ROZEREM™ (ramelteon) Shown to be Effective in a First-Night-Effect Model
Data presented at the SLEEP 2006 20th Anniversary Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies have shown that ROZEREMTM (ramelteon) reduced time to fall asleep with no evidence of next-day residual effects, including psychomotor and memory effects, in a first-night-effect model of transient insomnia. The results of this double-blind, randomized study were presented as a poster presentation.
“Some medications taken for sleep are associated with lingering effects the next day, which could make performing activities requiring mental sharpness difficult or dangerous,” said Gary Zammit, PhD, Director, Sleep Disorders Institute at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital, New York. “These data suggest that ROZEREM can promote sleep in patients with transient insomnia without evidence of next-day psychomotor or memory effects.”
Medicare Could Save Money, Provide More Defibrillators
Medicare beneficiaries with heart failure could benefit from new strategies to decide who qualifies for lifesaving implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs), according to a University of Iowa study.
The U.S. Medicare Program spends about $4.6 billion dollars each year providing ICDs to older Americans. The investigation, published in the June 16 online early issue of the journal Value in Health, explored what would happen if Medicare spent the same amount of money to provide more patients with less expensive, yet also less effective, automated external defibrillators (AEDs).
An ICD is a small, pager-sized device implanted beneath the skin that uses electric shock to restore normal heart rhythm and costs about $40,000. An AED is a briefcase-sized device that requires a bystander to use pads that deliver an electric shock to restore the victim’s heart rhythm and costs about $2,000.
Louisiana gov. signs law that would ban abortions
Louisiana Democratic Gov. Kathleen Blanco signed into law a ban on most abortions, which would be triggered if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns its 1973 ruling legalizing the procedure, a spokesman said on Saturday.
The ban would apply to all abortions, even in cases of rape or incest, except when the mother’s life is threatened. It is similar to a South Dakota law that has become the latest focus of the abortion battle.
The South Dakota law was enacted partly to invite a court challenge in the hope a more conservative Supreme Court would overturn its Roe v. Wade decision that established a woman’s right to abortion.
Scientists find sleep hormone melatonin in red wine grapes
Scientists in Italy say they have discovered that the grapes used to make some of the most popular red wines contain high levels of the sleep hormone melatonin.
Melatonin is naturally secreted by the pineal gland in the brain, especially at night. It tells the body when it is time to sleep.
The discovery of melatonin in grape skin could explain why so many of us hit the bottle in the evening to wind down after a day’s hard slog. ‘The melatonin content in wine could help regulate the circadian rhythm [sleep-wake patterns], just like the melatonin produced by the pineal gland in mammals,’ says researcher Iriti Marcello at the University of Milan.
Central nervous system can sometimes send out signals that invite hostile immune system attacks
It may sound like a case of blame the victim, but researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have shown that cells in the central nervous system can sometimes send out signals that invite hostile immune system attacks.
In mice the researchers studied, this invitation resulted in damage to the protective covering of nerves, causing a disease resembling multiple sclerosis.
“It’s been clear for quite a while that our own lymphocytes (white blood cells) have the ability to enter the central nervous system and react with the cells there,” says John Russell, Ph.D., professor of molecular biology and pharmacology. “Under normal circumstances, the brain and the immune system cooperate to keep out those cells that might harm the brain. But in people with multiple sclerosis, they get in.”
New technique will screen embryos for almost 6,000 inherited diseases
A powerful new method of testing embryos for inherited diseases, has been developed by fertility specialists in Britain.
The test will allow doctors to test for the first time a vast range of inherited diseases for which the specific genetic mutation is not known, such as Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy (DMD) and some forms of cystic fibrosis.
The technique which is more accurate and efficient than current methods, will offer help to hundreds of couples who have a realistic chance of having healthy children and will enhance the number of diseases clinics can test for from about 200 to almost 6,000.
Bahamas malaria outbreak causes concern
A case of malaria which has cropped up in the Bahamas has caused concern and raised many questions for health officials and has worried local residents.
Health officials are currently screening illegal immigrants for malaria after the outbreak of the potentially fatal disease was confirmed on the Exuma islands, a sandy chain of islands southeast of Nassau.
Malaria has not been endemic in the Bahamas and apart from what are termed “sporadic” cases by the health ministry, almost all cases have been imported into the country.
