Fibrosis Of The Heart Muscle Can Lead To Sudden Death

Fibrosis Of The Heart Muscle Can Lead To Sudden Death.
Scarring in the heart's screen may be a style risk factor for death, and scans that add up the amount of scarring might help in deciding which patients need particular treatments, a new examine suggests. At issue is a kind of scarring, or fibrosis, known as midwall fibrosis. Reporting in the March 6 emanation of the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers found that patients with enlarged hearts who had more of this pattern of damage were more than five times more likely to experience sudden cardiac end compared to patients without such scarring. "Both the presence of fibrosis and the extent were independently and incrementally associated with all-cause mortality destruction ," concluded a team led by Dr Ankur Gulati of Royal Brompton Hospital, in London.

In the study, the researchers took high-tech MRI scans of the hearts of 472 patients with dilated cardiomyopathy, a nature of weakened and enlarged pluck that is often linked to quintessence failure. The MRIs looked for scarring in the middle section of the heart muscle wall. Tracking the patients for an customary of more than five years, the team reported that while about 11 percent of patients without midwall fibrosis had died, nearly 27 percent of those with such scarring had died.

According to Gulati's team, assessments of midwall scarring based on MRI imaging might be of use to doctors in pinpointing which patients with enlarged hearts are at highest endanger for death, unequal heart rhythms and heart failure. Experts in the United States agreed that gauging the enormousness of scarring on the heart provides practical information. "The severity of the dysfunction can be linked to the extent with which healthy heart muscle is replaced by nonfunctioning disfigure tissue," explained Dr Moshe Gunsburg, director of the cardiac arrhythmia ceremony and co-chief of the division of cardiology at Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center, in New York City.

Psychologists Give Some Guidance To Adolescents

Psychologists Give Some Guidance To Adolescents.
Teen girls struggling with post-traumatic anxiety free-for-all stemming from sexual abuse do well when treated with a type of therapy that asks them to time after time confront their traumatic memories, according to a small new study. The study's results suggest that "prolonged disclosing therapy," which is approved for adults, is more effective at helping adolescent girls crush post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) than traditional supportive counseling. "Prolonged exposure is a specimen of cognitive behavior therapy in which patients are asked to recount aloud several times their traumatic experience, including details of what happened during the taste and what they thought and felt during the experience," said study initiator Edna Foa, a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.

And "For example, a friend that felt shame and guilt because she did not prevent her father from sexually abusing her comes to realize that she did not have the drag to prevent her father from abusing her, and it was her father's fault, not hers, that she was abused. During repeated recounting of the harmful events, the patient gets closure on those events and is able to put it aside as something monstrous that happened to her in the past. She can now continue to develop without being hampered by the traumatic experience".

Foa and her colleagues reported their findings in the Dec 25, 2013 consummation of the Journal of the American Medical Association. The researchers focused on a class of 61 girls, all between the ages of 13 and 18 and all suffering from PTSD connected to sexual abuse that had occurred at least three months before the study started. No boys were included in the research.

Roughly half of the girls were given regulatory supportive counseling in weekly sessions conducted over a 14-week period. During that time, counselors aimed to care for a trusting relation in which the teens were allowed to address their traumatic experience only if and when they felt ready to do so. The other firm group was enlisted in a prolonged exposure therapy program in which patients were encouraged to revisit the originator of their demons in a more direct manner, albeit in a controlled environment designed to be both contemplative and sensitive.

Doctors Advise How To Avoid Breast Cancer

Doctors Advise How To Avoid Breast Cancer.
If a sweetheart develops heart cancer, having larger breasts and being sedentary might increase her risk of sinking from the disease, a large, long-term study suggests. Experts have long known that being physically effective reduces the risk of getting breast cancer by about 25 percent. The new study, however, looked at how both bring to bear and breast size might predict survival if breast cancer does develop, said go into researcher Paul Williams, a staff scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in Berkeley, California Williams found a nearly 40 percent reduced risk of dying from heart of hearts cancer in physically active women compared to those who didn't meet exercise guidelines.

The meditate on was published online Dec 9, 2013 in the journal PLoS One. For the study, Williams and his set followed nearly 80000 women for 11 years. All were participants in national studies on runners' and walkers' health. About 33000 of the women were walkers and about 46000 were runners. When they entered the study, none of the women had been diagnosed with mamma cancer.

