Public Health
Bayer expands research work to fight cancer in Asia
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Bayer AG said on Thursday it had entered into five projects with scientists in Singapore to work on earlier diagnosis and treatment of cancers that are most prevalent in Asia.
Senior researchers at the German pharmaceutical giant also said they had identified five compounds which they hope can fight liver, stomach and colorectal cancer.
“Five compounds that have survived early identification fit into these three cancers with high prevalence in Asia,” Ludger Dinkelborg, head of Bayer’s diagnostic imaging research, said in an interview.
During National Diabetes Awareness Month, New Report Ties Disease to Shortened Life Expectancy
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Despite medical advances enabling those with diabetes to live longer today than in the past, a 50-year-old with the disease still can expect to live 8.5 years fewer years, on average, than a 50-year-old without the disease.
This critical finding comes from a new report commissioned by The National Academy on an Aging Society and supported by sanofi-aventis U.S. The analysis - based on data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) - found that older adults with diabetes have a lower life expectancy at every age than those without the disease. At age 60, for example, the difference in life expectancy is 5.4 years. By age 90, the difference is one year.
“Given the rise in diabetes among boomers and seniors, these findings are alarming,” said Greg O’Neill, PhD, director of the Academy. “They paint a stark picture of the impact of diabetes and its complications on healthy aging.”
A ‘USB’ for medical diagnosis?
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Biomedical engineers at UC Davis have developed a plug-in interface for the microfluidic chips that will form the basis of the next generation of compact medical devices. They hope that the “fit to flow” interface will become as ubiquitous as the USB interface for computer peripherals.
UC Davis filed a provisional patent on the invention Nov. 1. A paper describing the devices was published online Nov. 25 by the journal Lab on a Chip.
“We think there is a huge need for an interface to bridge microfluidics to electronic devices,” said Tingrui Pan, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at UC Davis. Pan and graduate student Arnold Chen - invented the chip and co-authored the paper.
Harm in hospitals still common for patients
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Despite a decade of efforts to improve patient safety in hospitals—initially inspired by a seminal report on the problem from the U.S. Institute of Medicine in 2000—harmful errors and accidents are still common, new research suggests.
The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed that between 2002 and 2007, the number of patients experiencing infections acquired in the hospital, medication errors, complications from diagnostic techniques or treatments, and other such “harms” did not change.
Researchers looked at 2,300 patient admission records from 10 randomly selected hospitals in North Carolina. They found 588 incidents of patient harm resulting from medical procedures, medications, or other causes. Two-thirds of these complications were considered preventable by reviewers at the hospitals themselves.
Cholera fighting efforts restart in Haiti’s north
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Aid supplies to combat Haiti’s deadly cholera epidemic are flowing again into the country’s northern regions after protests by Haitians blaming U.N. troops for the outbreak, humanitarian groups said on Sunday.
Vehicles carrying equipment from some aid groups have begun to reach the northern city of Cap-Haitien, where aid efforts were disrupted last week by several days of protests that saw Haitians throw up road barricades and hurl stones at U.N. peacekeepers, said Imogen Wall of the U.N. humanitarian agency, OCHA.
“The security situation there has now stabilized,” Wall said. “We’re going to have to scramble to get back to where we were.”
New tests and interventions may help prevent future health problems
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1. Potassium Citrate May Help Prevent and Treat Osteoporosis Supplement Neutralizes Bone Damage Inflicted by the Western Diet
The Western diet creates an acidic environment in the body that removes calcium from bones and may contribute to the development of osteoporosis. Healthy adults who consume the standard US diet sustain a chronic, low-grade state of acidosis that worsens with age as kidney function declines, limiting urinary acid excretion. Reto Krapf, MD (University of Basel, in Bruderholz/Basel, Switzerland) and colleagues designed a study to see if daily alkali as potassium citrate supplement tablets might neutralize these effects. They enrolled 201 healthy elderly individuals of both genders with normal bone mass in a randomized double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial. Participants received either 60 mmol alkali as potassium citrate (a base) or a placebo every day for 2 years. Bone density and high resolution computed tomography scans after 2 years revealed that neutralizing diet-induced acid production with potassium citrate significantly and safely increased subjects’ bone density vs. placebo. “In addition, we discovered that bone architecture improved significantly, suggesting that not only bone mass, but also its quality was improved,” said Dr. Krapf. These results suggest and predict that potassium citrate may be effective for preventing and even treating osteoporosis.
