University of Pittsburgh approach has lung recipients taking far fewer drugs
...at a negligible dose, 5 mg compared to 20 mg. The rationale is to treat patients with as little immunosuppressive medication as possible following the transplant while preventing injury to the graft by the recipient's immune system. Since June of 2002, more than 80 patients have been treated under the protoco...Researchers identify leukemia-linked pathway targeted by a new kinase inhibitor
... chronic phase of myeloid leukemia, there may be a rationale for dual kinase inhibitor therapy of more advanced leukemia. Increased activation of Src kinases has been observed in CML patients who have become resistant to Gleevec." Dr. Li and his team are currently developing additional mouse models lacking in ...Editorial: Blindness and visual impairment
... Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, describe the rationale for forming The Eye Diseases Prevalence Research Group, an initiative funded by the National Eye Institute of the National Institutes of Health with additional funding from Prevent Blindness America (Schaumburg, Ill.) that has estimated the current a...Intensive diabetes management yields positive results, according to Pittsburgh project
...icians on diabetes care focused on ADA guidelines, rationale and strategies for treatment and diabetes self-management education. This was a major challenge since the UPMC physician network extends across a radius of 250 miles. Physician education was delivered through a variety of venues including telecommuni...Mayo Clinic researchers discover green tea component helps kill leukemia cells
...chful waiting" with early-stage CLL patients. This rationale -- to spare elderly patients exposure to toxic chemotherapy -- has been challenged recently as new tests have improved physicians' ability to identify early stage patients who have a more aggressive form of the cancer. As a result, much...Place of death influences hospital league tables
...been published by health service commentators. The rationale for publication is that differences in death rates may indicate differences in quality of hospital care, yet provision and use of different facilities for the care of the dying varies geographically. Terminally ill patients need care, and if that is ...Should nurses conduct breast cancer follow-up visits?
...anged to meet patients' ongoing needs better." The rationale behind follow-up visits after primary treatment for breast cancer is that early detection of a recurrence leads to a better outcome, that women get a sense of psychological security and satisfaction from the visit, and that the data collected are use...Randomisation phase of the DIRECT programme (DIabetic REtinopathy Candesartan Trials) completed
...s with retinopathy for secondary prevention. The rationale for DIRECT arose from the promising results of the EURODIAB Controlled Trial of Lisinopril in Insulin dependent Diabetes (EUCLID).(4) Analysis of the data indicated that the ACE-inhibitor lisinopril could have a positive effect in preventing and re...Aromatase inhibitors: A promising new treatment for endometriosis
...ults appear extremely promising and constitute the rationale for further investigation of this regimen as a first-line treatment for endometriosis," said Dr. Bulun....Predicting risk of poor outcomes in patients with heart disease using certain biomarker
...ts receptor, ... these findings may also provide a rationale for a novel anti-inflammatory therapeutic target in patients with coronary artery disease," the authors conclude.(JAMA. 2004;291:435-441. Available post-embargo at JAMA.com )...Herceptin gives disappointing results in lung cancer trial
...tin than it had in breast cancer cells there was a rationale for believing that it might also benefit lung cancer patients. "It was disappointing therefore to find that the survival times and the time to the disease progressing were very similar between six and seven months for both the trastuzumab and contro...Antiviral drug, valacyclovir, reduces genital herpes transmission
...herpes transmission. This observation provided the rationale for the current study, which sought to determine whether reducing the amount of viral shedding-even in the absence of clinical symptoms-could prevent herpes transmission. The study, conducted at 96 centers in the United States, Canada, Europe, South...Foundation for adult body weight may be laid during adolescence
...dults. The results from this study provide strong rationale for obesity prevention at a young age. Such efforts should include the parents, and promotion of physical activity appears to be a critical component of such prevention efforts."...EGFR status linked to poor survival in advanced breast cancer patients
...that block the EGFR pathway. These data provide a rationale for studying these agents in selected patients with breast cancer," says Thomas Buchholz, M.D., associate professor of radiation oncology, who conducted the study. One such trial of the EGFR inhibitor drug, Iressa, combined with the endocrine therapy...Elderly women over-screened for cancers with little measurable benefit
..., examining the benefits of such screening and the rationale behind these screening practices," said Ostbye. In the absence of concrete cancer screening guidelines in the elderly, Gary Greenberg, M.D., co-author on the paper and a member of Duke's department of community and family medicine, said that provider...Nov/Dec 2003 Annals of Family Medicine tip sheet
... women we interviewed were very distrustful of the rationale for the suggested changes, suspicious that reducing the frequency of testing is motivated by concern for cost rather than quality of care," commented Smith. The researchers also note that women's reluctance to adopt a risk-based screening approach a...Whole-breast irradiation after lumpectomy may protect women from recurrence long term
...st in Salt Lake City, Utah. After lumpectomy, the rationale for treating the whole breast with radiation has been the risk of having microscopic tumor cells in other parts of the breast. A majority of cancer recurrences in the breast after lumpectomy with whole-breast irradiation have been reported to occur ...Disrupting two cell mechanisms in combination can suppress aggressive breast cancer in mice
...w nutrient and low pH environment. This provides a rationale for combining anti-angiogenic and Hsp 90 inhibitors in clinical trials for patients with advanced breast cancer." The findings have implications for the design of future studies combining anti-angiogenic and Hsp90 inhibitor drugs in patients. "Becaus...Cervical cancer A single vaccine could benefit most women
...ause of cervical cancer and this provides a strong rationale for their use in screening and for the development of anti-HPV vaccines. "Women who are not infected persistently with one of the cancer-causing types of HPV do not develop cervical cancer", said Dr. Bosch, "and this knowledge is helping us develop e...... the spillover effect is thought to be the driving rationale behind the review program. The term spillover represents the possibility that physicians, once alerted to a particular drug interaction or alternative therapeutic, might apply the information to the care of other patients. The Penn study aimed to f...