Caffeine May Help Treat Parkinson's Disease

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International health panel says treat all HIV infections

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Drug Widely Used to Treat MS May Not Slow Progression

HealthDay – 3 mins 47 secs ago TUESDAY, July 17 (HealthDay News) -- Interferon beta, a widely used treatment for multiple sclerosis, does not stave off the time to disability, new research finds.

However, prior studies have found that interferon beta does reduce MS flare ups, so patients should continue taking it, researchers said.

The new study is published in the July 18 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

In multiple sclerosis, the body's immune system attacks myelin, or the substance that insulates nerve fibers of the central nervous system. The damage disrupts nerve signals traveling to and from the brain, which can lead to numbness, movement difficulties, blurred vision, fatigue and eventually, problems with thinking and memory.

About 85 percent of those with multiple sclerosis start with a relapsing-remitting course, in which attacks are followed by partial or total recovery, according to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. More than half go on to develop a more progressive form of the disease, in which symptoms worsen over time and there are fewer, shorter periods without symptoms. Over time, the disease can lead to loss of vision and paralysis.

The study included data on nearly 2,700 multiple sclerosis patients from British Columbia, Canada, with relapsing-remitting MS who were followed for four to 11 years. About one-third of the patients were treated with interferon beta after it became available in the early 1990s and one-third were not treated with interferon beta. The researchers also examined data on a third group of MS patients who were diagnosed and followed before interferon beta was a treatment option.

The investigators found no statistically significant difference in how long it took for patients prescribed interferon beta to become disabled, defined as needing a cane to walk 330 feet.

"We were not able to find a significant association between interferon beta exposure and progression to disability," said Helen Tremlett, an associate professor of neurology at the University of British Columbia.

Most patients with multiple sclerosis, though not all, develop severe disability 10 to 20 years after diagnosis, according to background information in an accompanying editorial. Several studies have suggested that interferon beta, by reducing relapses, could also prolong progression to disability, Tremlett said. Still other research has found that brain scans of people taking interferon beta show less damage.

Though the exact mechanism of how interferon beta benefits multiple sclerosis patients isn't fully understood, the drug acts on the immune system and reduces inflammation.

"What the field pretty strongly believed is if you reduced relapse rate, surely that should translate into beneficial impact on disease progression," Tremlett said. "Subsequent studies seem to indicate there is disassociation between relapses and long-term irreversible disease progression."

Interferon beta is typically given by injection when people are first diagnosed.

That shouldn't change as a result of these findings, said Timothy Coetzee, chief research officer for the National MS Society. The new study doesn't negate prior studies that have found that the drugs reduce the frequency of relapses.

"If patients are taking the existing disease-modifying therapies

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Regional Systems to Treat Severe Heart Attack Increasing

HealthDay – 32 mins ago WEDNESDAY, May 23 (HealthDay News) -- The number of regional care systems able to quickly identify, transfer if necessary, and treat patients experiencing the most severe form of heart attack is increasing, new research finds.

ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction, or STEMI, is a deadly form of heart attack that affects nearly 300,000 people in the United States per year. It occurs when a blood clot completely blocks an artery to the heart. Quickly restoring blood flow is needed in order to prevent death.

In a regional STEMI-care system, emergency medical services have the equipment on their ambulances to diagnose the heart attack on the way to the hospital, and hospitals cooperate to make sure that patients are delivered to a facility that can quickly activate a team able to treat the heart attack. That treatment is often the artery-opening procedure called percutaneous coronary intervention, commonly known as angioplasty.

Between April 2008 and January 2010, the American Heart Association conducted a survey of 381 regional STEMI-care systems that included nearly 900 hospitals in 47 states. Each system included at least one hospital that performs angioplasty, and one emergency medical service provider.

The survey found that 67 percent of the systems were in urban areas and most followed standard procedures and policies, such as:

Admitting STEMI patients even when a hospital bed was not readily available (97 percent).Requiring a single phone call to activate the catheterization lab for angioplasty (92 percent).Permitting emergency department doctors to activate the catheterization lab without consulting a cardiologist (87 percent) and allowing the lab to be activated without a cardiology consultation before the patient arrives at the hospital (78 percent).Being part of a data collection registry (84 percent).

Competition among hospitals and cardiology groups was the most common barrier to implementing STEMI care systems. The researchers also found that about one-quarter of the systems have difficulties with emergency medical services' transport and finances.

The study appears in the journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.

