Blood Pressure Guidelines for Stroke May Not Be Relevant to Many Patients
Guidelines on blood pressure lowering after stroke may not be applicable to many patients under the care of their family doctor, warn researchers in this week’s BMJ.
International guidelines stress the importance of lowering blood pressure in people who have had a stroke. These guidelines are largely based on the results of the PROGRESS trial, which recruited people with stroke from hospital.
Study provides new evidence of the importance of reward pathways in the brain
Deleting a specific gene in the brain has the same effect that antidepressants do in mice that have been conditioned to be depressed, report researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center.
Mice are normally social animals, easily approaching and greeting unfamiliar mice. But when the strange mice are aggressive, a mouse over time becomes timid and withdrawn. Administering antidepressants such as Prozac improves their behavior, but so does deleting a gene called BDNF.
Treatments Based on Human Behaviour Could Reduce Drug Prescribing
New psychological treatments - behavioural medicine - could significantly reduce the need for drug treatments for some conditions, cutting health system costs says an editorial in this week’s BMJ.
Behavioural medicine - using treatments borrowed from psychology such as cognitive behavioural therapy - has the potential to reduce pain, argue the authors. Treating a patient with a system of behavioural instructions before surgery, for instance, can lower the amount of anaesthetic required during the operation, and cut the time they need to stay in hospital.
Statin drugs may improve the endothelial dysfunction
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine say preliminary results of a small study show promise in improving erectile dysfunction (ED) in men who had shown minimal reaction to Viagra. The study results are published in the March issue of the Journal of Sexual Medicine.
Erectile dysfunction is often a sign of a more severe vascular problem that involves abnormalities in the lining of the blood vessels. And often, endothelial dysfunction is an underlying problem for ED - it can be one of the first signs of atherosclerosis, a build-up of plaque and blockages in the arteries.
“It’s already known that there is a connection between erectile dysfunction and coronary disease. The risk factors are the same for both, and thus, ED can be a marker for coronary disease,” explains lead author Howard Herrmann, MD, Professor of Medicine and Director of the Interventional Cardiology and Cardiac Catheterization Laboratories at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. “Normal erections are caused when nitric oxide is made, but with endothelial dysfunction, the body doesn’t make enough of it, causing the erectile dysfunction. Normally, Viagra prevents the breakdown of the little nitric oxide that is there, so that there is enough of it for an erection to occur.”
Green tea may protect the aging brain
People who regularly drink green tea may have a lesser risk of mental decline as they grow older, researchers have found.
Their study, of more than 1,000 Japanese adults in their 70s and beyond, found that the more green tea men and women drank, the lower their odds of having cognitive impairment.
The findings build on evidence from lab experiments showing that certain compounds in green tea may protect brain cells from the damaging processes that mark conditions like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.
Study questions ecstasy link to depression
Ecstasy, the illegal recreational drug blamed by doctors for depression and anxiety, may often only enhance these symptoms rather than cause them, according to a study published on Friday.
Dutch researchers found that children who suffered from depression were more likely to go on to use the drug when they grew up to make them feel better.
The appearance later in life of emotional problems in these people might not therefore be primarily due to their use of ecstasy, but could reflect pre-existing conditions.
US senator questions FDA-approved blood study
A key Senate Republican pressed the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday for details on its role in the clinical trial of an experimental blood substitute being tested on trauma patients in 18 states, in some cases without their consent.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley asked the FDA to make a full public disclosure about the clinical trial of Northfield Laboratories Inc.’s PolyHeme blood substitute, after its safety was called into question in a Wall Street Journal article.
“It is outrageous that, for all intents and purposes, the FDA allowed a clinical trial to proceed, which makes every citizen in the United States a potential ‘guinea pig’ without providing a practical, informative warning to the public,” the Iowa Republican said in a letter to acting FDA Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach.
Indonesia launches campaign against bird flu
Hundreds of Indonesian officials clad in white protective gear and masks fanned out across the capital on Friday to check thousands of fowl as authorities kicked off a door-to-door prevention drive against bird flu.
About 600 inspectors sprayed disinfectant in bird cages and chicken coops in the sprawling city where backyard chickens are common.
Bird flu has killed at least 19 people in Indonesia, the world’s second highest death toll after Vietnam, and many of the victims lived in or around Jakarta, which is estimated to have about 500,000 fowl.
Prostate cancer harder to spot in obese men
Technical factors unrelated to underlying biology may make prostate cancer more difficult to detect in obese men in their early sixties or younger, researchers report in the Journal of Urology.
