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| Finally, A Reason To Start Drinking Alcohol |
People who do not drink alcohol may finally have a reason to start -- a study published on Friday shows non-drinkers who begin taking the occasional tipple live longer and are less likely to develop heart disease.
People who started drinking in middle age were 38 percent less likely to have a heart attack or other serious heart event than abstainers -- even if they were overweight, had diabetes, high blood pressure or other heart risks, Dr. Dana King of the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston and colleagues found.
Many studies have shown that light to moderate drinkers are healthier than teetotalers, but every time, the researchers have cautioned that there is no reason for the abstinent to start drinking.
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Aspirin Could Reduce Breast Cancer And Help Existing Sufferers, Review of Studies Suggests
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Anti-inflammatory drugs like aspirin may reduce breast cancer by up to 20 per cent, according to an extensive review carried out by experts at London's Guy's Hospital. But they stress that further research is needed to determine the best type, dose and duration and whether the benefits of regularly using non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) outweigh the side effects, especially for high-risk groups.
"Our review of research published over the last 27 years suggests that, in addition to possible prevention, there may also be a role for NSAIDs in the treatment of women with established breast cancer" says Professor Ian Fentiman from the Hedley Atkins Breast Unit at the hospital, part of Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust.
"NSAID use could be combined with hormone therapy or used to relieve symptoms in the commonest cause of cancer-related deaths in women."
Professor Fentiman and Mr Avi Agrawal reviewed 21 studies covering more than 37,000 women published between 1980 and 2007.
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Newly Developed Anti-Malarial Medicine Treats Toxoplasmosis
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A new drug that will soon enter clinical trials for treatment of malaria also appears to be 10 times more effective than the key medicine in the current gold-standard treatment for toxoplasmosis, a disease caused by a related parasite that infects nearly one-third of all humans-more than two billion people worldwide.
In the March issue of PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, a research team based at the University of Chicago Medical Center shows that the drug, known as JPC-2056, is extremely effective against Toxoplasma gondii, the parasite that causes toxoplasmosis, without toxicity.
"JPC-2056 has the potential to replace the standard treatment of pyrimethamine and sulfadiazine," said infectious disease specialist Rima McLeod, professor of ophthalmology at the University of Chicago and senior author of the study. "The drug, taken by mouth, is easily absorbed, bioavailable, and relatively nontoxic. In tissue culture and in mice, it was rapidly effective, markedly reducing numbers of parasites within just a few days."
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Stimulant Treatment for ADHD Has No Effect On Risk of Future Substance Abuse
MGH Study Looks at Young Adults 10 Years After Diagnosis
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A new study finds that the use of stimulant drugs to treat children with ADHD has no effect on their future risk of substance abuse. The report, which will appear in the American Journal of Psychiatry and has been issued online, assessed more than 100 young men 10 years after they had been diagnosed with ADHD and is the most methologically rigorous analysis of any potential relationship between stimulant treatment and drug abuse.
"Because stimulants are controlled drugs, there has been a concern that using them to treat children would promote future drug-seeking behavior," says Joseph Biederman, MD, director of Pediatric Psychopharmacology and Adult ADHD at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), the study's lead author. "But our study found no evidence that prior treatment with stimulants was associated with either increased or decreased risk for subsequent drug or alcohol abuse."
Earlier studies examining whether stimulant treatment could increase substance abuse risk have had conflicting results, but they had several limitations, the authors note. Some only looked at adolescents, although young adults are at the highest risk of substance abuse. Others did not control for conditions such as conduct disorder that are know to be associated with substance abuse or may have looked at the impact on use of only a particular substance. The current study, designed to address those shortcomings, analyzed patterns of substance use in a group of young men 10 years after their original diagnosis with ADHD.
Of the 112 study participants, who ranged in age from 16 to 27 at the time of their reassessment, 73 percent had been treated with stimulants at some time, and 22 percent were currently receiving stimulant treatment. Study participants were interviewed using standard tools for assessment of psychiatric disorders and additional questions about their use of alcohol, tobacco products and a wide variety of psychoactive drugs. Study results, controlled for the presence of conduct diagnosis in the original diagnosis, showed no relationship between whether a participant ever received stimulant treatment and the risk of future tobacco use or alcohol or other substance abuse. The age at which stimulant treatment began and how long it continued also had no effect on substance use.
