Monday 30 December 2013

Significant Weight Gain During Pregnancy Increases The Risk Of Gestational Diabetes

Significant Weight Gain During Pregnancy Increases The Risk Of Gestational Diabetes.
Excessive ballast come by during pregnancy, especially the first trimester, may increase a woman's jeopardy of gestational diabetes, say US researchers. Their three-year study included 345 in the women with gestational diabetes and 800 pregnant women without gestational diabetes, which is defined as glucose bias that typically occurs during the second or third trimester of pregnancy.

After the researchers adjusted for a loads of factors - age at delivery, previous births, pre-pregnancy body-mass list and race and/or ethnicity - they found that women who gained more weight during pregnancy than recommended by the US Institute of Medicine were 50 percent more plausible to develop gestational diabetes, compared to those whose charge gain was within or below the IOM recommendations. The link between pregnancy weight gain and gestational diabetes was strongest surrounded by overweight and non-white women.

The study was published online Feb 22 in the annal Obstetrics and Gynecology. "Health-care providers should talk to their patients early in their pregnancy about the assign gestational weight gain, especially during the first trimester, and help women monitor their incline gain.

Thursday 26 December 2013

Stem Cells From A New Source For The Treatment Of The Heart

Stem Cells From A New Source For The Treatment Of The Heart.
Stem cells from the amniotic sac that surrounds a fetus may someday be hand-me-down to renew ruin caused by a heart attack, Japanese researchers report. The work, so far only conducted in animals, raises the admissibility of a non-controversial source of stem cells to care for not only heart disease but also many other conditions, said Dr Shunichiro Miyoshi, an assistant professor in the cardiology section at the Keio University School of Medicine, and co-author of a report in the May 28 online subject of Circulation Research. "I believe these cells may be utilized in the treatment of autoimmune diseases such as SLA systemic lupus erythematosus and rheumatoid arthritis," Miyoshi said.

The amniotic sac is typically discarded after childbirth. SLA is an autoimmune cancer in which the body's unaffected system cells mistakenly revile healthy tissue. The cells that Miyoshi and his colleagues have used in mouse studies can undeniably be obtained in large numbers and offer another major advantage: they bypass the emergency to match donor-recipient cell typing, Miyoshi explained.

So "At the present time there is no obstruction for clinical utilization," he said. "We can obtain amniotic membrane from every delivery. We do not miss to match donor-recipient matching of complicated HLA typing". HLA refers to the protein markers that are found on most of the body's cells. Transplanted cells that conflict from the recipient's HLA type will be attacked and destroyed by the unsusceptible system.

The Keio researchers have begun a series of studies aimed at the human use of the amniotic slow cells. "Now we are performing the experiment on a swine model," Miyoshi said. "Immediately after we get a valid result, we are planning to perform clinical trials. I believe it will go on within a few years. But it may depend on the strength of our government regulation".

The journal report describes laboratory work in which check cells obtained from amniotic membranes were transformed into heart cells, 33 percent of which worst spontaneously and which improved rat heart function by more than 34 percent when injected two weeks after a pity attack. The injected cells decreased the area of heart damage by 13 percent to 18 percent and survived for more than four weeks in the rats without the use of drugs to discord protected rejection. The amniotic cells are much easier to convert into heart cells than stem cells from other sources, such as bone marrow or fat, Miyoshi said.

Wednesday 25 December 2013

Deadly Intestinal Infection

Deadly Intestinal Infection.
Increased efforts to up the spread of an intestinal superbug aren't having a vital impact, according to a national survey of infection prevention specialists in the United States. Hospitals and other trim care facilities need to do even more to reduce rates of Clostridium difficile infection, including hiring more infection forbiddance staff and improving monitoring of cleaning efforts, according to the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC). Each year, about 14000 Americans pop off from C difficile infection.

Deaths common to C difficile infection rose 400 percent between 2000 and 2007, partly due to the mien of a stronger strain, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In addition, the infections total at least $1 billion a year to US strength care costs. In January, 2013, APIC surveyed 1100 members and found that 70 percent said their vigour care facilities had adopted additional measures to arrest C difficile infections since March 2010.

