Is High Blood Pressure in Your Genes?
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Eighty-year-old Cleo Upell of Tecumseh, Mich. has high blood pressure. So do three of her daughters - and at least one of her granddaughters.
Families like the Upells are all too common in the United States, where one in four adults has high blood pressure, also known as hypertension. If untreated, the problem creates a much greater risk of heart disease and stroke.
Pregnancy test may lie behind deadly frog fungus
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What do an old pregnancy test for women and a mysterious fungus that is killing frogs have in common?
Plenty, according to researchers at North-West University in South Africa, who believe they have traced the spread of the killer fungus to trade in the African clawed frog, used for decades in a bizarre but effective way of determining pregnancy.
Heavy marijuana use linked to bladder cancer
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Pot smokers could be putting themselves at risk for developing bladder cancer, according to the results of a study of middle-aged men who were seen at two Veterans Administration facilities.
Marijuana smoking “might be an even more potent stimulant” of malignancy than cigarette smoking, Dr. Martha K. Terris of the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta and her colleagues write in the medical journal Urology.
Terris and her team point out that head and neck and lung cancers have been tied to marijuana use, and there is evidence that these marijuana-associated malignancies may strike at an earlier age.
Study Shows Minimally Invasive Lung Surgery Has Low Risk
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In the largest published study of its kind, with 1,100 patient cases reviewed, a minimally invasive surgical procedure for lung cancer has been shown to be as effective as open surgery with a low risk of complications and high survival rates when performed by experienced thoracic surgeons.
But even though the benefits of the technique have been documented over the past decade - shorter recovery times and hospitalizations, reduced pain, and improved quality of life, for example - it is currently used in only about five percent of the 40,000 lobectomies performed each year in the United States.
Obesity May Be Factor in Accelerated Type I Diabetes in Some Patients
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Obesity, long known as a cause of type 2 diabetes, may accelerate the onset of type 1 diabetes in some - but not all - groups of younger patients, according to research at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and six clinical sites nationally.
“The increasing prevalence of childhood obesity may substantially account for the younger age at onset of type 1 diabetes observed in various populations,” said the research team, writing in the February issue of Diabetes Care.
Mind and Mood Affect the Heart
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Heart disease can be depressing-literally. About 50% of hospitalized heart patients have some depressive symptoms, and up to 20% develop major depression. And depression affects heart health: Patients who are depressed at the time of hospitalization for heart conditions are two to five times more likely than average to die or to suffer further cardiovascular events such as heart attack, stroke, or severe chest pain in the following year. The February issue of the Harvard Mental Health Letter notes that recurrence of cardiovascular events is more closely linked to depression than to high cholesterol, smoking, high blood pressure, or diabetes.
Mind and mood can affect the cardiovascular system directly by creating a state of emergency readiness, in which stress hormone levels rise, blood vessels constrict, and heartbeat speeds up. If a person is seriously depressed or anxious, the emergency response becomes constant, damaging the blood vessels and making the heart less sensitive to signals telling it to slow down or speed up as the body’s demands change, reports the Harvard Mental Health Letter.
High-Risk Black Men Are Screened Less for Prostate Cancer
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The men most at risk for aggressive prostate cancer - black men with a family history - are the least likely to get screening even during peak ages of risk, researchers say.
Only 25 percent of black men during peak ages of 60-69 are screened using the common blood test that measures prostate specific antigen levels and 36 percent get annual digital rectal exams, according to a study published in the Feb. 15 issue of Cancer.
Black males are diagnosed with prostate cancer at an average age of 65.
Urban Black Women Underestimate Heart Disease Risk
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Two out of three urban black women at high risk for heart disease do not consider themselves at risk, says Tulane University researcher Karen DeSalvo.
“Black women are more likely than other groups to die from heart disease,” says DeSalvo, associate professor and chief of general internal medicine. “We do not fully understand why they are at greater risk. The results of this study show the women themselves do not think they are at risk even when they are. We also determined that women who are poor or who believe they are under a lot of stress are the least able to accurately assess their personal risk of heart disease.”
Oral devices recommended for milder sleep apnea
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Mouth devices that aid breathing during sleep can be used as the first-line treatment for people with chronic snoring or milder cases of obstructive sleep apnea, according to new treatment guidelines.
The guidelines, published this week by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, recommend that oral appliances - similar to mouth guards used in sports - be offered as an initial treatment to people with mild to moderate OSA.
Childhood cancer survivors face adulthood risk
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Children who survive cancer face a four-fold increased risk of developing cancers as adults, and these malignancies appear at an earlier-than-normal age, a new study shows.
But careful screening—as well as awareness of potential early symptoms—can help ensure that disease is caught early, when it’s much easier to treat, Dr. Nina S. Kadan-Lottick told Reuters Health in an interview.
Nucleotide supplements may protect digestive tract
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Nucleotides, available over the counter as “health food” supplements, are biologically active and reduce gastric injury, according to a report in the medical journal Gut.
These compounds “could provide a novel inexpensive approach for the prevention and treatment of the injurious effects of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and other ulcerative conditions of the bowel,” investigators from Imperial College and Hammersmith Hospital, London, conclude. The NSAID painkillers they refer to can often lead to stomach inflammation or ulcers.
Researchers Break Chain of Events That Brain Cancer Cells Use to Evade Therapy
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In their quest to find and exploit vulnerabilities in the natural armor that protects malignant brain tumors from destruction, researchers have found a way to decrease the cells’ resistance to therapies that are designed to trigger cell death. The findings resulted from laboratory experiments conducted at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center’s Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute and are based on the manipulation of a series of intricate biochemical events taking place within brain tumor cells.
“We have described and are exploiting a biochemical pathway to make brain cancers much more sensitive to common therapeutic agents that cause a natural process of cell death called apoptosis,” said John S. Yu, M.D., co-director of the Comprehensive Brain Tumor Program at the Institute, adding that the researchers are applying for Food and Drug Administration approval to translate their findings into patient clinical trials as soon as possible.
Self-monitoring benefits patients on blood-thinners
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Self-monitoring by patients taking anti-clotting drugs is safe, effective and could lead to fewer deaths, researchers said on Friday.
Anticoagulants, or blood thinners, are a common treatment to prevent blood clots and strokes. Millions of people take the drugs but their reaction to the treatment must be tested regularly to prevent bleeding or hemorrhage.
Misuse led to drug-resistant flu strains -experts
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Misuse of two anti-viral drugs in China, Russia and other countries likely led to the development of resistant influenza strains against which the drugs are now nearly useless, health experts said on Thursday.
The medicines involved are amantadine and rimantadine, used to treat common seasonal influenza but not intended to combat the avian flu strain that has killed at least 85 people since 2003 and which experts fear could mutate and cause a global pandemic.
Milder types of skin cancer may raise melanoma risk
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Women who’ve had common, highly curable forms of skin cancer may face a heightened risk of the deadlier skin tumor melanoma, researchers have found.
Their study of more than 67,000 white postmenopausal women found that those with a history of non-melanoma skin cancer were 70 percent more likely than other women to develop melanoma during the study period.
