Childhood Strokes Have Complex Causes
Patient Evaluations Should Seek Treatable Risk Factors
When children suffer strokes, physicians should look beyond the obvious causes to find risk factors that could be treated, say the authors of large British study of childhood stroke published November 15 in the on-line edition of the Annals of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Neurological Association.
About half the children in the study of more than 200 stroke v
Scientists open door to possible new treatments for urinary tract infections
Clingy bacteria often spell trouble. Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have discovered how bacteria manufacture hair-like fibers used to cling to the lining of the kidney and bladder where they cause urinary tract infections (UTIs). The results are published in the Nov. 15 issue of the journal Cell.
“Our findings should lead to new drugs to treat UTIs by blocking t
A gene may be responsible for halting the spread of cancer through the body, according to scientists at the University of Virginia Health System. The gene, called RhoGDI2, could also be used as a warning to help catch the spread of cancer in patients earlier. A multidisciplinary team of scientists, led by Dr. Dan Theodorescu, professor of urology and molecular physiology at U.Va., used advanced DNA technology to discover that low levels of RhoGDI2 were found more often in invasive cancer than in loca
Appendix removal delays the onset of inflammatory bowel disease and lessens the symptoms, especially if done before the age of 20, finds research in Gut.
Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis are the most common forms of inflammatory bowel disease and affect around 5 in every 1000 people.
The researchers based their analysis on a survey of patients registered with the Brisbane Inflammatory Bowel Disease Research Group between 1995 and 1999. They included 307 patients with Crohn’s
Bioengineers have for the first time used a computer model to relate specific genetic mutations to exact variations of a disease. This is the first model-based system for predicting phenotype (function of the cell or organism) based on genotype (an individual’s DNA).
In the study, published in Genome Research (Vol. 12, Issue 11, 1687-1692, November 2002, article link), Bernhard Palsson and his team at UCSD’s Jacobs School of Engineering reviewed genetic information from patients who have an
Clinical tests began today of a novel vaccine directed at the three most globally important HIV subtypes, or clades. Developed by scientists at the Dale and Betty Bumpers Vaccine Research Center (VRC), part of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the vaccine incorporates HIV genetic material from clades A, B and C, which cause about 90 percent of all HIV infections around the world.
“This is the first multigene, multiclade HIV vaccine to enter human trials,” no
A new molecular tag discovered by scientists at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center may help doctors decide which breast cancer patients need more aggressive treatment and which can forego the potentially toxic course of chemotherapy.
Khandan Keyomarsi, Ph.D., associate professor in experimental radiation at M. D. Anderson, and her colleagues report in the November 14, 2002, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine that high levels of a protein called cyclin E are close
A group of researchers from The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have designed a vaccine that might be used to protect against the pernicious consequences of severe sepsis, an acute and often deadly disease that is estimated to strike 700,000 Americans a year and millions more worldwide.
Though the new vaccine has not yet been applied to clinical trials in humans, it has worked well in preclinical studies, the results of which the team reports in the latest issue of the journal Angewandte
Paper published in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences
Below is an advisory distributed today by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The paper can be found in the online early edition of PNAS at www.pnas.org.
The study, conducted by Dr. Cassian Yee, a researcher at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, involved 10 people diagnosed with advanced melanoma. For each patient immune system cells able to identify and target melanoma wer
Danish authors of a study in this week’s issue of THE LANCET provide reassurance to pregnant women—maternal fever in the early stages of pregnancy is probably not a risk factor for miscarriage or stillbirth.
Increased maternal body temperature can cause fetal death in some animals, which has lead to the suspicion that maternal fever early in pregnancy (when embryonic development is at a critical stage) could have a similar effect in the human population.
Anne-Marie Nybo Andersen an
A new study of elderly Americans shows a strong link between air pollution and higher costs of medical care, both inpatient and outpatient, and especially for respiratory ailments.
Millions of Medicare records of whites between the ages of 65 and 84 from 1989 to 1991 provided a study sample for researchers Victor R. Fuchs, professor emeritus at Stanford University, and Sarah Rosen Franks, a doctoral student at the University of California, Berkeley. They write in the November/December issue
Researchers from Midwestern University in Illinois, Curtin University of Technology in Australia, and Illinois State University have found that when bacteria become resistant to pine oil cleaners (POC), a common household disinfectant, they may also be resistant to some antibiotics. Their findings appear in the November 2002 issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology.
In the study, POC-resistant Staphylococcus aureus were found to also be resistant to the antibiotics, vancomycin and ox
Radioactive spheres delivered via blood flow to tumor
Vanderbilt University Medical Center is offering the latest advancement for treating inoperable liver tumors.
Selective Internal Radiation Therapy (SIRT) targets a very high radiation dose to tumors within the liver, regardless of their cell of origin, number, size or location. The procedure uses biocompatible radioactive microspheres (SIR-Spheres®) that contain yttrium-90 and emit high energy beta radiation.
“T
Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have averted the onset of neurodegenerative disease in fruit flies by administering medication to flies genetically predisposed to a disorder akin to Parkinson’s disease.
The result suggests a new approach to the treatment of human disorders including Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases. Penn biologist Nancy M. Bonini and graduate student Pavan K. Auluck report the finding in the November issue of Nature Medicine.
The successful transfusion of a cell-free blood product on a 14-year-old Jehovah’s Witness may offer a solution for patients opposed to blood transfusions due to religious or personal beliefs.
“This was the first successful use of a human cell-free hemoglobin solution in a pediatric patient to manage life-threatening anemia due to an autoimmune disease,” says Dr. Brian Kavanagh, professor of medicine at the University of Toronto and staff physician in critical care medicine at T
Better educating physicians, using computers to order drugs and improving the system for policing inappropriate medication use can help reduce potentially deadly errors among cardiovascular patients, according to a new American Heart Association scientific statement published in today’s Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.
Several reports have blamed medical errors for thousands of adverse events and deaths among patients in recent years. One study estimates that medi
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