However, only 42 percent of respondents said C difficile infection rates at their facilities had declined, while 43 percent said there was no decrease, according to the findings presented Monday at an APIC convention on C difficile, held in Baltimore. Despite the actuality that C difficile infection rates have reached all-time highs in new years, only 21 percent of vigorousness care facilities have added more infection prevention staff to tackle the problem, the scan found.

Monday 23 December 2013

Passive Smoking May Cause Illness Of The Cardiovascular System

Passive Smoking May Cause Illness Of The Cardiovascular System.
The more you're exposed to secondhand tobacco smoke, the more conceivable you are to grow early signs of sincerity disease, a new study indicates. The findings suggest that exposure to secondhand smoke may be more harmful than previously thought, according to the researchers. For the study, the investigators looked at nearly 3100 salubrious people, aged 40 to 80, who had never smoked and found that 26 percent of those exposed to varying levels of secondhand smoke - as an full-grown or child, at work or at home - had signs of coronary artery calcification, compared to 18,5 percent of the loose population. Those who reported higher levels of secondhand smoke experience had the greatest evidence of calcification, a build-up of calcium in the artery walls.

After irresistible other heart risk factors into account, the researchers concluded that people exposed to low, middling or high levels of secondhand smoke were 50, 60 and 90 percent, respectively, more like as not to have evidence of calcification than those who had minimal exposure. The health effects of secondhand smoke on coronary artery calcification remained whether the orientation was during childhood or adulthood, the results showed.

The analysis findings are scheduled for presentation Thursday at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology (ACC), in San Francisco. "This scrutinize provides additional evidence that secondhand smoke is noxious and may be even more dangerous than we previously thought," study author Dr Harvey Hecht, affiliate director of cardiac imaging and professor of medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City, said in an ACC dispatch release.

Saturday 21 December 2013

Depression May Worsen Obesity

Depression May Worsen Obesity.
New enquire provides more evidence of a relation between depression and extra pounds around the waist, although it's not exactly clear how they're connected. The turn over raises the possibility that depression causes people to put on extra pounds around the belly. The irreconcilable doesn't appear to be the case: researchers found that overweight people aren't more likely to become depressed than their normal-weight peers.

These findings come from researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who examined figures from the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults Study (CARDIA), a 20-year longitudinal observe of more than 5100 men and women venerable 18-30. Longitudinal studies look for a link between cause and effect by observing a assort of individuals at regular intervals over a long period of time.

Friday 20 December 2013

Untreated Viral Hepatitis Leads To Liver Cancer

Untreated Viral Hepatitis Leads To Liver Cancer.
A typeface of liver cancer, hepatocellular carcinoma, is increasing in the United States, and salubriousness officials trace to much of the rise to untreated hepatitis infections. Chronic hepatitis B and hepatitis C are administrative for 78 percent of hepatocellular carcinoma around the world. In the United States, as many as 5,3 million kin have chronic viral hepatitis and don't know it, according to the May 6 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

So "The liver cancer rates are increasing in juxtapose to most other primary forms of cancer," said Dr John Ward, top dog of CDC's viral hepatitis division and co-author of the report. Viral hepatitis is a prime reason for the increase, he said.

The rate of hepatocellular carcinoma increased from 2,7 per 100,000 persons in 2001 to 3,2 in 2006 - an mean annual snowball of 3,5 percent, according to the report. The highest rates are seen among Asian Pacific Islanders and blacks, the CDC researchers noted.

This is of perturb because opportunities exist for prevention, Ward noted. "There is a vaccine against hepatitis B that is routinely given to infants - so our children are protected, but adults, for the most part, are not," he said. In addition, chaste treatments happen for both hepatitis B and C, Ward explained. "These will be even more functional in the future when new drugs currently in maturing come on the market," he said.

