Health News

Smartphone photography helps eye disease diagnosis

Date: Sep-25-2013
A US team has devised a smartphone system for capturing high quality photos of retinas to help diagnose eye diseases. The cheap and easy-to-use system could bring the advantages of affordable telemedicine to ophthalmology clinics. The researchers, from Massachusetts Eye and Ear, a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, describe the new system and how they tested it in a recent online issue of Journal of Ophthalmology. The study evaluated the smartphone system's ability to capture photographs of the "fundus," or retina, in human and rabbit eyes...

Patient-reported outcomes provide valuable insight regarding quality of life for patients with non-small cell lung cancer

Date: Sep-25-2013
An analysis of quality of life (QOL) data of stage III lung cancer patients who received higher doses of radiation therapy (with chemotherapy) shows a significantly lower quality of life at 3 months after treatment compared to patients who received a standard dose of radiation (with chemotherapy), according to research presented at the American Society for Radiation Oncology's (ASTRO's) 55th Annual Meeting...

New treatments aim to combat renal cell cancer and melanoma

Date: Sep-25-2013
Renal cell cancer vaccines Immatics Biotechnologies' cancer vaccine IMA901 is currently in phase III trials for the first-line treatment of metastatic renal cell cancer. The drug, which was shown to have a positive safety profile in its single-arm Phase II trial, is expected to gain approval in the US and five major EU markets* by 2015. It's estimated that IMA901 will be worth $88m by 2022, but is likely to face competition from Argos therapeutics/Kyowa HakkoKirin's AGS-003 which is currently at the same stage of development...

Inovio Pharmaceuticals targets transformation of monoclonal antibody therapies

Date: Sep-25-2013
Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NYSE MKT: INO) has announced the publication of a peer-reviewed paper demonstrating the success of its new DNA plasmid technology in generating therapeutic monoclonal antibodies. In this study in mice, a prototype monoclonal antibody construct encoding for an established anti-HIV monoclonal antibody (VRC01) was created as a DNA plasmid using Inovio's patented DNA optimization technologACy, including codon/RNA optimization and leader sequence utilization, and delivered with its CELLECTRA® adaptive electroporation device...

You can't hide your feelings! Women six times 'more disgusted by dental treatment' than men

Date: Sep-25-2013
After looking at pictures of dental treatment scenes, researchers[1] discovered that female patients scared of the dentist were six times more likely to be disgusted with what they saw, compared with non-dental phobic women. In a battle of the sexes, dental phobic women struggled to hide their emotions. Although both men and woman faired equally when asked about their feelings towards the dentist, women afraid of the dentist were more repulsed than their men counterparts...

Expert questions benefit of blocked artery treatment after George W Bush has procedure

Date: Sep-25-2013
The recent decision by former US president George W Bush to have a stent implanted, despite having no symptoms, has led to concerns about the benefits and potential harms of this procedure. One leading US cardiologist has called the practice of routine testing in patients without symptoms leading to procedures that are not indicated as "American medicine at its worst." On bmj...

New pig model developed to study immune responses to leading cause of peptic ulcers

Date: Sep-25-2013
Researchers at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute have developed a new large animal model to study how the immune system interacts with the stomach bacterium Helicobacter pylori, the leading cause of peptic ulcer disease. The discovery in the October edition of the journal Infection and Immunity may inform changes in the ways doctors treat patients. An estimated 4 million Americans have sores in the stomach lining known as peptic ulcers, according to the American Gastroenterological Association...

Doctors fear decline in NHS patient care

Date: Sep-25-2013
Doctors and patients are concerned about the current level of patient care offered by the NHS, according to a British Health Report commissioned by Your Legal Friend, a leading law firm, to ask doctors and patients their views on patient care, reform and experience of the British healthcare system.  The report found that nearly half of doctors (44%) believe that patient care within the NHS will decline in the next five years and staggeringly over a quarter (28%) are very concerned and cannot see a future for the NHS...

Phase 3 results demonstrate safety and efficacy profile of Invokana (canagliflozin) as add-on therapy for type 2 diabetes in adults

Date: Sep-25-2013
Janssen Research & Development, LLC (Janssen) have announced results from a new 52-week analysis of Phase 3 results showing INVOKANA® (canagliflozin) provided substantial improvements in glycemic control in patients with type 2 diabetes who are inadequately controlled on metformin and a sulfonylurea, two of the most commonly used antihyperglycemic therapies. These results are among a total of 12 abstracts for canagliflozin being presented at the 49th European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) Annual Meeting in Barcelona, Spain...

First CDC-recognized diabetes prevention program established in the Bronx by Health People

Date: Sep-25-2013
Health People (HP) has announced the launch of its new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)-recognized Diabetes Prevention Program for Bronx residents to help the borough combat its high diabetes-related death rate - the highest in the city. Starting this fall, Health People's Diabetes Prevention Program will hold its first series of year-long, 22-session courses led by 10 HP mentors - local residents who have been trained as CDC-approved "lifestyle coaches...