“We may be missing some cancers in younger obese men,” lead investigator Dr. Stephen J. Freedland told Reuters Health. “If we are missing some cancers, that means that by the time they are detected, there has been a delay leading to potentially a later-stage cancer. This could contribute to the worse outcomes we have observed among obese men.”
Obesity may be associated with decreased production of the tumor marker prostate specific antigen (PSA) and enlargement of the prostate make detection challenging.
New chest pain drug set for March launch, co. says
CV Therapeutics Inc. Chief Executive Officer Louis Lange said on Thursday that the company’s recently approved drug for chest pain is on track to be in 30,000 pharmacies by the end of March.
Palo Alto, California-based CV Therapeutics last month received U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval of Ranexa for treatment of chronic angina, the chest pain caused by an insufficient supply of oxygen to the heart.
Lange said the company’s 250-person sales force plans to begin marketing the drug at a major meeting of cardiologists next month in Atlanta and shipments will start shortly thereafter.
Potato lovers may have higher diabetes risk
Holding that side of fries might help thwart type 2 diabetes, new research suggests.
In a long-term study of nearly 85,000 U.S. women, researchers at Harvard University found that those with the highest potato intake had a modestly elevated risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
The link was strongest among obese women, who are already at increased risk of the disease, suggesting that heavy potato consumption may pose a particular problem for them, the researchers point out.
Why some infectious diseases are limited to small outbreaks and others become full-blown epidemics
In an important study forthcoming in the March 2006 issue of the American Naturalist, biologists from Yale University, University of Florida, and Dartmouth University explore the dynamics of pathogen survival and shed new light on a longstanding mystery: why some infectious diseases are limited to small outbreaks and others become full-blown epidemics.
“The capacity of a virus to propagate upon a novel host apparently is conditional on the recent experience of preceding generations,” the authors say. “This is intrinsically interesting, suggesting a kind of complexity in pathogen population dynamics that has not been widely regarded.”
The researchers observed viral populations on host bacteria, specifically situations where virus populations were sustained on the original hosts, but went extinct on the new hosts. Observing transmission rates, they found that viruses previously reared on an original host showed greater productivity on the new host than viruses previously reared on the new host.
Australia boost preparedness for Avian Influenza
Australia’s preparedness for a potential Avian Influenza pandemic will be boosted by four new projects at The Australian National University (ANU), funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC).
Researchers at the ANU College of Medicine and Health Sciences have received $110,000 for a project to strengthen the contribution of general practitioners to the control of pandemic influenza, $183,040 for a project that will examine the most effective ways to control an influenza pandemic, including strategies for effective use of limited antivirals, and $239,570 for research into inactivated flu vaccines.
Researchers at the ANU College of Science have received $237,807 to search for agents that prevent or disrupt the release of proteins, known as a cytokine storm, which causes death in flu victims.
Parkinson’s patients not likely to be risk-takers
Patients with Parkinson’s disease score lower on an impulsive sensation-seeking tests than their counterparts without the disease, investigators report. This may be why Parkinson’s disease patients are less likely to smoke and consume fewer caffeinated beverages and alcohol, which may explain “the hypothetical protective effect of cigarette smoking and caffeine consumption on Parkinson’s disease.”
Parkinson’s patients tend to exhibit low sensation-seeking behavior, which may reflect variations in the activity of brain dopamine systems, Dr. A. J. Lees and colleagues note in their report, published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry. Parkinson’s disease patients also tend to share other traits such as conscientiousness, anhedonia, and low levels of aggression.
To see how sensation seeking affected behaviors and risks in patients with Parkinson’s disease, Dr. Lees, from the Reta Lila Weston Institute of Neurological Studies in London, and colleagues compared standardized test results and habits among 106 patients with Parkinson’s disease and 106 healthy individuals of the same age.
Low sugar, reduced calorie apples
The technology to produce low sugar fruits with up to half the calories of the natural variety has been developed by US scientists, writes Jennifer Rohn in Chemistry & Industry magazine.
Scientists at the University of California, Davis, have developed apples with high levels of the natural sweetener sorbitol. Sorbitol has only 2.6 calories per gram, 45% less than sucrose and fructose. Sorbitol, fructose and sucrose are all naturally found in fruit.
Although researcher Abhaya Dandekar has worked primarily on apples, he says that related fruits, such as pears, peaches, plums and cherries could also be produced as a low-sugar variety. Dandekar used genetic modification, but he says that plant breeders could use natural methods to achieve the same end.