Thursday 19 December 2013

High School Is An Excellent Medium For Transmission Of Influenza Virus

High School Is An Excellent Medium For Transmission Of Influenza Virus.
By outfitting students and teachers with wireless sensors, researchers simulated how the flu might barbecue through a regular American cheerful school and found more than three-quarters of a million opportunities for infection daily. Over the dispatch of a single school day, students, teachers and staff came into buddy-buddy proximity of one another 762868 times - each a potential occasion to spread illness. The flu, match the common cold and whooping cough, spreads through tiny droplets that contain the virus, said protagonist study author Marcel Salathe, an assistant professor of biology at Pennsylvania State University.

The droplets, which can tarry airborne for about 10 feet, are spewed when someone infected coughs or sneezes, Salathe said. But it's not known how terminate you have to be to an infected soul to get the flu, or for how long, although just chatting briefly may be enough to pass the virus. When researchers ran computer simulations using the "contact network" text collected at the high school, their predictions for how many would fall unpleasantness closely matched absentee rates during the actual H1N1 flu pandemic in the fall of 2009.

And "We found that it's in very thorough agreement," Salathe said. "This data will allow us to foretell the spread of flu with even greater detail than before". The study is published in the Dec 13, 2010 online print run of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Figuring out how and where an infectious virus will spread is highly complex, said Daniel Janies, an associate professor of biomedical informatics at Ohio State University in Columbus.

The genomics of the disease, or the genetic makeup of the pathogen, can motivate its proficiency to infect humans as can environmental factors, such as weather and whether a particular virus or bacteria thrives during a given season. Your genetic makeup and salubriousness also influence how susceptible you are to a particular pathogen, he said.

Wednesday 18 December 2013

Research On Animals Has Shown That Women Are More Prone To Stress

Research On Animals Has Shown That Women Are More Prone To Stress.
When it comes to stress, women are twice as disposed to as men to come to light stress-induced disease, such as glumness and/or post-traumatic stress, and now a new study in rats could worker researchers understand why. The team has uncovered evidence in animals that suggests that males further from having a protein that regulates and diminishes the brain's stress signals - a protein that females lack. What's more, the crew uncovered what appears to be a molecular double-whammy, noting that in animals a younger protein that helps process such stress signals more effectively - conception them more potent - is much more effective in females than in males.

The differing dynamics, reported online June 15 in the newspaper Molecular Psychiatry, have so far only been observed in male and female rats. However, Debra Bangasser of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and colleagues suggest that if this psychopathology is at long last reflected in humans it could assume command to the development of new drug treatments that target gender-driven differences in the molecular processing of stress.

Tuesday 17 December 2013

Relationship Between Immune System And Mental Illness

Relationship Between Immune System And Mental Illness.
In the chief controlled illustration of exactly how some psychiatric illnesses might be linked to an immune system gone awry, researchers boom they cured mice of an obsessive-compulsive condition known as "hair-pulling disorder" by tweaking the rodents' unaffected systems. Although scientists have noticed a link between the immune system and psychiatric illnesses, this is the leading evidence of a cause-and-effect relationship, said the authors of a study appearing in the May 28 conclusion of the journal Cell. The "cure" in this case was a bone marrow transplant, which replaced a incompetent gene with a normal one.

The excitement lies in the fact that this could open the way to new treatments for unusual mental disorders, although bone marrow transplants, which can be life-threatening in themselves, are not a likely candidate, at least not at this point. "There are some drugs already existing that are functional with respect to immune disorders," said haunt senior author Mario Capecchi, the recipient of a 2007 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. "This is very renewed information in terms of there being some kind of immune reaction in the body that could be contributing to mental vigour symptoms," said Jacqueline Phillips-Sabol, an assistant professor of neurosurgery and psychiatry at Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine and top dog of the neuropsychology division at Scott & White in Temple, Texas. "This helps us persevere to unravel the mystery of mental illness, which reach-me-down to be shrouded in mysticism. We didn't know where it came from or what caused it".

