disorder. The result can be irreversible scarring of the liver (cirrhosis), liver cancer, diabetes, heart failure, heart rhythm problems, arthritis, impotence or darkening of the skin.