New hope for Huntington disease cure
Researchers at the University of British Columbia’s Centre for Molecular Medicine and Therapeutics (CMMT) have provided ground-breaking evidence for a cure for Huntington disease in a mouse offering hope that this disease can be relieved in humans.
Published in Cell journal, Dr. Michael Hayden and colleagues discovered that by preventing the cleavage of the mutant huntingtin protein responsible for Huntington disease (HD) in a mouse model, the degenerative symptoms underlying the illness do not appear and the mouse displays normal brain function. This is the first time that a cure for HD in mice has been successfully achieved.
“Ten years ago, we discovered that huntingtin is cleaved by ‘molecular scissors’ which led to the hypothesis that cleavage of huntingtin may play a key role in causing Huntington disease”, said Dr. Michael Hayden, Director and Senior Scientist at the Child and Family Research Institute’s Centre for Molecular Medicine and Therapeutics. Dr. Hayden is also a Canada Research Chair in Human Genetics and Molecular Medicine.
Altered Activity in Brain Receptors Points to Schizophrenia Complexity
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, in collaboration with scientists at the City University of New York, have identified a striking dysregulation in neuronal receptor activity in the postmortem brain tissue from patients with schizophrenia. By stimulating receptors in the prefrontal cortex, the research team tracked heightened levels of erbB4 receptor activity, as well as decreased NMDA receptor activity in the tissue from patients with schizophrenia. Additionally, they were able to identify a relationship between these two receptor groups, suggesting a mechanism for decreased NMDA receptor function that has long been suspected in schizophrenia. The researchers report their findings in this week’s advanced online issue of Nature Medicine.
Schizophrenia, a mental disorder afflicting approximately one percent of the world population, is characterized by a variety of symptoms such as: hallucinations, paranoia, disorganized behavior, and the inability to experience pleasure. Previous studies of the brains of patients with schizophrenia suggest altered function in the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s organizational center for cognitive function, personality expression, and behavioral control. International, large-scale genetic studies of patients with schizophrenia have pointed researchers to a gene called neuregulin 1 (NRG1), which appears to play a role in determining one’s susceptibility to the disease.
Chang-Gyu Hahn, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Steven Arnold, MD, Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology, and Raquel Gur, MD, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry, and colleagues at Penn, in collaboration with Hoau-Yan Wang, PhD, at The City University of New York, took an approach to use NRG1 protein to activate its neuronal receptor, erbB4, to measure the molecular response in postmortem brain tissue.
Acupuncture shows promise for fibromyalgia
Acupuncture may help relieve the symptoms of fibromyalgia, especially the fatigue and anxiety that often comes with the condition, a new study suggests.
Fibromyalgia is a syndrome marked by chronic widespread aches and pains, fatigue and sleep problems, among other symptoms; the cause is unknown, and there are no medications specifically approved for the condition. Instead, treatment usually involves a combination of approaches, such as painkillers, antidepressants and exercise therapy.
Only two well-designed clinical trials have tested acupuncture’s effects on fibromyalgia, and these studies yielded conflicting results.
Fertility treatments could aid Europe demographic crisis
Providing fertility treatment to more women could help offset Europe’s demographic crisis, a leading think tank said on Monday.
Increasing longevity, improvements in health care and falling birth rates mean that by 2050 the number of Europeans over the age of 65 will double from around 15 percent to about 30 percent.
Governments are concerned about the financial consequences because the graying population will increase healthcare and pension costs and there will be fewer younger people in the work force.
Vegetables may help arteries stay clear
A healthy dose of vegetables every day may help keep the heart arteries clear, a study in mice suggests. Researchers found that lab mice given a diet full of broccoli, carrots, green beans, corn and peas developed far less artery narrowing than those reared on a veggie-free diet.
For humans, the findings offer more support for the advice health experts and mothers have long given: eat your vegetables.
Discounting French fries, most Americans aren’t adequately heeding that advice, noted the study’s lead author, Dr. Michael R. Adams of Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Children may need two doses of chickenpox vaccine
One dose of chickenpox vaccine may be insufficient to prevent school outbreaks of chickenpox, according to a report in the medical journal Pediatrics.
Outbreaks of chickenpox continue to be reported, even in highly vaccinated populations, the authors explain.
In Arkansas, a chickenpox vaccination requirement for entry into kindergarten was introduced in 2000, so by September 2003 children in kindergarten through third grade were protected. Nonetheless, a large number of cases of chickenpox still occurred in an elementary school in 2003.