However, Phillips-Sabol was sharp to point out that bone marrow transplants are not a reasonable treatment for mental health disorders. "That's likely a stretch at least at this point," she said. "Most patients who have obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) are utterly successfully treated with psychotherapy". "The story starts with a mouse mutant that has a very unusual behavior, which is very almost identical to the obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorder in humans called trichotillomania, when patients compulsively assassinate all their body hair," explained Capecchi, who is a distinguished professor of human genetics and biology at the University of Utah School of Medicine and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Some 2 percent to 3 percent of men and women worldwide go down from the disorder, he said. The same group of researchers had earlier discovered the ground for the odd behavior: these mice had changes in a gene known as Hoxb8. To their great surprise, the gene turns out to be confused in the development of microglia, a type of immune cell found in the perspicacity but originating in the bone marrow, whose known function is to clean up damage in the brain.

Monday 16 December 2013

Omnitarg And Herceptin Could Save Women Without Chemotherapy From Breast Cancer

Omnitarg And Herceptin Could Save Women Without Chemotherapy From Breast Cancer.
Combinations of targeted therapies for an especially martial archetype of breast cancer could potentially usher the mass of affected patients into remission, researchers at a major breast cancer meeting said Friday. Presenting results from three trials at the annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, scientists explained that administering two or more drugs designed to examine HER2-positive tumors resulted in much higher deliverance rates than doses of any one opiate or standard chemotherapy alone. Given to patients several weeks before cancer surgery, with or without chemotherapy, the medications often shrank tumors dramatically or eradicated them altogether, the researchers said.

HER2-positive cancer is flexible to a protein called charitable epidermal lump factor receptor 2, which promotes the growth of malignant cells. Drugs that specifically objective HER2 cells - including Herceptin, Tykerb and Omnitarg - have been proven real on these types of tumors, which tend to be more aggressive than other breast cancers. "I think it's a very captivating era, because we've gone from a very lethal era - to a point where we might be able to cure this disease," said Dr Neil Spector, a professor of medicament at Duke University Medical Center, who moderated the symposium session.

Using Tykerb and Herceptin combined with chemotherapy before surgery, researchers followed 2,500 women with inappropriate heart cancer at 85 facilities throughout Germany. About half of these patients achieved release before surgery, said Dr Michael Untch, head of the multidisciplinary breast cancer domain at Helios Clinic in Berlin. "In a majority of these patients, we could do breast-conserving surgery where previously they were candidates for mastectomy," Untch said.

The group will continue following the patients to see if remission at surgery affects their outcome. Another weigh showed the combination of Omnitarg and Herceptin, when given with the chemotherapy drug docetaxel, eradicated 46 percent of tumors, 50 percent more than the results achieved without Omnitarg. Also, 17 percent of tumors were eradicated by combining the two targeted drugs and skipping chemotherapy, the researchers said.

Sunday 15 December 2013

In Men With Prostate Cancer Observed Decrease In Penis Size

In Men With Prostate Cancer Observed Decrease In Penis Size.
A flat million of men with prostate cancer complain that their penis appears to be shorter following treatment, doctors report. According to researchers from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women's Cancer Center, Boston, these patients said that this unexpected ancillary implication interfered with their insinuate relationships and made them regret the type of treatment they had chosen. "Prostate cancer is one of the few cancers where patients have a exquisite of therapies, and because of the range of possible side effects, it can be a tough choice," mull over leader Dr Paul Nguyen, a radiation oncologist, said in a Dana-Farber news release.

So "This workroom says that when penile shortening does occur, it really does affect patients and their nobility of life. It's something we should be discussing up front so that it will help reduce treatment regrets". The cause effect was most common among men who had prostatectomies, which is the surgical removal of the prostate, and those who had hormone-based remedy coupled with radiation. Nguyen added that most patients are able to cope with just about any side effect if they remember about it in advance.

The study involved 948 men with recurrent prostate cancer. The men were enrolled in a registry that collects message on patients whose prostate cancer shows signs of coming back after their primary treatment. Most of the men were between the ages of 60 and 80. Of the men snarled in the study, 54 percent had their prostate surgically removed, 24 percent received dispersal combined with hormone-blocking treatment and 22 percent chose to undergo only radiation.

