After years of keeping your high blood pressure in check with diet, exercise and medication, you learn that yours suddenly is too high.
The August issue of Mayo Clinic Health Letter discusses why you and your doctor will want to find the reason for the sudden jump, called secondary hypertension.
Usually, high blood pressure has no known cause. Hypertension of this sort is called essential hypertension and develops gradually over many years.
Secondary hypertension
Because golf is a leisurely sport, many people don’t think of it as promoting heart health. Conversely, since it is easygoing, injuries are believed to be rare. The August issue of the Harvard Men’s Health Watch debunks these myths and advises readers how to benefit the most from their golf game.
Golf can be good for your health and safe for your heart. These health benefits don’t come from swinging your club, but from walking. Walking an average course for a round of golf can be as
Pregnant women may be volunteering to participate in HIV research without fully understanding the benefits or consequences, according to a study published today in BMC Medicine. Volunteers’ comprehension of studies or treatments should be tested to ensure that their consent is truly informed and voluntary, say the study’s authors.
International regulations for ethical conduct of research require that volunteers are presented with detailed scientific and legal information before consenting
Metabolism is regulated by a host of tiny proteins in the hypothalamus, the small segment of the brain controlling hunger. But those peptides can’t perform their fat-fighting function without the aid of PC1 and PC2 enzymes, according to new Brown University research.
Led by Brown Medical School professor and Rhode Island Hospital investigator Eduardo Nillni, the team found that PC1 and PC2 chop up the precursor of thyrotropin-releasing hormone (TRH), a process that sets the mole
New York City’s late summer/early fall 2000 mosquito spraying session, designed as an effort to minimize the spread of West Nile virus, did not increase the number of people seeking emergency care for asthma-related problems, according to a study published today in the August issue of the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP). The study found no correlation between the application of sumithrin—a pyrethroid pesticide—in the 162 residential zip codes sprayed between July and S
Encouraging trends in the long term success of total ankle replacement were reported in a study presented at the American Orthopaedic Foot and Ankle Society’s (AOFAS) annual summer meeting today.
This study, conducted by Charles Saltzman MD, a Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery and Engineering from the University of Iowa, found total ankle replacement to be an option for patients with severe arthritis. Similar to hip and knee replacement surgeries, total ankle replacement involves removing th
Data presented here today at the Academy 2004 meeting of the American Academy of Dermatology demonstrate that tacrolimus ointment is more effective than pimecrolimus cream in the treatment of adult and pediatric patients with atopic dermatitis (AD).
Overall results also revealed that in the same patient populations, both treatments have similar safety profiles including no statistical difference with regard to burning and stinging. These findings were presented by Alan Fleischer, M.
Men who try hypnosis to help them quit smoking are more likely to be successful than women who use the same treatment, according to new research.
A review of 18 studies of hypnosis-based smoking cessation programs found that about 30 percent of men who used such a treatment successfully quit smoking, compared to 23 percent of women.
But the reasons may have more to do with gender differences in quitting smoking in general than reasons associated with hypnosis, said Joseph Gre
A Mayo Clinic research team is focusing on a hormone previously identified in the venom of the green mamba snake for the role it may play in a dangerous blood vessel narrowing in stroke patients that can lead to a second stroke, reduced blood flow and brain damage.
Called “cerebral vasospasm,” this common complication of stroke occurs in approximately one-third of patients who experience a ruptured brain blood vessel. Its cause is not known. By discovering a possible role for this
High-risk prostate cancer patients who undergo a combination of hormonal therapy, radioactive seed implant (also called brachytherapy) and external beam radiation therapy are shown to have an increased chance of cancer cure, according to a new study published in the August 1, 2004, issue of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology*Biology*Physics, the official journal of ASTRO, the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology.
Historically, high-risk prostate cancer
Surgeons at the Cedars-Sinai Institute for Spinal Disorders describe in the August 1 issue of the journal Spine a minimally invasive approach that enables them to perform fusion surgery on the difficult-to-access upper lumbar region of the spine with a reduced risk of serious complications.
“Compared to previous options, this new approach is safer with respect to major blood vessels and abdominal organs,” said John J. Regan, M.D., co-director of the Institute. “The majority of patients expe
A hormone that is important in the control of blood pressure may also inhibit the growth of lung cancer cells, say scientists at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, writing in the new issue of the journal Carcinogenesis.
Patricia E. Gallagher, Ph.D., and E. Ann Tallant, Ph.D., said the hormone, called angiotensin-(1-7), “may represent a novel chemotherapeutic and chemopreventive treatment for lung cancer.”
Their studies found that angiotensin-(1-7) significantly
Carbohydrate microarray technology shows strength in exploring novel immunologic targets
Researchers in New York City and Guangzhou, China applied the rapidly-developing carbohydrate microarray technology to study an inactivated SARS-coronavirus (SARS-CoV) vaccine and discovered autoimmunogenic activity of this newly identified human viral pathogen.
Using glycan microarrays, the researchers characterized the carbohydrate binding activity of SARS-CoV neutralizing antibodies e
OHSU researchers publish new findings, recommendations for clinicians
Every minute of every day, Bill McClellan hears an incessant hissing or ringing noise that fluctuates between a faint low-pitched static to a piercing high-pitched ring.
If he manages to fall asleep amid the cacophony, he awakens a few hours later to the same intolerable din. His resulting sleep deprivation makes it difficult to concentrate and his attention span is short. He can’t stand to drive because
Radiofrequency ablation (RFA), the use of electrodes to heat and destroy abnormal tissue, is a promising technique to safely and effectively treat patients with inoperable lung tumors, say researchers from the IRCCS Hospital of Oncology in Bari, Italy.
In a study that focused on 18 patients with lung tumors ineligible for surgery, forty nodules were treated by lung RFA. Upon regular follow-up, no relapse was detected in 94% of the patients.
According to Cosmo Gadaleta, MD,
MRI reveals that greater trochanteric fractures of the hip that are diagnosed as isolated on X-ray are frequently underestimated and are neither isolated nor minor, say a pair of researchers from Presbyterian Hospital, New York, NY.
Frieda Feldman, MD, and Ronald B. Staron, MD, analyzed 37 patients over the age of fifty who had fallen and fractured their hip. All patients were diagnosed on X-ray as having greater trochanteric fractures, an injury to one of the bony protrusions
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