Indiana University researchers closer to helping hearing-impaired using stem cells
INDIANAPOLIS -- Researchers at Indiana University School of Medicine are several steps closer to the day when a profoundly deaf patient's own bone marrow cells could be used to let him or her hear the world. ......The IU group, led by Eri Hashino, Ph.D., was able to transform, in the laboratory, stem cells taken from adult bone marrow into cells with many of the characteristics of sensory nerve c...Branding practices in rural India should be banned
The superstitious practice known as 'branding treatment' in rural India should be banned, urge researchers in this week's BMJ....... Branding or inflicting burns over the body as a remedy for illnesses such as pneumonia, jaundice, and convulsions, is a harmful practice prevalent in rural India. Children and young babies are worst affected by this superstitious practice, which causes serious ill h...Yale opens Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS (CIRA) in India
On a recent trip to India, Yale President Richard C. Levin and a delegation of Yale officials formally opened a new office for Yale's Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS (CIRA) housed at YRG Care, a nonprofit organization based in Chennai.... ...The office will operate three research projects relating to HIV and AIDS throughout India: Project Parivartan, supported by a threeyear grant f...Satellite data reveal immense pollution pool over Bihar, India
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Scientists studying satellite data have discovered an immense wintertime pool of pollution over the northern Indian state of Bihar. Blanketing around 100 million people, primarily in the Ganges Valley, the pollution levels are about five times larger than those typically found over Los Angeles. ......The discovery was made by researchers analyzing four years of data collected...UCLA-VA study names India dietary staple as potential Alzheimer's weapon
A dietary staple of India, where Alzheimer's disease rates are reportedly among the world's lowest, holds potential as a weapon in the fight against the disease. ...... The new UCLA-Veterans Affairs study involving genetically altered mice suggests that curcumin, the yellow pigment in curry spice, inhibits the accumulation of destructive beta amyloids in the brains of Alzheimer's patients and al...Indiana a national leader in new federal funding for health information technology
Over the next 5 years, Indiana will receive $10.8 million, of which $9.3 million was awarded to the Indiana University School of Medicine, from a new federal program to promote the use of information technology in health care. It is the second largest amount awarded to any of the 38 states that received the recently announced awards. ...... The funding is part of a new $139 million initiative by...Elevated rates of trauma may put urban American Indian women at increased risk for contracting HIV
Urban American Indian women endure extremely high rates of physical and sexual trauma and, as a result, may engage in risky behaviors that place them at high risk for becoming infected with the HIV virus that causes AIDS, according to a new study focusing on American Indians in the New York City area. ... The study also indicates that HIV rates among American Indian women may be much higher than...Poorest in India are biggest consumers of tobacco
The view that many poor families in South Asia are going without food to get tobacco is raised in this week's BMJ. A study from India finds that those with the lowest standard of living smoke and chew tobacco more than others do....... The analysis is based on the 1998-9 national family health survey of over 300,000 adults across 26 Indian states. Factors such as age, sex, education, caste, and s...Study reveals high suicide rates among young people in India
Authors of a research letter in this week's issue of THE LANCET highlight how suicide among young people in India--especially among young women--is a major public-health problem requiring urgent intervention. ...... The average suicide rate worldwide is around 14.5 per 100000 population (rates are lower in industrialised countries and higher in less-developed settings). Anuradha Bose from the Chr...Unethical promotion of medicines is rife in India
The Indian government has failed to prevent the unethical and illegal promotion of prescription drugs, according to an editorial in this week's BMJ....... Government policies adopted in the 1970s permitted manufacturers in India to produce generic versions of branded drugs discovered abroad. This has led to an unprecedented growth of companies with little incentive to undertake research to make n...Grant expands Indiana University-Kenya AIDS program
The success of a two-year program to treat HIV/AIDS in adults and children in Kenya has attracted a one-year, $1.6 million grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development. The announcement was made today by Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.... ...The program, Academic Model for the Prevention and Treatment for HIV/AIDS (AMPATH), was creat...Re-examining alcohol problems among American Indian communities
... Numerous stereotypes exist about American Indians' use of alcohol.... New research examines alcohol dependence among Northern Plains and Southwest tribes.... Although rates of alcohol dependence are higher than U.S. averages, they are not as high as previous research has indicated.... ...Numerous stereotypes exist about American Indians' use of alcohol. However, a new study of alcohol depen...Grant funds Indian River lagoon research
MELBOURNE, Fla.--Dr. John Trefry, Florida Tech professor of environmental science and oceanography, has earned a $95,000 grant from the St. Johns River Water Management District for Indian River Lagoon research.... Trefry will work to identify the types of particles blocking the light in the lagoon that contribute to a decline in sea grass. He will conduct chemical analysis and study the particl...Smoking causes half the tuberculosis deaths in Indian men