All reported the distances they walked or ran each week, as well as their bra cup greatness and body manipulate and height. During the 11-year follow-up period, 111 mug up participants died from breast cancer. They were in their mid-50s, on average, when they died. Those who met ongoing exercise guidelines were about 42 percent less likely to die of breast cancer compared to those who did not dispose of the guidelines.

These guidelines recommend two and a half hours of moderate activity, an hour and 15 minutes of fit activity or an equivalent combination weekly. The supply of exercise found to be protective against breast cancer was about seven miles of brisk walking or nearly five miles of management each week. "It's not a lot of exercise. "This is more evidence of yet another benefit of exercise.

Prevention Of Cardiovascular Diseases By Dietary Supplements

Prevention Of Cardiovascular Diseases By Dietary Supplements.
Regular doses of the dietary add Coenzyme Q10 curtail in half the death rate of patients pain from advanced heart failure, in a randomized double-blind trial in May 2013. Researchers also reported a significant lower in the number of hospitalizations for heart failure patients being treated with Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10). About 14 percent of patients taking the appendix suffered from a major cardiovascular event that required polyclinic treatment, compared with 25 percent of patients receiving placebos.

In heart failure, the tenderness becomes weak and can no longer pump enough oxygen- and nutrient-rich blood throughout the body. Patients often ordeal fatigue and breathing problems as the heart enlarges and pumps faster in an effort to suitable the body's needs. The study is scheduled to be presented Saturday at the annual meeting of the Heart Failure Association of the European Society of Cardiology, in Lisbon, Portugal.

And "CoQ10 is the opening medication to redeem survival in chronic heart failure since ACE inhibitors and beta blockers more than a decade ago and should be added to average heart failure therapy," lead researcher Svend Aage Mortensen, a professor with the Heart Center at Copenhagen University Hospital, in Denmark, said in a league communication release. While randomized clinical trails are considered the "gold standard" of studies, because this altered study was presented at a medical meeting, the data and conclusions should be viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

American cardiologists greeted the reported findings with discreet optimism. "This is a study that is very full of promise but requires replication in a second confirmatory trial," said Dr Gregg Fonarow, a professor of cardiology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a spokesman for the American Heart Association. Fonarow popular that earlier, smaller trials with Coenzyme Q10 have produced hybrid results.

And "Some studies have shown no effect, while other studies have shown some improvement, but not nearly the powerful effects displayed in this trial. Coenzyme Q10 occurs needless to say in the body. It functions as an electron carrier in cellular mitochondria (the cell's "powerhouse") to assistance convert food to energy. It also is a powerful antioxidant, and has become a ordinary over-the-counter dietary supplement.

The Relationship Between Heart Disease And Dementia Exists

The Relationship Between Heart Disease And Dementia Exists.
Older women with soul contagion might be at increased risk for dementia, according to a new study. Researchers followed nearly 6500 US women, superannuated 65 to 79, who had healthy brain function when the study started. Those with spunk disease were 29 percent more likely to experience mental decline over hour than those without heart disease. The risk of mental decline was about twice as high among women who'd had a understanding attack as it was among those who had not.

Women who had a heart bypass operation, surgery to take off a blockage in a neck artery or peripheral artery disease also were at increased risk for mental decline. Heart disability risk factors such as high blood pressure and diabetes also increased the jeopardy for mental decline, but obesity did not significantly boost the risk, according to the study, which was published in the Dec 18, 2013 child of the Journal of the American Heart Association. "Our study provides further new deposition that this relationship between heart disease and dementia does exist, especially among postmenopausal women," study inventor Dr Bernhard Haring said in a journal news release.

Obesity Getting Younger In The United States

Obesity Getting Younger In The United States.
Obese children who don't have classification 2 diabetes but rob the diabetes drug metformin while improving their house and exercise habits seem to lose a bit of weight. But it isn't much more weight than kids who only make out the lifestyle changes, according to a new review of studies. Some evidence suggests that metformin, in clique with lifestyle changes, affects weight loss in obese children. But the drug isn't undoubtedly to result in important reductions in weight, said lead researcher Marian McDonagh.

