Preeclampsia a risk factor for future stroke
Pregnant women who develop preeclampsia—a condition that includes abnormally high blood pressure—are known to run the risk of having a stroke during pregnancy, but researchers at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now report that preeclampsia is also a risk factor for stroke in the future.
Dr. David W. Brown and colleagues in Atlanta used data from the Stroke Prevention in Young Women Study to assess the association of preclampsia with stroke in women between the ages of 15 and 44. The team identified 261 cases of stroke among nonpregnant women in the study group and compared them with 416 randomly chosen “controls” who had not had a stroke.
There was a history of preeclampsia in 15 percent of the women with stroke and in 10 percent of controls, the investigators report in the medical journal Stroke.
Signs of long-term problems seen in teens’ dieting
Teenagers who go on diets or take unhealthy measures to lose weight may end up gaining pounds in the long run, according to a new study.
What’s more, researchers found, these teens seem likely to get trapped in a pattern of unhealthy eating, extreme weight-loss tactics and, in some cases, overt eating disorders.
Among more than 2,500 teenagers in the study, those who said they were trying to control their weight were three times more likely than their peers to be overweight five years later. They were also at greater risk of having a binge-eating disorder, or to be vomiting or using diet pills, laxatives or diuretics in an effort to lose weight.
Study shows results of tight glucose control
Here’s what we know about controlling blood glucose (blood sugar) in people with diabetes: It’s not easy, but it can be done. It requires vigilance and resolve. And it can save your life.
A recent study by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has answered one of the most important questions about diabetes: Can glucose control lower the risk of heart attacks and strokes? The answer is yes - intensive glucose control can reduce the risk by more than half. From 1983 to 1989, the NIH-sponsored Diabetes Control and Complications Trial (DCCT) randomly assigned a large number of people with diabetes to an intensive or conventional treatment group. Those in the intensive group were held to a stricter level of glucose control and were required to self-monitor their own glucose levels throughout the day. The DCCT ended in 1993 after conclusively demonstrating that intensive control better protected against damage to the eyes (retinopathy), kidneys (nephropathy), and nerves (neuropathy).
New guidelines for treating severely injured patients
If someone is injured in an automobile collision or is severely burned, emergency room physicians across the country would probably take similar steps to stabilize each condition. But subsequent treatment in the intensive care unit or operating room is less well established and may vary significantly.
That is likely to change based on the work of an interdisciplinary team of dozens of scientists and physicians funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS). Drawing from the best available evidence, the team is developing a series of standard procedures for the care of severely injured patients. The guidelines will describe how to implement the most successful treatment protocols in the clinic and will include summaries of each procedure ready to print on 3-by-5 index cards for quick bedside reference.
The team’s first article--on mechanical ventilation--appeared in the September 2005 issue of the Journal of Trauma: Injury, Infection, and Critical Care. Planned future topics will cover resuscitation, prevention and treatment of venous blood clots, diagnosis of ventilator-associated pneumonia, blood sugar control, nutritional support, transfusion thresholds, and sedation. The team chose to cover aspects of care for which practices vary the most and those that have the greatest potential to influence patient outcomes.
Wal-Mart offers to help fix US health care
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., at the center of debate over corporate responsibility for health care, said on Tuesday that it wants to use its cost-cutting expertise to help make the U.S. health care system more efficient.
Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest retailer, has become a lightning rod for labor unions, environmentalists, anti-sprawl groups and others who contend that the retailer pays poverty-level wages, pushes employees onto government-funded Medicaid health insurance, and devours green space for its massive stores.
Maryland recently passed legislation that requires Wal-Mart to spend more on employee health care, and similar bills have been proposed in dozens of other states as they try to defray rising costs.
Teens not learning lesson from mom’s skin cancer
Teenagers whose mothers have been diagnosed with skin cancer are not much more likely than their peers to protect themselves effectively from the sun, a new study shows.
Having a parent with skin cancer increases a person’s own risk of the disease, Alan C. Geller of the Boston University School of Medicine and colleagues note in the medical journal of Pediatrics.
For the more-treatable basal cell and squamous cell cancers, risk is at least doubled, while having a family history of melanoma, the most deadly type of skin cancer, increases risk from two- to eight-fold. This means effective sun protection is even more important for individuals with a family history of skin cancer, Geller and his team write.
U.S. FDA plans tracking of drug safety reviews
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration needs a way to track the hundreds of internal safety reviews completed each year about drugs already on the market, an agency official said on Tuesday.
Dr. Paul Seligman said building such a system would be one of his priorities as he takes the newly created position of associate director for safety policy and communication in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.
Analysts in the FDA’s Office of Drug Safety provide about 600 reports a year about potential concerns from marketed prescription drugs to officials in another office, the Office of New Drugs.