An international study in this week's issue of THE LANCET shows that smokers in India are four times as likely as non-smokers to die of tuberculosis. Almost 200,000 people a year in India die from tuberculosis because they smoked.... ...Most adult deaths in India involve vascular disease, pulmonary tuberculosis, or other respiratory disease. In the first major study of how smoking causes death in...Smoking causes half the tuberculosis deaths in Indian men
Half the male tuberculosis deaths in India are caused by smoking, and three quarters of the smokers who become ill with tuberculosis (TB) would not have done so if they had not smoked. These are the conclusions of a major new study led by the Epidemiological Research Center in Chennai, India and primarily funded by the UK Medical Research Council and Cancer Research UK.... ...The study found that...OneWorld Health begins final testing of drug to cure deadly kala azar in India
San Francisco, Calif. July 7, 2003 The Institute for OneWorld Health, the first nonprofit pharmaceutical company in the United States, announced today it has begun Phase III testing of paromomycin to cure one of the world's deadliest parasitic diseases, kala azar, also known as visceral leishmaniasis (VL). Demonstrating a new use for an old medicine, OneWorld Health is developing paromomycin...Cancer patients in India cheated of appropriate care
A letter in this week's BMJ charges the medical community in India with a "commercialisation of suffering and prolongation of lucrative illness."...... Dr Chatuverdi, Assistant Surgeon at Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai states that, in a country with 3 million cancer sufferers of whom 80 per cent are incurable there are only 20 dedicated cancer centres and 13 hospices. Those with advanced con...India launches commission to improve its economy through improved health care
Based on a report issued in 2001 by the World Health Organization's (WHO) Commission on Macroeconomics and Health (chaired by economist Jeffrey Sachs), the government of India is officially forming a special Indian Commission on Macroeconomics and Health to target health sector priorities in order to spur economic development. ... ...India is the world's second most populated country and faces ma...Inaccurate arsenic test kits jeopardize water safety in Bangladesh and India
Thousands in southern Asia could be drinking arsenic-contaminated water from wells that are falsely labeled safe, while precious good water sits untapped in wells that are wrongly marked unsafe a dire disparity for countries where water can be more valuable than gold.... ...A new study of wells in Bangladesh and West Bengal, India, suggests the arsenic test kits used by field workers are frequen...New Indiana University School of Medicine pediatrics program focuses on patient advocacy
INDIANAPOLIS Providing optimum health care to youngsters is far more than giving routine physical exams, making diagnoses, writing prescriptions and charting appropriate treatment plans. The ever-evolving role of pediatric physicians requires a fuller understanding of children's total environment and working with the community in which they live.... ...That's the driving force behind a newly cr...Indiana University orthopaedic surgeon to share cartilage growth research results
INDIANAPOLIS Degenerative joint disease is on the rise as the population ages costing untold dollars in lost productivity and medical expenses. Few remedies exist, other than joint replacement surgery, but a growing field of tissue engineering research is seeking less invasive and less painful ways to address the problem.... ...One of those researchers is Stephen B. Trippel, M.D., professor and...3D ultrasound telehealth system first commercial test at Indian reservations
Pregnant women living on South Dakota Indian reservations where infant mortality rates are more than twice the national average will receive specialty care under the first commercial test of a telehealth system called MUSTPAC-3 (for the third version of the Medical Ultrasound, Three-dimensional and Portable with Advanced Communications). ... This state-of-the-art portable ultrasound system was de...INDIANAPOLIS - Ultrasound technology, long known to expectant parents and used in the monitoring of fetal conditions, is making new waves at the Indiana University School of Medicine for its value in fighting prostate cancer.... ...A Phase I clinical trial at the IU School of Medicine investigates the efficiency and safety of using high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) for prostate cancer. The...Indiana University Cancer Center receives National Cancer Institute designation
.INDIANAPOLIS -- Indiana University Cancer Center has been recognized as a.premier national center for the study of cancer and the development of new.cancer treatments by the National Cancer Institute. As an NCI-designated.clinical cancer center, the IU Cancer Center will receive a five-year, $6.3.million support grant. The grant bolsters the $33.3 million annual funding.currently received for c...Dental students help close care gap at Indian reservation
<P. .CLEVELAND--Twenty-one senior dental students from Case Western Reserve University and four other schools are.serving externships this summer at the Pine Ridge, S.D., Indian Reservation in a pilot project designed to assist the U.S..Public Health Service (PHS) in providing much-needed dental care for the reservation's 40,000 residents.. .Dennis Tommasone, an associate professor of dentistry a....Asthma. Although asthma is the most common chronic childhood illness in the.United States, little is known about its prevalence among American Indian and.Alaska Native children. . . The authors of a study published in the May/June 1999 issue of the.journal Public Health Reports used the latest available data for American Indian.and Alaska Native children ages 1-17 years old to estimate t.... ... Bihar in north east India accounts for half the annual worldwide cases of visceral leishmaniasis (a disease transmitted by sandfly bites). Dr P Olliaro of the World Health Organisation worked alongside a local medical team in Bihar to research the efficacy of the drug aminosidine and they report the findings of their study in this week's BMJ. The authors found it was significantly more...