Study co-authors include Sigrid Jehle, MD (University of Basel, in Bruderholz/Basel, Switzerland) and Henry N. Hulter, MD (FibroGen, Inc., San Francisco).
Disclosures: The authors reported no financial disclosures.
UK starts world’s first stroke stem cell trial
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Doctors in Scotland working with British biotech company ReNeuron have injected stem cells into the brain of a man in a pioneering clinical trial to test the safety of a therapy for patients disabled by stroke.
The trial is the first in the world to use neural stem cell therapy in stroke patients, its organisers said on Tuesday, and external experts said it was grounds for “cautious optimism.”
Keith Muir of the University of Glasgow’s Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology, the principal investigator, said the surgery on the first patient, a man in his 60s, had gone well and he had been discharged from hospital.
Mayo Clinic Health Policy Center to Host Health Care Symposium
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With the 2010 election over and new Capitol Hill leadership arriving in 2011, it is important to continue the discussion about patient-centered health care. In a sustained effort to seek consensus-driven policies that would build a high-value health care system, the Mayo Clinic Health Policy Center will host a symposium Dec. 5–7 entitled “Achieving the Vision: Advancing High-Value Health Care.”
WHO: Mayo Clinic Health Policy Center experts and national health care leaders. Among the panelists and speakers are Carolyn Clancy, M.D., director, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality; Susan Dentzer, editor-in-chief, Health Affairs; Tim Johnson, M.D., senior medical contributor, ABC News; Randall Krakauer, M.D., national medical director for Medicare, Aetna; Pat Mitchell, president and CEO, The Paley Center for Media (welcoming participants on behalf of the Mayo Clinic Board of Trustees during the reception on Dec. 5); and John Noseworthy, M.D., president and CEO, Mayo Clinic.
UNC Miscarriage Expert Available to Comment on Bush’s Miscarriage Disclosure
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Kristen M. Swanson, Ph.D., dean of the School of Nursing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is available for interviews about President George W. Bush’s disclosure of his mother’s miscarriage in his book ‘Decision Points.’
Swanson is an expert on miscarriage and how couples respond emotionally to it. She began her work on miscarriage 25 years ago with her dissertation, “The Unborn One: A Profile of The Human Experience of Miscarriage,” and has continued studying this area both as an investigator and as a consultant to other researchers’ works.
Although some have been shocked that President George W. Bush saw the fetus in a jar when he drove his mother to the hospital, Swanson said that the holding of the fetus is one of the most tender and private losses that a woman goes through when she miscarries.
Healthcare reform not top voter issue: poll
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Americans who turned out to vote last week dislike healthcare reform but it was not their top concern—the economy was.
A poll released on Tuesday by the non-profit Kaiser Foundation showed healthcare came only fourth in a list of concerns voiced by people who voted in the congressional elections on November 2.
“When voters were asked in our open-ended question to voice, in their own words, what influenced their vote, they said healthcare was a factor, but not a dominant one,” the foundation said in a statement.
A comparison of severe outcomes during the waves of pandemic (H1N1) 2009
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The second wave of the pandemic (H1N1) was substantially greater than the first with 4.8 times more hospital admissions, 4.6 times more deaths and 4 times more ICU cases, according to a study published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) (pre-embargo link only) http://www.cmaj.ca/embargo/cmaj100746.pdf. However, because of the larger number of people hospitalized during the second wave compared to the first, the percentage of people with severe outcomes was smaller.
The researchers compared demographic and clinical characteristics as well as outcomes of patients with (H1N1) influenza admitted to hospital during the first wave with those admitted during the second wave and post-peak period of the pandemic.
In the first wave, Nunavut, Manitoba and Quebec had the highest rates for hospital admissions. In the second wave, all provinces and territories were affected with the Maritimes provinces, Alberta, British Columbia, the Yukon Territory and the Northwest Territories experiencing much higher rates of hospital admission than in the first one. Quebec and Ontario were impacted in both waves, with Quebec reporting the highest number of hospitalizations and Ontario reported the most deaths overall.
