Women successfully treated to prevent preterm labor at low risk for recurrent episode
ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Mayo Clinic and Medical University of South Carolina researchers have found that the large majority of expectant mothers treated to prevent preterm labor will deliver at or near term. ...... "We found that if you stopped labor once, only one out of nine women would come back with a repeat episode, which is about a baseline risk for preterm delivery," says Brian Brost, M.D., Ma...New mosquito control strategy proves successful against dengue fever
Over 380,000 people have been protected from dengue fever in Vietnam thanks to the implementation of a novel strategy to control mosquitoes in the country, concludes a report in this week's issue of THE LANCET....... Dengue fever is the most common insect-borne virus infection, causing more than 50 million infections, 500 000 cases of dengue haemorrhagic fever and at least 12 000 deaths per year....Auditory screening for newborns can be successful, UT Southwestern researchers report
DALLAS Jan. 27, 2005 Universal screening of newborns' hearing at large public hospitals, which annually deliver tens of thousands of babies, can be done more effectively when infants are not only tested four hours after birth as required by many states but also by rescreening those with a suspected problem before discharge and, if necessary, retesting infants at 10 days old, UT Southwestern M...More precise radiation therapy lets prostate cancer patients avoid erectile dysfunction
ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center are using innovative planning techniques to help men with prostate cancer avoid erectile dysfunction after radiation treatment....... .......<p...NHLBI stops sickle cell anemia transfusion study
San Diego, CA, Dec. 5, 2004 The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has stopped early a clinical trial studying whether children with sickle cell anemia at high risk for stroke could at some point after a minimum of 30 months (range 30-91 months) safely stop receiving the periodic blood transfusions that prevent strokes. The study found a...Ongoing transfusions needed to avoid strokes in children with sickle cell disease
The 10 percent of children with sickle cell disease who are at risk for a stroke need ongoing blood transfusions to reduce their risk, according to a study at 25 sites in North America. ......The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health, which funded the $11 million study headquartered at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta, issued a clinical alert to co...Proposed addiction treatment successful, safe in second small trial
A second, small clinical trial of a proposed addiction treatment led by investigators at NYU School of Medicine and the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory has produced favorable results in the treatment of long-term addiction to methamphetamine and/or cocaine, with no visual side effects in any of the 30 patients enrolled.... ... This latest research on GVG (gamma-viny...Proposed addiction treatment successful, safe in second small trial
UPTON, NY -- A second, small-scale clinical trial of a proposed addiction treatment originally investigated at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory has produced favorable results in the treatment of long-term addiction to methamphetamine and/or cocaine, with no visual side effects in any of the 30 patients enrolled....... This research on vigabatrin (a.k.a. gamma vinyl G...'Painting' technique successfully transfers gene therapy to heart
In experiments with pigs, scientists at Johns Hopkins have successfully used a technique called "gene painting" to target gene therapy to a specific region of the heart and change the heart's rhythm....... "Getting the genes where we want them has been a key limiting factor in the successful development of gene therapies for heart conditions," said cardiac electrophysiologist Kevin Donahue, M.D.,...Angiogenesis therapy successful for peripheral arterial disease
DURHAM, N.C. Duke University Medical Center researchers have shown that they can stimulate the body to produce its own naturally occurring growth factors to promote blood vessel growth into tissue damaged by peripheral arterial obstructive disease (PAOD). They said their finding could offer a new approach to treating the disease, which rivals coronary artery disease in its prevalence and health...Matching method helps doctors successfully transplant higher-risk kidneys
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. By carefully matching the estimated function of kidneys from deceased donors with the needs of potential recipients, surgeons can successfully transplant kidneys that would otherwise be discarded, according to a report from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. The center was able to double its transplant volume within a year....... In addition, a second report concl...Univ. of Pittsburgh researcher presents six-year results of botox injections for bladder dysfunction
SAN FRANCISCO, May 9 Botulinum toxin A injections, commonly known as botox injections, continue to show promise as a treatment for a variety of lower urinary tract dysfunctions, according to a study presented by a University of Pittsburgh researcher at the annual meeting of the American Urological Association (AUA) in San Francisco. Results will be published in abstract 517 in the AUA proceeding...Kadian alleviated chronic pain in patients unsuccessfully treated with well-known therapies
Atlanta and Vancouver, May 6, 2004 Arnold Weil, M.D., founder of the Non-Surgical Orthopaedic & Spine Center, is presenting new data at the 2nd Joint Scientific Meeting of the American Pain Society and the Canadian Pain Society demonstrating that patients who were treated unsuccessfully with MS Contin® and OxyContin® found pain relief with Kadian, a sustained-release morphine sulfate. K...First multi-center trial shows cryosurgery successful at treating some early-stage breast cancer
ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Imagine being treated for breast cancer right in your doctor's office, with an incision as small as a pinprick to show for it. New research from seven cancer centers suggests this might one day be possible.... ...In a process called cryoablation, surgeons freeze the tumors to kill the cells. The technique is already used as a non-surgical treatment for benign breast disease. R...Trials launched to test treatment of cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia
The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has awarded a four-year, $9 million contract to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and five other academic medical centers to create a network of Treatment Units for Research on Neurocognition and Schizophrenia (TURNS). The research will test the effectiveness of new drug treatments for the c...Study finds combination therapy successful for treating depression
Depression is common among opiate users and may serve as a trigger for high-risk drug injection practices, continued drug use, and relapse. Research has shown that individuals with co-occurring depression and substance use are less likely to complete treatment and have poorer prognoses after traditional treatment. However, scientists at the Brown University School of Medicine demonstrated that mu...Successful therapy for head and neck cancer may lead to long-term circulatory problems
Washington, DC Despite a steady stream of health advisories, younger Americans continue to light up in bars and restaurants. What many do not realize is that tobacco and alcohol combined contributes to head and neck cancer. While this is not one of the more common cancers, it is among the deadliest. Malignancies in this region of the body are among the most difficult to treat, resulting in a...Improving the chances of successful organ transplants
Each year over 50,000 patients undergo life-saving kidney, liver, or heart and lung transplant surgery. Unfortunately, organ transplantation remains a significant challenge because of the shortage of organ donors and differences in tissue type between donor and recipient that can cause rejection of the donor organ by the recipient's immune system. If this rejection reaction is not successfully tr...Erectile dysfunction has devastating effect on morale
The launch of sildenafil (Viagra) had an adverse effect on the morale of men who found it did not work, according to new research. It also reveals that men are more distressed by impotence than has generally been realised....... on Monday 29 March 2004....... Researchers interviewed a random sample of 40 men prescribed sildenafil who had attended a men's health clinic in the year before the stud...Drug for erectile dysfunction appears safe for some men with congestive heart failure
CHICAGO Carefully selected men with congestive heart failure appear to be able to safely take sildenafil, a drug used to treat erectile dysfunction (ED), if they are not taking nitrates to treat their heart condition, and have no evidence of myocardial ischemia, according to an article in the March 8 issue of The Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.... ...Erectile dy...Targeted antiviral prophylaxis of flu case contacts could successfully contain pandemic influenza
ATLANTA In a future outbreak of pandemic influenza, such as the three pandemics that sickened millions and killed hundreds of thousands of people during the 20th century, supplies of flu vaccine might not be available quickly enough to contain the spread of disease. However, according to research by biostatisticians in Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health, many thousands of deaths...Blood transfusion poses CJD risk
Two studies in this week's issue of ......The death from vCJD of an individual in the UK who had previously received a blood transfusion from a donor who went on to have vCJD was announced on December 17, 2003. Robert Will from the National CJD Surveillance Unit, Edinburgh, UK and colleagues outline the process which links individuals from the UK CJD register with data from the national blood-d...Cancer vaccine using low affinity epitopes proves successful in mice
Antitumor immunotherapy is a challenging endeavor since most human tumorassociated antigens are nonmutated self-proteins expressed on normal tissues. The ideal vaccination approach requires self-tolerance while eliciting an effective antitumor response. In an effort to design the ideal vaccine, David-Alexandre Gross and colleagues from Institut Gustave Roussy, France, examined epitopes (parts of...Successful, rapid protein crystallization possible with technique developed by UCSD researcher
An innovative method that allows increased success and speed of protein crystallization a crucial step in the laborious, often unsuccessful process to determine the 3-dimensional structure unique to each of the body's tens of thousands of folded proteins has been developed by researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine and verified in tests with the Joint Ce...fMRI depicts multisensory dysfunction in people with dyslexia
CHICAGO Sights and sounds cross paths abnormally in the minds of dyslexic readers, according to the first functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study of multisensory processing in people with the disorder. ... ..."Dyslexic readers appear to process auditory and visual sensory cues differently than do normal readers, and these differences may be the cause of their difficulty in reading,"...Successful prostate surgery: It's quality of surgery not quantity that matters most
Copenhagen, Denmark: A surgeon's personal skill in performing radical prostate surgery and not necessarily the number of operations performed is the key to a patient's future quality of life and the potential for cure. Surgeons must be honest with patients about their own success rates and prospective patients should not be afraid to ask tough questions, a leading urologist said today (Monday 22...Method to keep track of cancer comorbidities is successful; may help cancer research
