Early intervention with ICDs: Saving lives and money
...netic cardiac disorders can be balanced by society gains when the lifespan of an individual is considered. ...is cost effective or even associated with economic gains due to the societal contributions of young and otherwise healthy patients in whom defibrillator ther...Warning to government from biotech on PBS changes
...dled with a system to deliver short-term budgetary gains but long-term negatives for patients," MrSchneemann said. "We do not want to go down a path where doctors can only prescribe one potentially inappropriate medicine for a patient. Neither do New Zealanders after a decade of failure, its Government is...Research clarifies how brain replenishes memory-making molecules
...eet at a synapse. But how and from where the brain gains fresh supplies of these crucial receptors has remained unclear. Known as AMPA receptors, they are essential for the rapid connections made between nerves during learning. The scientists sought to answer this question by studying the basal trafficking...Adults with lazy eye can improve
...zy eye, can improve substantially and retain their gains under a new treatment developed by researchers at USC and three Chinese universities. A lazy eye in children appears normal but does not see properly, even with corrective lenses. If untreated, the eye will not develop fully, resulting in permanent l...Children with heart defects found to benefit from exercise
...m at Children's Hospital Boston showed significant gains in heart function, researchers report in the December Pediatrics. Congenital heart defects affect about 8 in 1000 newborns. Due to advances in care, more and more children with these defects are surviving. Many have diminished exercise capacity after...Large-scale study proves volunteer operated defibrillators are life-savers
...undred in the study. When you look at the relative gains though, as opposed to the absolute values, there was more benefit for the rural areas. "However, there was a more than three times higher incidence of defibrillator teams being dispatched to CAs in urban areas (0.7 per 1,000 per year) than in the cou...Can healthcare systems afford Herceptin for early breast cancer?
...setting, the potential of Herceptin and the health gains are greater in the adjuvant setting. Response usually improves when drugs are used earlier in the disease and when looking at the higher costs involved, we should not forget that adjuvant treatment is curative in the first place. If more people are c...Physical activity improves life expectancy and cardiovascular health
...n at moderate levels of physical activity, and the gains in cardiovascular disease-free life expectancy at higher levels are more than twice as large." The authors point out that their study results underline current recommendations for physical activity, which call for even moderate levels of activity to ...Exercise adds years to life and improves quality, researchers say
...outcomes -- in effect, significant quality-of-life gains -- among participants who remained physically active long after they began an initial randomized, six-month exercise trial consisting of walking and stretching/toning exercises. Results were gleaned from a battery of surveys and assessments administe...Medication shows promise in the treatment of hyperactivity associated with autism-related disorders
...for an additional eight-week period to ensure that gains were stable. Response to treatment was assessed by parents and teachers using standardized ratings of behavior. Seventy-two children, aged five to 14 years participated in the study. Six participants (eight percent) had intolerable negative side eff...Interferon with ribavirin is safe and effective for children with chronic Hepatitis C
...y typically experienced height and weight catch-up gains after it ended. Interestingly, none of the African-American children in the study had a sustained virologic response to combination therapy. "The number of African-American children studied was too small to draw firm conclusions," say the authors. Bu...Regular physical activity may strenghten knee cartilage
... In the exercise group, many subjects reported gains in physical activity and functional performance tests compared with subjects in the control group. Improvements in tests of aerobic capacity and stamina affirmed the self-reported changes. What's more, MRI measures of the GAG content showed a stron...ICSU pursues new initiative that challenges science to do more to prevent natural disasters
... frequently find it easier to focus on short-terms gains than guard against the potential long-term losses. The challenge to ICSU, he said, is to organize a natural hazards initiative that moves beyond our traditional focus on the physical sciences and addresses how scientific results interact with the pol...UQ study gives young Australians with disabilities a healthy start
...ed." The UQ project is designed to achieve health gains through intervention, which at its core empowers adolescents with ID, and their families, as they move towards the increased autonomy of adulthood. "It is focused at a time when they are moving away from the relative protection of special education ...US kidney failure rates stabilize, ending a 20-year climb
...tent disparities are sobering." Credit for recent gains likely goes to clinical strategies proven in the 1990s to significantly delay or prevent kidney failure: angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (ACE-inhibitors) and angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs), which lower protein in the urine and are tho...Model predicts risk of breast cancer for young women treated for Hodgkin lymphoma
...%. "However, it should always be noted that the gains in long-term survival provided by successful radiotherapy and chemotherapy outweigh the associated risks of breast cancer and other late sequelae. Moreover, current modifications in treatment will likely result in lower risks of breast cancer in the ...Use of kidney paired donation for incompatible donors could expand donor pool
...o increase at an alarming pace and any significant gains in closing the gap between organ supply and demand are likely to come from the increased use of live donors, according to background information in the article. The two most significant barriers to greater use of live donors are blood type incompatib......uld find a compatible match. "The only significant gains in finding available kidneys for these patients are likely to come from KPD," Montgomery said. Live-donor transplants have distinct advantages over deceased-donor transplants, according to Montgomery. Aside from circumventing the long waiting period ...Scrapping health care fees in Africa could prevent over 200,000 child deaths a year
..., say the authors. However, they stress that these gains will only be sustainable if policy makers establish viable alternative financing mechanisms, which also account for increased demand for services. Replacing user fees with more equitable financing methods should be seen as an effective first step tow...Hopkins experts highlight strategies to raise levels of so-called good HDL cholesterol
...uctions in risk from heart disease are due to drug gains in HDL levels or other direct effects on the arteries. "That has been responsible for delaying revisions to national guidelines on HDL cholesterol," Blumenthal says. Using a recent patient case study from Hopkins involving a 41-year-old man with l...