Statins Not Routinely Indicated for Children and Adolescents with Lupus
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While statins are known to help prevent the progression of atherosclerosis, research presented this week at the American College of Rheumatology Annual Scientific Meeting in Atlanta indicates they should not be routinely prescribed in children and adolescents with lupus despite their increased risk of premature atherosclerosis.
Lupus, or SLE, is a chronic inflammatory disease that can affect the skin, joints, kidneys, lungs, nervous system, and other organs of the body. Usually, patients have skin rashes and arthritis, as well as fatigue and fever. It is often more severe when it begins in childhood. Lupus has been identified as a strong independent risk factor for heart attack and stroke, and children with lupus are at a particularly high risk because of their lifelong exposure to the disease. Atherosclerosis—a buildup of fatty deposits in the artery walls—which normally leads to heart attack and strokes in older adults, starts at an at an unusually early age and progresses more quickly in people with lupus.
Statins have been shown to reduce cardiovascular complications and death among the general adult population, but they have not been studied in the prevention of atherosclerosis among young people with lupus. In the largest trial of its kind—and the first major trial completed by the Childhood Arthritis and Rheumatology Research Alliance (called CARRA)—researchers recently completed a study looking at whether the use of statins would be helpful enough in the prevention of atherosclerosis in children and adolescents with lupus to make it worthwhile for them to start taking at such a young age.
Timing is everything in combination therapy for osteoporosis
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The adult human skeleton undergoes constant remodeling, with new bone forming at sites that have been broken down by a precise process called resorption. During remodeling, skeletal stem cells are recruited to resorption sites and directed to differentiate into bone-forming cells. Osteoporosis, a condition characterized by weak and fragile bones, develops when there is an imbalance in the remodeling process and more bone is lost than replaced. Now, new research published by Cell Press in the November issue of the journal Cell Stem Cell uncovers a mechanism that may guide development of better strategies for treatment osteoporosis.
Osteoporosis is often treated with drugs that inhibit bone resorption, such as alendronate, or drugs that stimulate bone formation, such as parathyroid hormone (PTH). Surprisingly, previous attempts to combine these approaches were not effective. “In clinical trials where PTH and alendronate were administered concurrently, the bone building effects of PTH were impaired,” explains senior study author Dr. Xu Cao from The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, MD. “This suggests that bone resorption is necessary for PTH-induced bone formation, but the underlying mechanisms are obscure. An improved understanding of the role that bone resorption plays in PTH-induced bone formation would provide a key mechanistic rationale for the development of strategies that maximize use of both PTH and antiresorptive drugs in the treatment of osteoporosis.”
Dr. Cao’s group had previously shown that transforming growth factor (TGF)-?1 plays a key role in bone formation after bone resorption.
Burning pain and itching governed by same nerve cells
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There are disorders and conditions that entail increased itching and can be extremely troublesome for those suffering from it. The mechanisms behind itching are not well understood today. For one thing, what is it about scratching that relieves itching?
In the current study, which was performed on mice, the research team led by Professor Klas Kullander at the Department of Neuroscience examined the nerve cells that transfer heat pain. When these nerve cells had lost its capacity to signal, the mice reacted less to heat, as expected, but surprisingly they also started to itch incessantly.
“These findings link together pain from a burn with regulating sensitivity to itching, which was highly surprising and interesting,” says Klas Kullander.
Macrophage protein has major role in inflammation
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Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have discovered that a multi-tasking protein called FoxO1 has another important but previously unknown function: It directly interacts with macrophages, promoting an inflammatory response that can lead to insulin resistance and diabetes. Contrarily, it also generates a negative feedback loop that can limit damage from excessive inflammation.
The findings by Jerrold M. Olefsky, MD, Associate Dean for Scientific Affairs and professor of Medicine, and colleagues are published in the November 2 issue of The EMBO Journal.
FoxO1 belongs to a group of well-known transcriptions factors crucial to determining the fate of cells. Earlier research has shown that FoxO1 helps govern the expression of genes involved in diabetes, cancer and aging. One unusual aspect of FoxO1 is that exposure to insulin causes cells to exclude the protein from their nuclei, inactivating it.