Saturday 14 December 2013

The Opinions Of Americans About Healthcare Reform Still Varies Widely

The Opinions Of Americans About Healthcare Reform Still Varies Widely.
One month after President Barack Obama signed the signal health-reform jaws into law, Americans be there divided on the measure, with many people still unsure how it will affect them, a untrodden Harris Interactive/HealthDay poll finds. Supporters and opponents of the reform package are roughly equally divided, 42 percent to 44 percent respectively, and most of those who counterbalance the new law (81 percent) turn it makes the "wrong changes". "They are shoveling it down our throats without explaining it to the American people, and no one knows what it entails," said a 64-year-old female Democrat who participated in the poll.

Thirty-nine percent said the immature statute will be "bad" for people like them, and 26 percent aren't sure. About the only aversion that people agreed on - by a 58 percent to 24 percent preponderance - is that the legislation will provide many more Americans with adequate health insurance. "The free is divided partly because of ideological reasons, partly because of partisanship and partly because most people don't ascertain this as benefiting them.

They see it as benefiting the uninsured," said Humphrey Taylor, chairman of The Harris Poll, a checking of Harris Interactive. Some 15,4 percent of the population, or 46,3 million Americans, paucity health insurance coverage, according to the US Census Bureau. Those 2008 figures, however, do not include people who recently lost health insurance coverage among widespread job losses.

The centerpiece of the voluminous health reform package is an flourishing of health insurance. By 2019, an additional 32 million uninsured people will payout coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The measure also allows young adults to deter on their parents' health insurance plan until age 26, and that change takes effect this year.

So "I fantasize that people are optimistic about stuff that they know about for sure, which is the under-26 provision, and then just the blurry nature of just what's been promised to them," said Stephen T Parente, director of the Medical Industry Leadership Institute at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, and a previous confidant to Republican Presidential candidate Sen John McCain. Expanding coverage to children under 26 "promises to be a to some degree cheap and easy way to cover a group that was clearly disadvantaged under the tumbledown system," noted Pamela Farley Short, professor of health policy and direction and director of the Center for Health Care and Policy Research at Pennsylvania State University.

And "It will give parents amity of mind and save them money if they were paying for COBRA extensions or individual policies so their kids would not be uninsured," she explained. "So I regard that change will be popular and may help to found support for the exchanges and the big expansion of coverage in 2014".

However, on other measures of the legislation's impact, public appreciation is mixed, the Harris Interactive/HealthDay poll found. More people think the plan will be offensive for the quality of care in America (40 percent to 34 percent), for containing the cost of vigorousness care (41 percent to 35 percent) and for strengthening the economy (42 percent to 29 percent).

Saturday 7 December 2013

High Doses Of Inhaled Corticosteroids Lead To Increased Diabetes

High Doses Of Inhaled Corticosteroids Lead To Increased Diabetes.
Asthma and dyed in the wool obstructive pulmonary infirmity (COPD) patients who are treated with inhaled corticosteroids may outside a significantly higher relative risk for both the development and progression of diabetes, new Canadian investigation suggests. The warning stems from an analysis of data involving more than 380000 respiratory patients in Quebec. Inhaler use was associated with a 34 percent grow in the rate of new diabetes diagnoses and diabetes progression, the researchers found.

What's more, asthma and COPD patients treated with the highest portion inhalers appear to give even higher diabetes-related risks: a 64 percent jump in the onslaught of diabetes and a 54 percent rise in diabetes progression. "High doses of inhaled corticosteroids commonly old in patients with COPD are associated with an increase in the risk of requiring treatment for diabetes and of having to deepen therapy to include insulin," the study team noted in a news release.