Childhood weight is a significant health problem in the United States, with nearly 18 percent of kids between 6 and 19 years cast off classified as obese. Metformin is approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to survey type 2 diabetes in adults and children over 10 years old, but doctors have utilized it "off-label" to treat obese kids who don't have diabetes, according to background information included in the study.

McDonagh's rig analyzed 14 clinical trials that included nearly 1000 children between 10 and 16 years old. All were overweight or obese. Based on facts in adults, moment reductions of 5 percent to 10 percent are needed to decrease the risk of serious condition problems tied to obesity, the researchers said. The additional amount of weight damage among children taking metformin in the review, however, was less than 5 percent on average.

Implantable Devices Are Not A Panacea, But The Ability To Relieve Migraine Attacks

Implantable Devices Are Not A Panacea, But The Ability To Relieve Migraine Attacks.
An implantable legend occult in the nape of the neck may penurious more headache-free days for people with severe migraines that don't respond to other treatments, a reborn study suggests. More than 36 million Americans get migraine headaches, which are marked by impetuous pain, sensitivity to light and sound, nausea and vomiting, according to the Migraine Research Foundation. Medication and lifestyle changes are the first-line treatments for migraine, but not Dick improves with these measures.

The St Jude Medical Genesis neurostimulator is a short, slim strip that is implanted behind the neck. A battery drove is then implanted elsewhere in the body. Activating the device stimulates the occipital nerve and can shade the pain of migraine headache. "There are a large number of patients for whom nothing works and whose lives are ruined by the quotidian pain of their migraine headache, and this device has the potential to help some of them," said think over author Dr Stephen D Silberstein, director of the Jefferson Headache Center in Philadelphia.

The study, which was funded by cognizance manufacturer St Jude Medical Inc, is slated for performance on Thursday at the International Headache Congress in Berlin, and is the largest study to date on the device. The crowd is now seeking approval for the device in Europe and then plans to submit their data to the US Food and Drug Administration for go-ahead in the United States.

Researchers tested the new device in 157 society who had severe migraines about 26 days out of each month. After 12 weeks, those who received the unheard of device had seven more headache-free days per month, compared to one more headache-free day per month seen in the midst people in the control group.

Individuals in the control arm did not receive stimulation until after the sooner 12 weeks. Study participants who received the stimulator also reported less severe headaches and improvements in their mark of life. After one year, 66 percent of people in the study said they had magic or good pain relief.

The pain reduction seen in the study did fall short of FDA standards, which invite for a 50 percent reduction in pain. "The device is invisible to the eye, but not to the touch". The implantation standard operating procedure involves local anesthesia along with conscious sedation so you are awake, but not fully aware.

There may be some subdued pain associated with this surgery. Study co-author Dr Joel Saper, go to Davy Jones's locker and director of Michigan Head Pain and Neurological Institute in Ann Arbor, and a fellow of the advisory board for the Migraine Research Foundation, said this therapy could be an important option for some grass roots with migraines.

The Researchers Have Defined Age Of The First Cat

The Researchers Have Defined Age Of The First Cat.
They may not hold the title of "man's best friend," but domesticated cats have been purring around the put up for a prolonged time. Just how long? New into or points back at least 5300 years, at which point felines needing chow and humans needing rodent killers may have entered into a mutually beneficial relationship. "We all sisterhood cats, but they're not a herd animal," study co-author Fiona Marshall said.

So "They're a individual species, and so they're really rare in archeological sites, which means we just don't be sure much about their history with people". New scientific methods enabled Marshall's team to show what led to cats' domestication. While dogs were attracted to kinsfolk living as hunter-gatherers 9000 to 20000 years ago, it looks be fond of cats were first domesticated as farmer's animals. "Cats had a poser obtaining food, and so were attracted to our millet grain.

And farmers had a problem with rodents, and found it useful to have cats pack away them," said Marshall, a professor of archaeology and acting chair of the anthropology concern at Washington University of St Louis. The findings are published in the Dec 16, 2013 version of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The authors point out that although cats are one of the most trendy pet species in the world, information regarding the timing of their domestication has been sparse, based pre-eminently on Egypt artifacts that date back about 4000 years and show the animals were home dwellers then.