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| OHSU Researchers to Study Whether Alcoholism Drug is Effective Tinnitus Treatment |
Participants are coming from as far away as the East Coast
Oregon Health & Science University researchers have received more than $370,000 in grants to study whether a drug typically used to prevent alcoholism relapses can also be used to treat tinnitus.
Approximately 14 percent to 20 percent of the U.S. population suffers with the occasional, yet disturbing "ringing in the ears" associated with the condition. Four percent of the population seeks medical care because the symptoms are severe enough to disrupt their lives. Severe tinnitus sufferers often complain of trouble sleeping, loss of focus, anxiety and depression
"It is impossible for those without tinnitus to comprehend how devastating this condition can be," said Billy Martin, Ph.D., professor of otolaryngology/head and neck surgery, and director of the OHSU Tinnitus Clinic.
"Just imagine waking up in the middle of the night to the sound of a Boeing 747 at the side of your head getting ready for take-off, or waking to the sound of finger nails on a chalkboard. Now imagine not knowing where the sound is from, why it started and what it means."
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| In Novel Strategy Against AIDS, Einstein Researchers Genetically Engineer Immune Cells Into Potent Weapons for Battling HIV Infection |
By outfitting immune-system killer cells with a new pair of genes, scientists at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University transformed them into potent weapons that destroy cells infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Their novel strategy of genetically engineering immune cells to redirect their infection-fighting ability toward killing HIV-infected cells could lead to an entirely new approach for combating AIDS and other viral diseases. The findings appear in the March issue of the Journal of Virology.
After someone is infected with HIV, a subgroup of their immune cells known as CD8 cytotoxic T lymphocytes, or CTLs, recognize cells infected with HIV and kill them before they become HIV-producing factories. This CTL activity initially keeps the infection in check. But then-largely because these CTLs may not bind tightly enough to the infected cells or because HIV mutates so rapidly-the virus typically evades and ultimately overpowers the immune system, leading to an increase in viral load that, in the absence of drug therapy, results in AIDS. However, a very small percentage of HIV-infected people known as elite controllers manage to suppress HIV infection for many years.
"Certain of the CTLs of elite controllers may be genetically equipped to bind tightly to HIV-infected cells and destroy them and thereby suppress the infection indefinitely," says Dr. Harris Goldstein, senior author of the study and Director of the Einstein/Montefiore Center for AIDS Research. "Our idea," says Dr. Goldstein, "was first to identify the elite controllers' "super" CTLs and to isolate the genes that enable these cells to bind tightly to HIV-infected cells and kill them efficiently; then we would transfer these genes into CTLs that do not recognize HIV-infected cells and convert them into potent killers of those cells."
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| Type 2 Diabetes May Be Caused by Intestinal Dysfunction |
Diabetes May Be Disorder of Upper Intestine, Therefore Amenable to Surgical Treatment, According to a New Article by NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Surgeon-Scientist
NEW YORK (March 5, 2008) - Growing evidence shows that surgery may effectively cure Type 2 diabetes - an approach that not only may change the way the disease is treated, but that introduces a new way of thinking about diabetes.
A new article - published in a special supplement to the February issue of Diabetes Care by a leading expert in the emerging field of diabetes surgery - points to the small bowel as the possible site of critical mechanisms for the development of diabetes.
The study's author, Dr. Francesco Rubino of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, presents scientific evidence on the mechanisms of diabetes control after surgery. Clinical studies have shown that procedures that simply restrict the stomach's size (i.e., gastric banding) improve diabetes only by inducing massive weight loss. By studying diabetes in animals, Dr. Rubino was the first to provide scientific evidence that gastrointestinal bypass operations involving rerouting the gastrointestinal tract (i.e., gastric bypass) can cause diabetes remission independently of any weight loss, and even in subjects that are not obese.
"By answering the question of how diabetes surgery works, we may be answering the question of how diabetes itself works," says Dr. Rubino, who is a professor in the Department of Surgery at Weill Cornell Medical College and chief of gastrointestinal metabolic surgery at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell.
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Believe it or not
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Group seeks volunteers to get malaria
The Seattle Biomedical Research Institute will pay volunteers as much as $4,000 to be bitten by mosquitoes infected with malaria. Scientists say no lives are in danger because the volunteers can be cured. The institute is testing which vaccines work fastest.
The head of the program, Dr. Patrick Duffy, says volunteers will spend several nights under medical supervision in a hotel.
All of the human trials will be reviewed for safety by the Food and Drug Administration.
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News From MedWatch |
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