Health News

LEO Pharma announce the completion of the Phase III FIELD Study 1, evaluating one year treatment outcomes of actinic keratosis

Date: Sep-30-2013
LEO Pharma has announced the completion of the Phase III FIELD Study 1 - the largest[1-3] ever, one year evaluation of field treatment with ingenol mebutate gel for actinic keratosis (AK) after initial cryosurgery of individual AK lesions, compared to cryosurgery followed by a vehicle gel. The study involved more than 300 patients across 35 trial sites and is also the first to evaluate field treatment with ingenol mebutate gel subsequent to cryosurgery. LEO Pharma reported that the study met its efficacy and safety endpoints at 11 weeks and 12 months...

Two thirds of children who die have a chronic condition, reveals UK's largest study of child mortality

Date: Sep-30-2013
Efforts to prevent deaths in children must focus on improving the quality of care for children with chronic conditions and their families - that's according to a major new study into child mortality launched by the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH). The study is commissioned by the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership and it is part of the Clinical Outcome Review Programme: Child Health Reviews - UK (CHR-UK) project. It uses death registration data for UK children between January 1980 and December 2010...

Study reveals differences in post-operative complications across race, ethnicity, and sex in older patients

Date: Sep-30-2013
Older black and Hispanic patients have a greater risk than white patients of developing complications following surgery, a difference that can be explained by a patients' gender and pre-existing medical conditions. These findings, which are published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society (JAGS), indicate that efforts to carefully evaluate risk factors prior to surgery need more attention, particularly for older minority patients. Research has shown that minority groups tend to develop complications following surgery more often than whites...

esperityTM: the first multi-lingual online community for cancer patients worldwide

Date: Sep-30-2013
esperityTM (www.esperity.com) announces its going live as the first multi-lingual social media network dedicated exclusively to cancer patients. esperityTM aims to support cancer patients around the world by providing them with an online environment where they can connect with each other and share information, thereby reducing the feeling of isolation many experience while dealing with cancer. To this end, esperityTM enables patients to find their "medical twins" (people with the same type or subtype of cancer as themselves) and connect to them through a user-friendly social network site...

EYLEA® meets primary endpoint in two Phase III trials for the treatment of diabetic macular oedema

Date: Sep-30-2013
Bayer HealthCare has announced that EYLEA (aflibercept solution for injection, known in the scientific literature as VEGF Trap-Eye) has achieved the primary endpoint in two pivotal phase III trials for the treatment of diabetic macular oedema (DMO),1 the leading cause of sight loss in people suffering from diabetes.[2] These results from the phase III trials, VIVID-DME and VISTA-DME, were presented at the13th EURETINA Congress in Hamburg, Germany...

Researchers analyze nutritional value of foods marketed to children through online games

Date: Sep-30-2013
In a new study from Michigan State University, researchers classified the foods marketed to children through advergames (free online games) as those meeting or not meeting nutrition recommendations of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Food & Drug Administration (FDA), Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), and the Institute of Medicine (IOM). After identifying 143 websites that marketed foods to children aged 2 to 11 years, they found that that a large number of foods with low nutritional value are being marketed to children via advergames...

Parkinson's patients are more mistrustful and more willing to take risks than healthy people

Date: Sep-30-2013
Parkinson's patients seem to have more difficulties than healthy people to trust others. This is demonstrated by a current study, which was presented at the 21st World Congress of Neurology in Vienna. Presently, more than 8,000 experts are discussing the latest developments in this specialty field. "Particularly those brain areas that regulate trust behaviour are affected by the disease: the basal ganglia of the cerebrum, the frontal cortex and the limbic system...

Mouse studies reveal promising vitamin D-based treatment for MS

Date: Sep-30-2013
A diagnosis of multiple sclerosis (MS) is a hard lot. Patients typically get the diagnosis around age 30 after experiencing a series of neurological problems such as blurry vision, wobbly gait or a numb foot. From there, this neurodegenerative disease follows an unforgiving course. Many people with MS start using some kind of mobility aid - cane, walker, scooter or wheelchair - by 45 or 50, and those with the most severe cases are typically bed-bound by 60. The medications that are currently available don't do much to slow the relentless march of the disease...

Commercial urine test for prostate cancer available

Date: Sep-30-2013
A new urine test for prostate cancer that measures minute fragments of RNA is now commercially available to men nationwide through the University of Michigan MLabs. The new test - Mi-Prostate Score (MiPS) - improves the utility of the PSA blood test, increases physicians' ability to pick out high-risk prostate tumors from low-risk tumors in patients, and may help tens of thousands of men avoid unnecessary biopsies...

How viral infection disrupts neural development in offspring, increasing risk of autism

Date: Sep-30-2013
Activating a mother's immune system during her pregnancy disrupts the development of neural cells in the brain of her offspring and damages the cells' ability to transmit signals and communicate with one another, researchers with the UC Davis Center for Neuroscience and Department of Neurology have found. They said the finding suggests how maternal viral infection might increase the risk of having a child with autism spectrum disorder or schizophrenia...