Based on their results, researchers from McGill University and the Lady Davis Research Institute at Jewish General Hospital in Montreal suggest "patients instituting treatment with boisterous doses of inhaled corticosteroids should be assessed for reasonable hyperglycemia and treatment with high doses of inhaled corticosteroids limited to situations where the better is clear". Lead investigator Samy Suissa colleagues report their findings in the most recent exit of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Thursday 5 December 2013

Early Mammography For Women Younger Than 50 Years With A Moderate History

Early Mammography For Women Younger Than 50 Years With A Moderate History.
Mammograms given to women under 50 with a temperate class history of soul cancer can spot cancers earlier and increase the odds for long-term survival, a new cramming shows. British researchers examined mammogram results for 6,710 women with several relatives with heart of hearts cancer, or at least one relative diagnosed before age 40, finding that 136 were diagnosed with the malignancy between 2003 and 2007. These women, who researchers said were quite not carriers of a mutated BRCA heart cancer gene, started receiving mammograms at an earlier age than recommended by the UK National Health Service, which currently offers the screenings every three years for women between the ages of 50 and 70.

Findings showed their tumors were smaller and less quarrelsome than those in women screened at normal ages, and these women were more acceptable to be alive 10 years after diagnosis of an invasive cancer, the researchers said. "We were not unreservedly surprised at the findings," said lead researcher Stephen Duffy, a professor of cancer screening at Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry at Queen Mary University of London.

And "There is already validation that inhabitants screening with mammography works in women under 50, even if it is less less effective than at later ages. However, there is evidence that women with a family history have denser core tissue, which makes mammography a tougher job, so we were not sure what to expect," Duffy noted. "We did not explicitly omit BRCA-positive women," he added, "but very few with an identified mutation were recruits, and because the women had a unexceptional rather than an extensive family history, we suspect there were very few cases among the vast majority who had not been tested for mutations".

Duffy juxtaposed his findings against the stylish debate among US public health experts, who diverge over whether annual mammograms are necessary beginning at the age of 40, which has been the standard for years. In November 2009, the US Preventive Services Task Force sparked wrath when it revised its mammogram recommendations, suggesting that screenings can hang about until age 50 and be given every other year.

And "There are two issues here," Duffy said. "The inception is that there is some evidence of a mortality benefit of screening women in their 40s, albeit a lesser one than in older women. The assistant is that our study does not relate to natives screening, but to mammographic surveillance of women who are concerned about their family history of breast or ovarian cancer," he explained.

Monday 2 December 2013

Medical Errors Are A Huge Public Health Problem

Medical Errors Are A Huge Public Health Problem.
Hospital care-related problems bestow to the deaths of about 15000 Medicare patients each month, according to a untrodden federal domination study. One in seven patients suffers harm from hospital care, including infections, bed sores and nauseating bleeding from blood-thinning drugs, said researchers who analyzed evidence on 780 Medicare patients discharged from hospitals in October 2008, USA Today reported. That innards out to about 134000 of the estimated one million Medicare patients discharged that month, said the Office of Inspector General, Department of Health and Human Services.

Temporary wrong occurred in another one in seven patients whose care-related problems were detected in opportunity and corrected. "Reducing the incidence of adverse events in hospitals is a dangerous component of efforts to improve patient safety and quality care," the inspector habitual wrote.

Sunday 1 December 2013

The Depression Is Associated With Heart Troubles

The Depression Is Associated With Heart Troubles.
Depression is more low-grade in patients who undergo heart bypass surgery, and a new study finds that short-term use of antidepressants may scholarship patients' recovery May 2013. "Depression among patients requiring or having undergone evade surgery is high and can significantly impact postoperative recovery," said one crackerjack not connected to the study, Dr Bryan Bruno, acting chairman of the department of psychiatry at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. In this study, a line-up of French researchers looked at 182 patients who started charming a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressant two to three weeks before undergoing coronary artery ignore graft surgery and continued delightful it for six months after the procedure.

SSRIs include widely used antidepressants such as Celexa, Lexapro, Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft. In this study, patients took one 10 milligram lozenge of Lexapro (escitalopram) daily. The office was funded by Lexapro's maker, H Lundbeck A/S. The outcomes of patients prescribed Lexapro were compared to 179 patients who took an supine placebo as an alternative of the antidepressant.

During the six months after the surgery, the patients who took the antidepressant reported less glumness and better quality of life than those who took the placebo, the researchers reported. In addition, attractive antidepressants did not increase the risk of complications or death in the year after surgery, according to the study, which appears in the May question of the Annals of Thoracic Surgery.