SHEA Physical Therapy Introduces the NG360 Functional Performance System

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2012SHEA Physical Therapy, an innovative leader in the physical therapy industry, is proud to announce the release of the NG360

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Watch: Spinal Cord Therapy Approved by FDA

NYPD Officer Talks Man Out of Bridge...More Popular VideoUK's All-Male Synchronized Swim Team Left Out...U.S. Bridges, Roads Being Built by Chinese...Mitt Romney: Fallout Continues in PolandOlympic Games 2012: French Beat Michael...James Holmes Charged With 24 Counts of MurderIn The NewsU.S.PoliticsEntertainmentWeird and WackySpinal Cord Therapy Approved by FDAResearch using Schwann cells can now be used to treats patients with paralysis.01:42

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European regulator: Gene therapy treatment OK

The European Medicines Agency is recommending the first-ever approval of a gene therapy treatment in the EU, in a significant move for a type of treatment that has so far failed to deliver on its promise to cure diseases.

In a statement on Friday, the EMA said Glybera, made by Dutch company uniQure, should be approved across Europe for the treatment of an extremely rare disorder that leaves people unable to digest fat. The treatment consists of a gene that makes a protein to break down fat.

Gene therapy is an experimental technique that tries to cure diseases by replacing genes that don't work. It has never been approved in the U.S. and most trials over the past two decades have failed. China was the first country to approve a gene therapy treatment in 2003 for cancer.

Scientists have struggled to find ways to deliver the genes safely, often by using a harmless virus. There are also concerns that inserting a gene at the wrong spot could cause cancer or that the body's immune system might attack the new gene and the virus used to deliver it.

The EMA previously rejected Glybera three times but it was reconsidered at the request of the European Commission. The agency recommended approval under tough restrictions and will require the company to set up a registry to closely track patients. Previous trials of the treatment only tested it in 27 patients.

"It is only meant for patients with the greatest need," said Monika Benstetter, an EMA spokeswoman, explaining the gene therapy is intended for people with no other treatment options. She said only a handful of gene therapy treatments had been considered before

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Personalized Blood Pressure Therapy May Help Diabetics

HealthDay – 4 hrs ago WEDNESDAY, May 30 (HealthDay News) -- Aggressive efforts to control blood pressure in people with diabetes may be leading to overtreatment with blood pressure drugs in some patients, a new study suggests.

Researchers examined data from nearly 1 million diabetes patients treated at Veterans Affairs health facilities across the United States and found that as many as 82 percent were receiving treatment to keep their blood pressure under control.

However, more than 8 percent of patients were possibly being overtreated to control their blood pressure, and 6 percent were not being treated as aggressively as they could be, the study found.

The findings, published online May 28 in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine, suggest that the current one-size-fits-all method of blood pressure control needs to be reconsidered, the researchers said.

This personalized approach should be possible with the help of electronic health records, which can combine blood pressure, prescription and other health data on patients' individual risks such as heart disease or balance problems, the study authors explained in a University of Michigan Health System news release.

"Appropriately treating blood pressure in people with diabetes is extremely important, and good blood pressure control should still be the goal to reduce risk of heart attack, stroke and other conditions," first author Dr. Eve Kerr, director of the Center for Clinical Management Research at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System and a professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School, said in the news release.

"But just treating to a blood pressure target in all patients may result in overtreating and harming some patients because their blood pressures actually fall too low," she added. "We need to find better ways to measure and incentivize appropriate blood pressure management to make sure that patients who need aggressive treatment are getting it, and to decrease the rate of inappropriate overtreatment."

More information

The American Diabetes Association has more about high blood pressure and diabetes.

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California's Senate passes bill to ban gay therapy

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Pediatricians raise caution on sensory-based therapy

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Combo Therapy May Help Ease 'Ringing in the Ears'

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Back Pain Therapy Often Yields Early Benefits: Study

HealthDay – 1 hr 38 mins ago MONDAY, May 14 (HealthDay News) -- People who receive treatment for chronic and acute low-back pain show significant improvement in the first six weeks, but may still have some pain and disability after one year, according to a new study.

Researchers analyzed data from 33 studies that included more than 11,000 patients to learn more about how treatment affects low-back pain. Their findings appear in the May 14 online edition of CMAJ, the journal of the Canadian Medical Association.

"Our review confirms the broad finding of previous reviews that the typical course of acute low-back pain is initially favorable: there is a marked reduction in mean pain and disability in the first six weeks," Dr. Christopher Maher, director of the musculoskeletal division at the George Institute for Global Health of the University of Sydney in Australia, said in a journal news release.

"Beyond six weeks, improvement slows and thereafter only small reductions in mean pain and disability are apparent up to one year," he added.