Additional anthropological demonstration of the connection had also been unearthed in Cyprus, the team notes, suggesting some form of close get hold of (although not necessarily domesticity) dating back roughly 9500 years. But an inability to join the dots between these two periods has frustrated researchers for years. The current revelation stems from an opinion of eight cat bones, attributed to at least two cats, unearthed near a paltry agricultural village known as Quanhucun in Shaanxi province, China.

Scientists Have Submitted A New Drug To Treat HIV

Scientists Have Submitted A New Drug To Treat HIV.
Scientists are reporting beforehand but heartening results from a new drug that blocks HIV as it attempts to invade hominid cells. The approach differs from most current antiretroviral therapy, which tries to confine the virus only after it has gained entry to cells. The medication, called VIR-576 for now, is still in the cock's-crow phases of development.

But researchers say that if it is successful, it might also circumvent the drug resistance that can drain standard therapy, according to a report published Dec 22 2010 in Science Translational Medicine. The novel approach is an attractive one for a number of reasons, said Dr Michael Horberg, kingpin of HIV/AIDS for Kaiser Permanente in Santa Clara, California. "Theoretically it should have fewer secondary effects and indeed had minimal adverse events in this study and there's probably less of a chance of evolution in developing resistance to medication," said Horberg, who was not involved in the study.

Viruses replicate inside cells and scientists have large known that this is when they tend to mutate - potentially developing new ways to stem drugs. "It's generally accepted that it's harder for a virus to mutate outdoor cell walls".

The new drug focuses on HIV at this pre-invasion stage. "VIR-576 targets a duty of the virus that is different from that targeted by all other HIV-1 inhibitors," explained study co-author Frank Kirchhoff, a professor at the Institute of Molecular Virology, University Hospital of Ulm in Ulm, Germany, who, along with several other researchers, holds a blatant on the young medication. The target is the gp41 fusion peptide of HIV, the "sticky" end of the virus's outer membrane, which "shoots be fond of a 'harpoon'" into the body's cells, the authors said.

Flame Retardants In Our Homes Are A Threat To Human Health

Flame Retardants In Our Homes Are A Threat To Human Health.
Flame retardants second-hand in a completely range of consumer products pretence a threat to human health and may not even be all that effective, according to a statement signed by nearly 150 scientists from 22 countries. Brominated and chlorinated girlfriend retardants (BFRs and CFRs) are used in products such as televisions, computers, cubicle phones, upholstered furniture, mattresses, carpet pads, textiles, airplanes and cars. These chemicals are accumulating in the habitat and in humans, and some of them may harm unborn children, affect people's hormones, and may even attention a role in causing cancer, according to the San Antonio Statement, named for the Texas see that hosted the 30th International Symposium of Halogenated Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) closing month.

The statement said that "BFRs and CFRs can increase fire toxicity and their overall advance in improving fire safety has not been proven". It also states that these fire retardants "can proliferate the release of carbon monoxide, toxic gases and soot, which are the cause of most fire deaths and injuries".

A Person Can Be Their Own Donor Cells For Insulin Production

A Person Can Be Their Own Donor Cells For Insulin Production.
Researchers have been able to reminder lenient cells that normally produce sperm to arrange insulin instead and, after transplanting them, the cells briefly cured mice with font 1 diabetes. "The goal is to coax these cells into making enough insulin to cure diabetes. These cells don't leak enough insulin to cure diabetes in humans yet," cautioned investigation senior researcher G Ian Gallicano, an associate professor in the department of Biochemistry and Molecular and Cellular Biology, and cicerone of the Transgenic Core Facility at Georgetown University Medical Center, in Washington DC.

Gallicano and his colleagues will be presenting the findings Sunday at the American Society of Cell Biology annual conjunction in Philadelphia. Type 1 diabetes is believed to be an autoimmune condition in which the body mistakenly attacks and destroys the insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. As a result, mortals with variety 1 diabetes must rely on insulin injections to be able to process the foods they eat. Without this additional insulin, mobile vulgus with type 1 diabetes could not survive.

Doctors have had some success with pancreas transplants, and with transplants of just the pancreatic beta cells (also known as islet cells). There are several problems with these types of transplants, however. One is that as with any transplant, when the transplanted solid comes from a donor, the body sees the rejuvenated concatenation as foreign and attempts to destroy it. So, transplants require immune-suppressing medications. The other trouble is that the autoimmune attack that destroyed the original beta cells can weaken the newly transplanted cells.

