Newly Diagnosed Breast Cancer Patients Benefit
Newly Diagnosed Breast Cancer Patients Benefit from Use of Ultrasound-guided Fine Needle Aspiration of Lymph Nodes
Ultrasound-guided fine needle aspiration (USFNA) of the lymph nodes is a safe, useful, and minimally invasive procedure for diagnosing metastatic disease in patients who are undergoing preoperative staging for breast cancer, according to a recent study conducted by researchers at the Rhode Island Hospital/Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University in Providence, RI.
“We wanted to determine which patients with newly diagnosed breast cancer would benefit most from preoperative fine needle aspiration of the axillary lymph nodes,” said Martha Mainiero, MD, lead author of the study. “This quick and minimally invasive procedure can assist the surgeon in determining what type of axillary surgery is best for patients with breast cancer. Unfortunately many centers do not routinely perform this procedure as there is not yet consensus on who will benefit from it,” she said.
MDCT Accurate in Detecting Stenosis in Calcified Coronary Artery Plaque
Multidetector CT angiography can accurately predict the presence of obstructive disease (stenosis) in small and moderate-sized calcified coronary artery plaque (CAP), and is even fairly accurate in diagnosing large and heavily calcified CAP, according to a recent study conducted by researchers at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, PA.
The study evaluated 31 patients who had one or more calcified CAP, comparing the results from CCTA to cardiac catheterization. “It is commonly believed that when coronary artery plaque is calcified, (particularly when it is heavily calcified), MDCT is unreliable in determining the degree of stenosis,” said David C. Levin, MD, lead author of the study. However, in this study CCTA and cardiac catheterization were concordant in 58 of 61 small calcified CAPs (95%), 20 of 22 moderate-sized (91%) and 29 of 43 large calcified CAPs (67%). The study showed that overestimation of stenosis occurred in 2 of the small lesions, 2 of the moderate-sized lesions and 14 of the large lesions.
Inhaled insulin linked to lung cancer: Pfizer
Clinical trials of the inhaled insulin product Exubera revealed an increase in the number of lung cancer patient, leading Nektar Therapeutics to end talks with potential partners to market the product, Pfizer Inc and Nektar said on Wednesday
Over the course of the clinical trials, Pfizer said 6 of the 4,740 Exubera-treated patients versus 1 of the 4,292 patients not treated with Exubera developed lung cancer. One lung cancer case was also found after Exubera reached the market.
Pfizer updated the Exubera labeling to include a warning with safety information about lung cancer cases found in patients who used Exubera, which U.S. regulators approved in January 2006.
Drug regime reverses heart disease in diabetics
Aggressive use of drugs to lower cholesterol and blood pressure helped reverse heart disease in people with diabetes, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.
The 3-year study of 499 Native American adults with type 2 diabetes showed that lowering blood pressure and cholesterol more than is usually recommended helped reverse thickening of the arteries and damage to the heart.
This is good news for everyone with diabetes, the researchers said—especially Native Americans, who have high rates of the disease.
Low-impact exercise helps obese boys burn more fat
For obese boys, lower-intensity exercise like walking may be better at burning fat than more-vigorous workouts, a small study suggests.
In exercise tests of 30 thin or obese 12-year-old boys, French researchers found that obese boys burned the most fat when they worked out at a modest intensity—akin to riding a bike on level ground.
Once the activity became more challenging, their bodies began to use substantially less fat compared with normal-weight boys.
Weight discrimination common, U.S. survey finds
Discrimination against the overweight may be about as prevalent as racial discrimination, the results of a survey of U.S. adults suggest.
Using data from a survey of nearly 2,300 Americans, researchers at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut found that 5 percent of men and 10 percent of women said they had faced discrimination because of their weight—ranging from job refusals to rude treatment in everyday life.
Among respondents who were severely obese—having a body mass index
(BMI) of 35 or higher—40 percent reported instances of weight discrimination. A body mass index is the ratio between height and weight commonly used to classify individuals as over- or underweight.
Methamphetamine use in pregnancy changes learning ability of the offspring
Studies have suggested that infants exposed to methamphetamines while in the womb can suffer irreversible brain damage, although the exact effects of these drugs during pregnancy have been hard to pinpoint due to many other negative behaviors that often occur in meth users.
Now, using a guinea pig model that can assess neural changes in offspring born to mothers given methamphetamine during an otherwise normal pregnancy, Dr. Sanika Samuel Chirwa provides new evidence for the cognitive damage of these drugs.
