Are Gulf war veterans getting better?
...n other military personnel, but the health gap has narrowed slightly, finds a study in this week's BMJ. A second study shows no increased risk of cancer among Gulf war veterans. The first study compared the health of members of the UK armed forces who served in the 1991 Gulf war with non-deployed military per...Baby and coated aspirin equally effective in thinning of blood when taken in combination with Plavix
...rm because of sluggish blood flow through a vessel narrowed by fatty deposits. The goal of aspirin is to thin the blood, thereby reducing the risk of blood clots. Dr. Alberts and his colleagues plan to continue their research of dose-adjusted aspirin and how PFA results correlate with clinical events....Angioplasty clears clogged brain arteries
SAN DIEGO, Feb. 5 Angioplasty opened narrowed brain arteries, preventing strokes in patients for whom standard medication had failed, according to a study presented today at the American Stroke Association's 29th International Stroke Conference. "Angioplasty improves the outcome over what we wo...National study: Health care access for poor children improves, but gap in care for uninsured grows
...en who did notreport a problem getting needed care narrowed from 2000 (a 9.9 percent difference) to 2001 (a 3.7 percent difference). Parents of publicly insured and uninsured children were more than twice as likely as parents of privately-insured children to report that health care providers never or s...Vitamins good for some older women/bad for others
...lobin-2 increase their risk of atherosclerosis, or narrowed arteries, if they take doses of the antioxidant vitamins C and E, Dr. Andrew P. Levy of the Faculty of Medicine says. In contrast, diabetic women who carry two copies of haptoglobin-1 seem to have a decreased rate of atherosclerosis when they take th...Researchers say stenting the best treatment for blocked leg arteries
...were complete blockages and 417 were significantly narrowed vessels. Researchers analyzed clinical patient data for up to eight years after stent placement. Of the 496 limbs for which follow-up data were available, improved blood circulation was achieved in 484 limbs, for a success rate of 98 percent. After f...Study identifies predictors of Alzheimer's disease longevity
...about 4 years after diagnosis. But this gender gap narrowed with age. Age at diagnosis was also a factor. Those who were diagnosed with AD in their 70s had longer survival times than those diagnosed at age 85 or older."This finding moves us toward a more precise vision of the course that Alzheimer's may take ...Top honors for patient counseling awarded to UH student
...tion competed in a preliminary round that was then narrowed down to the top 10. The contestants were given five minutes to mentally prepare for a scenario presented to them where they had to counsel a patient on an assigned medication. To keep things realistic, the patients presented with some kind of commu...Adult marijuana abuse, dependence increased during 1990s
...ndence rates among the different ethnic groups had narrowed considerably. This change was due to increases of 224 percent among young African-American men and women aged 1829, and 148 percent among young Hispanic men aged 1829." The increase in potency of marijuana over the last decade may be partly respon...Carotid artery surgery could substantially reduce stroke among high-risk patients
... issue of THE LANCET suggest that surgery to widen narrowed carotid arteries could halve the risk of stroke among high-risk patients. However, authors of the study caution that surgery carries its own stroke risks if not done by experts. There is currently debate as to whether people who have substantial narr...New findings on stroke prevention surgery should change medical practice
...N.C. New evidence confirming that surgery to open narrowed neck vessels can dramatically reduce stroke risk m...ce stroke risk by half with surgery to 'clean out' narrowed arteries leading to the brain even in patients who have no symptoms," says neurologist James Toole,...New data show SPIRIVA significantly reduces COPD exacerbations and related health resource burden
...helps COPD patients breathe more easily by opening narrowed airways and helping to keep them open for 24 hours. According to treatment guidelines of the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD), long-acting bronchodilators, including tiotropium, are a preferred treatment option for COPD m...Under the surface, the brain seethes with undiscovered activity
...reas of the brain responded, but while that method narrowed the focus to how a single cell responds, it eliminated the chance to understand how the neural network of a conscious animal would respond. Accepting all the neural traffic of a conscious brain as part of the equation let Weliky get a better idea of ...Study lays down genetic basis for sinus disease and nasal polyps
...percent decrease in amount. The researchers then narrowed their initial focus to the top-four "up" genes and the most common "down" gene to see if any proteins, as the products of genes, were also present in significantly larger or smaller amounts than normal. Changes in proteins and genes can be clues to ...Dartmouth study suggests caution against using certain drugs to unclog heart arteries
...ning that angiogenesis induced intimal growth that narrowed the blood vessel. Then, using different agents to inhibit angiogenesis, they showed that even when angiogenesis was completely stopped, some new muscle accumulated. "Intimal growth is a fundamental pathology responsible for many cardiovascular disea...Researcher says screenings vital to reduce stroke rate
...ration, says using ultrasound to screen people for narrowed arteries in the neck is the best way to identify p...nt research confirmed the value of surgery to open narrowed neck vessels in reducing stroke risk. "We now know definitively that we can reduce stroke ris...Study questions safety of heart procedures at hospitals without cardiac surgery programs
...up. PCI is a non-surgical procedure that unblocks narrowed coronary arteries, often using a balloon to open a constricted artery and a wire stent to keep the artery clear. Although it is a non-surgical procedure, complications that require emergency cardiac surgery, may arise. In the United States, hospital...Study of cancer trials finds significant safety improvement
...r treatment of leukemia or lymphoma. This strategy narrowed the study group down to 213 trials, enrolling aproximately 6,500 patients. For these studies, the researchers analyzed how often participants died from drug toxicity, cancer-related deaths, other toxic treatment effects, and whether or not the treatm...Genetic testing can identify ischemic and nonischemic heart failure
...schemic heart disease, the patient's arteries have narrowed and the heart cannot pump normally because blood flow (and thus oxygen) is often restricted to the heart muscle. In nonischemic forms of the disease, the heart cannot pump normally because the heart muscle has often enlarged for other reasons, such ......to irregular heartbeats. The most common cause is narrowed arteries that feed the heart, called ischemic cardiomyopathy. However, the heart failure in this group of patients was not due to a lack of blood flow but to various factors such as infections (mostly viral), heredity, alcohol abuse, toxins, and oth...