"It's essential to get competing hospitals and separate

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Iraq veteran uses rap to treat his PTSD

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Botox may soon be used in UK to treat migraine

"Lyn Talent receives a free Botox injection at an event in Arlington, Virginia, in 2009. Botox could soon become an NHS approved remedy for chronic migraine, following a recommendation by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. (AFP Photo/Win Mcnamee)" title

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Votrient Approved to Treat Cancer That Begins in Soft Tissue

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Levaquin Approved to Treat or Prevent Plague

HealthDay – 16 hrs ago FRIDAY, April 27 (HealthDay News) -- Approval of the antibiotic Levaquin (levofloxacin) has been expanded by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to include plague, a rare but deadly bacterial infection.

The disease is extremely rare in the United States, and only about 1,000 to 2,000 cases occur each year across the globe, the agency said in a news release. The three most common forms of plague include bubonic (affecting the lymph nodes), pneumonic (lungs) and septicemic (blood stream).

Animals are most frequently infected, although plague can be spread to people by fleas, contact with infected animals or other people, or by exposure in the laboratory. The bacterium that causes plague, Yersinia pestis, is considered a potential bioterrorism agent, the FDA said.

Levaquin was tested under the agency's Animal Efficacy Rule, which allows findings from carefully controlled tests in animals to be applied to people. It would not be ethical or feasible to conduct clinical testing of the drug for this purpose in people, the FDA said.

Known side effects of Levaquin include nausea, headache, diarrhea, insomnia, constipation and dizziness. More serious but rare adverse reactions could include tendinitis and tendon rupture, allergic reactions, liver damage, blood and nervous system problems, and abnormal heart rhythm, the agency said.

Levaquin is produced by Raritan, N.J.-based Janssen Pharmaceuticals, a unit of Johnson & Johnson.

More information

Medline Plus has more about Levaquin.

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New Zealand firm to trial pig cells to treat Parkinson's

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Stem-Cell Trial Failed to Treat Heart Failure

HealthDay – 15 hrs ago SATURDAY, March 24 (HealthDay News) -- An innovative approach using patients' own bone marrow cells to treat chronic heart failure came up short in terms of effectiveness, researchers report.

Use of stem cell therapy to repair the slow, steady damage done to heart muscle and improve heart function is safe, but has not been shown to improve most measures of heart function, the study authors said.

"For the measures we paid most attention to, we saw no effect, there is no question about that," said researcher Dr. Lemuel Moye, a professor of biostatistics at the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston.

"Ultimately, this is going to pay off handsomely for individuals and for public health in general, but it's going to take years of work," Moye said. "We are the vanguard looking for new promising lines of research."

While the hoped-for results didn't materialize, there appeared to be a small improvement in some patients, he said. "When we looked at another commonly used measure of heart function called ejection fraction, or the strength of the heart's pumping, that's where all the action was," Moye noted.

It's hard to know which measures of heart function to look at, Moye explained. "We have had some difficulty with that," he said.

Future research will look at other measures of heart function, pay more attention to the characteristics of the cells that are injected and determine which cells are best, he added.

Cardiac cells and other types of specially prepared cells are available now that were not accessible when this study started in 2009, Moye pointed out.

The results of the trial, which was sponsored by the U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, were to be presented Saturday at the American College of Cardiology's annual meeting in Chicago. The report was also published online March 24 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

For the study, Moye and colleagues worked with 92 patients, average age 63 and mostly male, who had heart failure with and without chest pain. They were randomly assigned to receive either an injection of 100 million bone marrow cells from their own bone marrow, or an inactive placebo. Patients in both groups also received aggressive medical therapy.

During the trial, the researchers looked for improvements in blood volume in the heart, oxygen use by the heart and blood flow through the heart.

After six months, the researchers said they saw no difference between the groups in these measures. Nor was any difference seen in the extent of heart damage, heart movement during contractions or overall condition.

Moye's team did find a slight improvement in the heart's ability to pump blood among patients 62 and younger. The improvement was small, only 3.1 percent, but patients in the placebo group declined 1.6 percent in this measure, they said.

It's possible that cells of younger people are more potent, and that's borne out by improvement in heart function seen in younger patients who did not get bone marrow cells, Moye said.

"We have demonstrated that the characteristics of the cells are correlated with heart function, so that the better the cells, the better the response -- so even in patients who did not get stem cells, those younger patients did better," he said.

Commenting on the study, Dr. Gregg Fonarow, director of the Ahmanson-University of California, Los Angeles, Cardiomyopathy Center, said there has been "tremendous interest in cell-based therapies" to treat acute and chronic heart disease and chronic heart failure.

Most studies trying delivery of different types of cells have been small and not adequately powered to demonstrate improvement in cardiac function or clinical outcomes, and results have been mixed, Fonarow said.

"While this study failed to meet any of its primary or secondary endpoints, the insights provided will be helpful in designing future trials," Fonarow added. "However, whether cell-based therapies will be of therapeutic value to patients with heart disease and heart failure remains to be seen."

More information

For more information on heart disease, visit the American Heart Association.

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