A benefit of the technique developed by Gallicano and his team is that the cells are coming from the same man they'll be transplanted in, so the body won't see the cells as foreign. The researchers hand-me-down spermatogonial cells, extracted from the testicles of deceased human organ donors. In the testes, the province of these cells is to produce sperm, according to Gallicano.

However, outside of the testes the cells perform a lot like human eggs do, and there are certain genes that turn them on and make them behave peer embryonic-like stem cells. "Once you take them out of their niche, the genes are primed and ready to go".

Military Suffer From Depression

Military Suffer From Depression.
Private contractors who worked in Afghanistan, Iraq and other brawl zones over the before two years have high rates of depression and post-traumatic burden disorder (PTSD), a new study finds. Researchers conducted an anonymous online scanning of 660 contractors who had been deployed to a conflict zone at least once between early 2011 and early 2013, and found that 25 percent met the criteria for PTSD and 18 percent for depression. Half reported fire-water misuse.

Despite these problems, few contractors received lend a hand before or after deployment, according to the study by the RAND Corp, a nonprofit scrutinize organization. Even though most of them had health insurance, only 28 percent of those with PTSD and 34 percent of those with gloominess reported receiving mental health treatment in the previous 12 months. Many contractors also reported fleshly health problems as a result of deployment, including traumatic perceptiveness injuries, respiratory issues, back pain and hearing problems, the study authors pointed out in a RAND flash release.

Increased Risk Of Major And Minor Bleeding During Antiplatelet Therapy

Increased Risk Of Major And Minor Bleeding During Antiplatelet Therapy.
Risk of bleeding for patients on antiplatelet analysis with either warfarin or a federation of Plavix (clopidogrel) and aspirin is substantial, a restored study finds. Both therapies are prescribed for millions of Americans to avert life-threatening blood clots, especially after a heart attack or stroke. But the Plavix-aspirin conspiracy was thought to cause less bleeding than it actually does, the researchers say.

And "As with all drugs, these drugs come with risks; the most precarious is bleeding," said lead author Dr Nadine Shehab, from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). While the gamble of bleeding from warfarin is well-known, the risks associated with dual remedy were not well understood. "We found that the risk for hemorrhage was threefold higher for warfarin than for dual antiplatelet therapy. We expected that because warfarin is prescribed much more many times than dual antiplatelet therapy".

However, when the researchers took the calculate of prescriptions into account, the gap between warfarin and dual antiplatelet psychotherapy shrank. "And this was worrisome". For both regimens, the number of hospital admissions because of bleeding was similar. And bleeding-related visits to difficulty department visits were only 50 percent trim for those on dual antiplatelet therapy compared with warfarin. "This isn't as big a difference as we had thought".

For the study, published Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine, Shehab's tandem used national databases to relate emergency department visits for bleeding caused by either dual antiplatelet therapy or warfarin between 2006 and 2008. The investigators found 384 annual danger department visits for bleeding amongst patients taking dual antiplatelet therapy and 2,926 annual visits for those taking warfarin.

Physically Active People Are More Likely To Prevail Over Cancer

Physically Active People Are More Likely To Prevail Over Cancer.
People undergoing cancer remedying traditionally have been told to keep on being as much as possible and elude exertion, to save all their strength to battle the dreaded disease. But a growing number of physicians and researchers now claim that people who remain physically active as best they can during treatment are more likely to beat cancer. The undeniable evidence for exercise during and after cancer treatment has piled so high that an American College of Sports Medicine panel is revising the group's nationalist guidelines regarding exercise recommended for cancer survivors.

The panel's conclusion: Cancer patients and survivors should fight to get the same amount of operation recommended for everyone else, about 150 minutes a week of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise. Resistance training and stretching also are recommended.

Treatment Options For Knee

Treatment Options For Knee.
Improvements in knee affliction following a common orthopedic course appear to be largely due to the placebo effect, a new Finnish study suggests. The research, which was published Dec 26, 2013 in the New England Journal of Medicine, has adipose implications for the 700000 patients who have arthroscopic surgery each year in the United States to restoration a torn meniscus. A meniscus is a C-shaped filler of cartilage that cushions the knee joint.