St. Louis, Sept. 16, 2003 -- Many cancer patients have other diseases, and those ailments can influence their chance of survival and response to treatment. Although physicians take a person's overall health into account when determining prognosis and making treatment recommendations, that information is not recorded in tumor registries and used in medical research, according to Jay F. Piccirillo,...New Mayo Clinic approach to kidney transplants means more patients can be successfully transplanted
ROCHESTER, Minn. -- The Mayo Clinic kidney transplant team is using a new approach that filters out antibodies prior to surgery to overcome a major barrier to kidney transplantation in some patients. The report appears in this month's American Journal of Transplantation....... These patients have historically been ineligible for transplants because they have high levels of antibodies in their blo...Drug may eliminate transfusions in patients with blood disorder
(WASHINGTON, DC, August 12, 2003) The use of hydroxyurea may eliminate the need for future blood transfusions in children with beta-thalassemia major, an inherited blood disorder, according to a study published in the August 15th issue of Beta-thalassemia is an inherited blood disorder that occurs when a person is unable to produce adequate levels of hemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying component of...1st successful national CQI intervention in medicine reported
New OrleansT. Bruce Ferguson, Jr., MD, Professor of Surgery and Physiology at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in New Orleans, is the lead author of a paper being published in the July 2, 2003 issue of the JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION that reports the success of the first randomized trial of Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) accomplished on a national scale. The...Physicians offer new solution for blood transfusions
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 o...Remembering stressful events may lead to later heart disease
Doing math in your head in a high-pressure environment raises your blood pressure, as does walking a quick and mindless quarter-mile. But new research shows that only the former includes an emotional component, making it a stressor that keeps on giving.... ...Testing whether ruminations about a previous task would induce the same heart racing that the original task did, researchers found that whe...Popular long-acting contraceptive linked to vascular dysfunction
DALLAS, Sept. 3 Long-term use of a contraceptive injected once every three months impairs the arteries' ability to contract and expand, possibly increasing the risk for heart disease, according to research reported in today's rapid access issue of Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.... ... Researchers studied depot medroxyprogesterone acetate (DMPA), commonly known by the bra...Sense of control eases physical toll of stressful situation
Believing that you have control over a moderately stressful situation may make it less potentially damaging to your heart and circulatory system, a new study suggests.... ..."Investigators have proposed that having control of life events can reduce an individual's cardiovascular disease risk," explains lead author Suzanne E. Weinstein, Ph.D., of Pennsylvania State University, writing in the jour...Heart, heart-lung and lung transplant recipients can have successful pregnancies
Women who have received a heart, heart-lung or lung transplant are having successful pregnancies after transplantation, according to a study by researchers at Jefferson Medical College. ...While such pregnancies are considered "high risk," the results are encouraging, says Vincent Armenti, M.D., Ph.D., professor of surgery at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphi...Anemia drug reduces transfusions and chemotherapy-related fatigue
Patients treated with darbepoetin alfa (AranespTM) for chemotherapy-induced anemia may require fewer blood transfusions and feel less fatigued than patients receiving a placebo, concludes a new study in the August 21 issue of the .... ...Chemotherapy-related anemia often results from decreased production of the hormone erythropoietin, a hormone that stimulates the formation of red blood cells. A...Caring for children with emotional disorders grows increasingly stressful over time
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Researchers know that growing up in a... dysfunctional family can have a damaging effect on the... psychological health of children. But conversely, what effect do... children with emotional disorders have on their families? ...... Now researchers have found that caring for children with......Time, trust key to successful teen-doctor relationship
Doctors willing to spend time and effort to build trust with their young patients will be rewarded with a more productive and long-lasting relationship, according to a new study....... "Adolescents want a strong interpersonal relationship with their [health care] provider, a sense of emotional and physical safety, and a provider who offers counseling," says Kenneth R. Ginsburg, M.D., M.S.Ed., of...Quick blood test for heart failure proves successful in multinational trial
SAN DIEGO -- In a trial of nearly 1,600 patients in the United States and Europe, a 15-minute blood test enabled emergency-room doctors to correctly diagnose congestive heart failure in 9 out of 10 cases--without relying on costly, time-consuming tests such as echocardiograms and chest X-rays. ... ...The study, led by a Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) cardiologist, appears in the July 18 is...Successful implementation of pilot study for HIV antiretroviral therapy in Uganda
Authors of a study in this week's issue of THE LANCET report on the successful implementation of a UNAIDS/Uganda Health Ministry initiative to provide antiretroviral treatment to people with HIV/AIDS in Uganda. ...... Little is known about how to implement complex HIV-1 treatment programmes in resource-limited countries. Paul Weidle from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, USA, and co...