One year after beginning treatment, the typical improvement in pain intensity was about 90 percent for patients who had acute low-back pain and about 50 percent for those who had chronic low-back pain, the investigators found.

"There is both good and bad news in our review. It is great that people improve with care, but arguably there is room to do better, particularly for people with persistent low-back pain," Maher said.

"Generally, when people see results like this they want to blame the clinician, but I think that is short-sighted," he added. "One of the principal reasons we have not made more progress in the back pain field is that research agencies do not take back pain research seriously. Around the world, back pain research is hugely underfunded relative to the burden of the disease. It's time for that to change."

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke has more about back pain.

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Study: Gene Therapy for HIV Safe, But Effectiveness Still Unclear

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Study: Gene Therapy for HIV Safe, But Effectiveness Still Unclear

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Pricier therapy no better for early prostate cancer

Reuters – 1 hr 49 mins ago NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A new study suggests that expensive, high-tech proton beam radiation doesn't do any more for men with prostate cancer than the most commonly-used option.

Proton beam radiation, heavily promoted by facilities that perform the treatment, also came with a higher risk of certain side effects compared to intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT), researchers found.

"This paper is the strongest evidence yet that proton beam (therapy) is not only not better, but probably not as good as IMRT," said Dr. Matthew Cooperberg, a urologist from the University of California, San Francisco, who didn't participate in the new research.

The findings suggest that men have multiple radiation options when it comes to treating early, localized prostate cancer.

Though not covered in the new study, their options also include surgery -- or getting no treatment at all and waiting to see how the disease progresses, researchers said.

Dr. Ronald Chen of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his colleagues used data from a nationwide cancer registry covering treatment records for men insured by Medicare who were diagnosed with prostate cancer starting in 2000.

At that time, less than one percent of prostate cancers that hadn't spread beyond the gland were treated with IMRT, a minimally-invasive treatment meant to limit damage to the surrounding organs. The rest were treated conformal radiation, the previous standard of care.

By 2008, almost 96 percent of men got the high-dose, targeted radiation.

Intensity-modulated radiation was tied to an approximately 10 to 20 percent lower risk of stomach problems and hip fractures compared to conformal radiation therapy, which exposes more organs around the prostate to radiation. But it also came with a 12 percent higher risk of erectile dysfunction.

Over the course of each year after radiation, 2.5 percent of men who'd received IMRT needed more cancer treatment -- suggesting their disease came back -- compared to 3.1 percent of men in the traditional-radiation group.

That was based on records of close to 13,000 men age 66 and older.

In a smaller analysis, Medicare patients who got proton beam therapy, the most high-tech type of radiation offered, didn't fare much better or worse than those who had IMRT -- except that proton-treated men had more stomach-related side effects.

HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS IN COSTS

The use of both of those technologies has driven up the cost of prostate cancer treatment by hundreds of millions of dollars, the researchers wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

But with conformal radiation fading from popularity, patients' radiation choice now tends to come down to IMRT versus proton therapy -- which is available at far fewer cancer centers because of the technology required.

Researchers said that proton beam facilities can cost $100 million or more to build. A round of proton beam radiation treatment costs insurers up to $100,000 per patient, while IMRT is billed at about $50,000.

"Here we have more expensive therapy that is not proven to give a better outcome," said Dr. Eric Klein, a prostate cancer researcher at the Cleveland Clinic, who didn't take part in the new study.

Researchers agreed that policymakers, including those that decide how much Medicare will pay for various treatments, should reevaluate the evidence for cancer outcomes -- including whether proton beam therapy is worth its hefty price tag.

"There's a trend in this country of adopting newer, costly, promising treatments, without very much evidence to prove they're better," Chen told Reuters Health.

"What our data provides the patients is evidence that IMRT is a good prostate cancer treatment," he said. Until more rigorous studies are available, "That's the type of radiation that they should seek."

WATCHFUL WAITING?

Another perfectly good option for men with early prostate cancer is not to get treatment at all, but to wait and see whether the cancer grows or doesn't cause any harm, researchers said.

"Many men with early disease, especially men who are older, likely don't need treatment," said Dr. W. Robert Lee, a radiation oncologist at the Duke University School of Medicine in Durham who wasn't involved in the new study.

"Active surveillance really plays a very important role," he told Reuters Health.

Cooperberg told Reuters Health that if men find their doctor pushing one treatment option, especially if it's a high-tech radiation option, they should seek outside opinions and think about their priorities -- in terms of what side effects they can put up with and the chance of needing more serious treatment.

"Prostate cancer is very much a disease of options," Lee said.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/hwxtTL Journal of the American Medical Association, online April 17, 2012.

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Early, Temporary HIV Treatment Can Postpone Long-Term Therapy

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Early, Temporary HIV Treatment Can Postpone Long-Term Therapy

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Chavez starts radiation therapy, may meet Pope

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