For a meniscal repair, orthopedic surgeons use a camera and minuscule instruments inserted through small incisions around the knee to scrape damaged tissue away. The idea is that clearing sharp and unstable debris out of the combined should relieve pain. But mounting evidence suggests that, for many patients, the procedure just doesn't exertion as intended. "There have been several trials now, including this one, where surgeons have examined whether meniscal run surgery accomplishes anything, basically, and the answer through all those studies is no, it doesn't," said Dr David Felson, a professor of remedy and public health at Boston University.

He was not concerned in the new research. For the new study, doctors recruited patients between the ages of 35 and 65 who'd had a meniscal divide and knee pain for at least three months to have an arthroscopic strategy to examine the knee joint. If a patient didn't also have arthritis, and the surgeon viewing the knee resolved they were eligible for the study, he opened an envelope in the operating room with further instructions.

At that point, 70 patients had some of their damaged meniscus removed, while 76 other patients had nothing further done. But surgeons did the entirety they could to judge the sham procedure seem like the real thing. They asked for the same instruments, they moved and pressed on the knee as they otherwise would, and they in use mechanical instruments with the blades removed to simulate the sights and sounds of a meniscal repair. They even timed the procedures to do sure one wasn't shorter than the other.

British Scientists Have Reported That Children Cured Of Childhood Cancer Have A High Risk Of Premature Death

British Scientists Have Reported That Children Cured Of Childhood Cancer Have A High Risk Of Premature Death.
Childhood cancer casts a extensive shadow. Those who pull through the fresh cancer are at high risk of expiring prematurely decades afterward from new cancers, heart disease and stroke likely caused by the cancer remedying itself, British researchers report. Although more children are surviving cancer, many have long-term risks of in extremis prematurely from other diseases. These excess deaths, the researchers say, may be tied up to late complications of treatment, such as the long-term effects of radiation and chemotherapy.

Equally troubling is that many older survivors are not being monitored for these problems, the researchers added. Compared to the everyday population, excess deaths may end from new primary cancers and circulatory disease that surface up to 45 years after a minority cancer diagnosis, said lead researcher Raoul C Reulen of the Center for Childhood Cancer Survivor Studies at the University of Birmingham.

Reulen respected that while the risk of death from the effects of budding cancers and cancer treatments increases with age, many of the most vulnerable survivors are not monitored for these life-threatening healthiness problems. "In terms of absolute risk, older survivors are most at risk of dying of a two shakes primary cancer and circulatory disease, yet are less likely to be on active follow-up. This suggests that survivors should be able to access well-being care intervention programs even many years" after they pass the mark for five-year survival.

The account is published in the July 14 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. For the study, Reulen's tandem collected data on 17981 children who survived cancer. These children, born between 1940 and 1991, were all diagnosed with a malignancy before they were 15.

By the end of 2006, 3049 of these individuals had died. That was a amount 11 times higher than would be seen in the encyclopedic population - something called the communal mortality rate. And while the rate dropped over time, it was still three-fold higher than expected after 45 years of follow-up, the researchers note.

Cryoneedles A Possible Alternative To Botox In Fighting Against Wrinkles

Cryoneedles A Possible Alternative To Botox In Fighting Against Wrinkles.
A rejuvenated technology that time zaps away forehead wrinkles by freezing the nerves shows bid fair in early clinical trials, researchers say. The technique, if in approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, could provide an alternative to Botox and Dysport. Both are injectable forms of Botulinum toxin breed A, a neurotoxin that, when injected in tight quantities, temporarily paralyzes facial muscles, thereby reducing wrinkles. "It's a toxin-free option to treating unwanted lines and wrinkles, similar to what is being done with Botox and Dysport," said inquiry co-author Francis Palmer, director of facial plastic surgery at the University of Southern California School of Medicine in Los Angeles.

And "From the untimely clinical trials, this procedure - which its maker calls cryoneuromodulation - appears to have the same clinical efficacy and refuge comparable to the existing techniques". Palmer is also consulting medical governor of MyoScience Inc, the Redwood City (California) - based attendance developing the cryotechnology. The results of the clinical trials were to be presented Friday at an American Society for Laser Medicine and Surgery (ASLMS) discussion in Grapevine, Texas.

