Mental illness writers had industry ties
Most of the experts who wrote the manual widely used to diagnose mental illness have had financial ties to drug makers such as research funding or stock holdings, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.
Writing in a new study, they called for full disclosure of the relationships between companies and the medical experts on panels that craft future editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, known as the DSM.
“Transparency is especially important when there are multiple and continuous financial relationships between panel members and the pharmaceutical industry, because of the greater likelihood that the drug industry may be exerting an undue influence,” the researchers wrote in a study to be published in the journal Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics.
FDA speaks out against marijuana legalization
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration will publish a statement on Friday criticizing state measures to legalize the medical use of marijuana, calling them attempts to bypass scientific review.
The agency said it was posting the statement in response to requests from lawmakers and others, but advocates for legalizing marijuana said the FDA was making an unusual and inappropriate foray into politics.
“In response to inquiries, including from Congress, we are clarifying our position on the science,” said FDA spokeswoman Susan Bro in an interview.
Home exercise may aid heavy heart failure patients
A home-based exercise program for overweight or obese patients with advanced heart failure results in significant weight loss after six months, researchers in California report.
It’s well established that exercise is important for long-term weight control for overweight people, Dr. Lorraine S. Evangelista, of the University of California, Los Angeles, and colleagues point out. “However, little evidence exists confirming such findings in patients with advanced heart failure.”
To look into this, the researchers assigned 99 heart failure patients, classified as at least overweight, to a low-level, home-based exercise program or to a comparison “control” group. The participants’ average age was 53 years, and most were male, white and married, according to the report in the American Journal of Cardiology.
Spain sizes up real women to fight anorexia
Spain has launched a study into the size of average women compared with models used by the fashion industry in a bid to stop the use of ultra-thin advertising images blamed for eating disorders like anorexia.
Spain’s government hopes to show real women do not fit the fashion industry’s skinny ideals and oblige leading retail brands to display bigger sizes in shop windows and magazines.
“This ideal is impossible for most people to achieve and can end up hurting people’s health,” Health Minister Elena Salgado said in a statement this week at the launch of the study.
Australian scientists tackle deadly Q fever
Scientists at James Cook University have taken the lead in developing a new vaccine against a highly infectious cattleyard disease caused by a bacteria which has the potential to be developed as a bioterrorist weapon.
JCU’s Infectious Diseases and Immunopathogenesis Research Group, within the School of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences, has secured a $300,000 grant from the Defence, Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) in Melbourne to conduct research into Q fever over three years.
Research associate Ray Layton is one of a small team of scientists working on the groundbreaking project at JCU.
Research puts something extra in your grapes
Researchers at the University of Adelaide have discovered a potential way to increase the amount of Vitamin C in grapes.
Senior lecturer Dr Christopher Ford and postgraduate student Seth de Bolt from the University of Adelaide’s School of Agriculture, Food and Wine have made the significant breakthrough, in collaboration with their US colleagues at the University of California.
The researchers have identified an enzyme in grapes that helps convert Vitamin C, or ascorbic acid, into tartaric acid. Tartaric acid accumulates in grapes as they ripen and contributes greatly to taste, tartness and aging potential.
Corticosteroids do not improve survival in patients with late-stage ARDS
Corticosteroids do not improve survival in patients with late-stage acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), according to new results from the ARDS Clinical Research Network of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), part of the National Institutes of Health.
The study is the first multi-center randomized clinical trial to evaluate the effects of moderate doses of steroids in ARDS patients when treatment is started 7 days or more after the onset of the condition.
ARDS is a sudden, life-threatening lung condition that affects about 150,000 people in the United States each year. ARDS develops in patients who are critically ill with other diseases such as pneumonia or sepsis (severe and widespread bacterial infection), or who have sustained major injuries that result in severe fluid building up in both lungs, leading to breathing failure. An estimated 30 percent to 50 percent of ARDS patients die. Results of the Late Steroid Rescue Study appear in the April 20, 2006, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