To do the procedure, physicians use modest needles - "cryoprobes" - to deliver cold to nerves race through the forehead, specifically the temporal branch of the frontal nerve. The cold freezes the nerve, which interrupts the spirit signal and relaxes the muscle that causes vertical and horizontal forehead lines. Although the audacity quickly returns to normal body temperature, the cold temporarily "injures" the nerve, allowing the special to remain interrupted for some period of time after the patient leaves the office.

The system does not permanently damage the nerve. Researchers said they are still refining the technique and could not say how elongate the effect lasts, but it seems to be comparable to Botox, which works for about three to four months. Physicians would be in want of training to identify the nerve that should be targeted.

Mandatory Health Insurance In The United States

Mandatory Health Insurance In The United States.
The haleness guaranty industry announced Wednesday that the payment deadline for those who buy health insurance through circumstance and federal exchanges under the final provision of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, has been extended to Jan 10, 2014. The deadline was extended to urge sure no one experiences any inconsistency in coverage this January, according to a statement on the website of America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), a sell group that represents the lion's share of the industry. Earlier this month, Obama administration officials had said that constitution insurers must accept payment up until Dec 31, 2013 for coverage that begins the following day, and recommended that the pay deadline be extended further.

The deadline for selecting a health insurance arrangement remains Dec 23, 2013. Roughly 365000 people had selected a health procedure by the end of November, a number well below initial projections. Those low numbers have been linked to the fumbled establish in October of HealthCare dot gov, the federally run health insurance exchange. Many consumers in the 36 states served by the federal altercation encountered long lag times, timed-out trap pages and other bugs while attempting to apply for coverage and enroll in a plan.

Most of these problems have since been ironed out, form officials have said. Now that HealthCare dot gov is said to be working well for most users, efforts are focused on ways to assurance that the uninsured and those whose health plans are being cancelled don't capitulation through the cracks. "The short time period in which consumers must complete these steps and have their enrollment processed, combined with the endless technical difficulties associated with HealthCare dot gov, could carry that for some consumers, coverage may not be able to begin Jan 1, 2014," the AHIP said in its statement.

Obesity Can Be A Barrier To Pregnancy

Obesity Can Be A Barrier To Pregnancy.
Women should be tabled at least one year after having weight-loss surgery before they attempt to get pregnant, researchers say. The portliness rate among women of child-bearing age is expected to rise from about 24 percent in 2005 to about 28 percent in 2015, and the reckon of women having weight-loss surgery is increasing, the researchers noted. In a review, published Jan 11, 2013 in The Obstetrician & Gynaecologist, investigators looked at c whilom studies to assess the safety, limitations and advantages of weight-loss ("bariatric") surgery, and brass of weight-loss surgery patients before, during and after pregnancy.

Obesity increases the jeopardy of pregnancy complications, but weight-loss surgery reduces the chance in extremely obese women, the consideration authors said. One study found that 79 percent of women who had weight-loss surgery capable no complications during their pregnancy. However, the review also found that complications during pregnancy can occur in women who have had weight-loss surgery.

The Use Of Nicotinic Acid In The Treatment Of Heart Disease

The Use Of Nicotinic Acid In The Treatment Of Heart Disease.
Combining the vitamin niacin with a cholesterol-lowering statin tranquillizer appears to put up patients no service and may also increase side effects, a new study indicates. It's a disconcerting result from the largest-ever study of niacin for heart patients, which involved almost 26000 people. In the study, patients who added the B-vitamin to the statin sedate Zocor saw no added profit in terms of reductions in heart-related death, non-fatal heart attack, stroke, or the need for angioplasty or get round surgeries.

The study also found that people taking niacin had more incidents of bleeding and (or) infections than those who were taking an idle placebo, according to a team reporting Saturday at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology, in San Francisco. "We are frustrated that these results did not show benefits for our patients," study lead author Jane Armitage, a professor at the University of Oxford in England, said in a encounter news release. "Niacin has been old for many years in the belief that it would help patients and prevent heart attacks and stroke, but we now recognize that its adverse side effects outweigh the benefits when used with current treatments".

Niacin has long been employed to boost levels of "good" HDL cholesterol and decrease levels of "bad" LDL cholesterol and triglycerides (fats) in the blood in forebears at risk for heart disease and stroke. However, niacin also causes a tot of side effects, including flushing of the skin. A drug called laropiprant can lose weight the incidence of flushing in people taking niacin. This new study included patients with narrowing of the arteries.

They received either 2 grams of extended-release niacin gain 40 milligrams of laropiprant or corresponding placebos. All of the patients also took Zocor (simvastatin). The patients from China, the United Kingdom and Scandinavia were followed for an unexceptional of almost four years.

Advanced Cancer Of The Lungs In Some Patients Can Be Cured By The Drug Iressa

Advanced Cancer Of The Lungs In Some Patients Can Be Cured By The Drug Iressa.
Advanced lung cancer is notoriously obdurate to treat, but a body of Japanese scientists reports that a cancer tranquillizer known as Iressa was significantly more serviceable than standard chemotherapy for patients with a certain genetic profile. These patients have an advanced raise of the most common type of lung cancer - non-small cell lung cancer - and a transfiguration of a protein found on the surface of certain cells that causes them to divide. This protein - known as epidermal excrescence factor receptor (EGFR) - is found in unusually momentous numbers on the surface of some cancer cells.

The researchers focused on gefitinib (Iressa), which stops the protein receptor from sending a letter to the cancer cells to divide and grow. In their study, reported in the June 24 egress of the New England Journal of Medicine, the drug had a better safety diagram and improved survival time with no cancer progression in a significantly higher percentage of patients than did standard chemotherapy.

Researchers from the respiratory medicament department at the Tohoku University Hospital in Sendai, Japan chose to scrutinize gefitinib in part because standard cancer treatments -including surgery, radiation and chemotherapy - ebb to cure most cases of non-small cell lung cancer. From clinical trials, the researchers also knew that non-small apartment lung cancers in people with a sensitive EGFR alteration were very responsive to gefitinib, but little was known about the medication's safety profile or effectiveness compared with level chemotherapy.

For this reason, Dr Akira Inoue and his colleagues focused on 230 patients with the EGFR anomaly and metastatic non-small-cell lung cancer; the patients were treated in 43 different medical facilities between 2006 and 2009 throughout Japan. In a randomized case-control study, half were given gefitinib, while the others received prevalent chemotherapy.

After an standard follow-up of about 17 months, the research side found that while 73,7 percent of the gefitinib patients responded positively to their treatment, only 30,7 percent of the chemotherapy patients did so. The hope survival time with no cancer progression was significantly higher all the gefitinib group - 10,8 months, compared to 5,4 months among the chemotherapy group. In addition, one and two-year survival rates were, respectively, 42,1 percent and 8,4 percent in the midst those in the gefitinib group, compared to 3,2 and nobody among those in the chemotherapy group.

Ethnic And Racial Differences Were Found In The Levels Of Biomarkers C-Reactive Protein In The Blood

Ethnic And Racial Differences Were Found In The Levels Of Biomarkers C-Reactive Protein In The Blood.
Levels of the blood biomarker C-reactive protein (CRP) can alter surrounded by discrete racial and ethnic groups, which might be a guide in determining heart-disease risk and the value of cholesterol-lowering drugs, a new British study suggests. CRP is a forewarning of inflammation, and elevated levels have been linked - but not proven - to an increased hazard for heart disease.

Cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins can reduce heart risk and CRP, but it's not nitid if lowering levels of CRP helps to reduce heart-disease risk. "The modification in CRP between populations was sufficiently large as to influence how many people from different populations would be considered at spacy risk of heart attack based on an isolated CRP measurement and would also affect the arrangement of people eligible for statin treatment," said study researcher Aroon D Hingorani, a professor of genetic epidemiology and British Heart Foundation Senior Research Fellow at University College London. "The results of the au courant ruminate on indicate they physicians should bear ethnicity in will in interpreting the CRP value".

The report is published in the Sept 28, 2010 online version of Circulation: Cardiovascular Genetics. For the study, Hingorani and her colleagues reviewed 89 studies that included more than 221000 people. They found that CRP levels differed by family and ethnicity, with blacks having the highest levels at an standard of 2,6 milligrams per liter (mg/L) of blood. Hispanics were next (2,51 mg/L), followed by South Asians (2,34 mg/L), whites (2,03 mg/L), and East Asians (1,01 mg/L).