Health News

Doctors pioneer use of 'bug' device to protect critically ill patients

Date: Jul-29-2013
Doctors in Southampton are the first in the world to fit critically ill patients with a revolutionary bug-like device to detect dangerous blood sugar levels.  The hi-tech gadget, which consists of two probes with four sensors that are hooked into the skin and covered with a dressing, enables doctors to offer patients round-the-clock protection against life-threatening infections or seizures for the duration of their time in intensive care...

Kids sleep patterns affected by electronic media time and media presence in the bedroom

Date: Jul-29-2013
Children's sleep disruption is worse with increased time spent watching TV or playing on the computer, finds research in Biomed Central's open access journal BMC Public Health. The greater the e-media use was at the start of the study, the shorter the sleep duration and the later the bedtime was eighteen months later. The academics suggest that where children are struggling to sleep, or are tired, their media habits should be taken into consideration. The amount of sleep children get has a direct bearing on their performance in school and their mental and physical health...

Self-evaluation of menopausal symptoms underestimates true burden, Pitt study finds

Date: Jul-29-2013
Physicians should consider a more in-depth evaluation of their menopausal patients' symptoms, as current approaches might not accurately reflect the number of hot flashes and night sweats each woman experiences, a new University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine study finds. Patients tend to underestimate how often they have hot flashes and night sweats, clinically known as vasomotor symptoms (VMS), particularly if they suffer from anxiety, and overestimate nighttime VMS if they experience sleep disturbances, according to the study published today in the journal Menopause...

New guide on suicide prevention for mental health workers

Date: Jul-29-2013
SANE Australia has released a practical and easy-to-understand resource that helps people working in mental health to support a person who may be at risk of taking their own life. Supporting people who are experiencing suicidal thoughts and behaviours can be a challenging and daunting task,' explains Charmaine Smith, Acting CEO of SANE Australia. 'The Suicide Prevention and Recovery Guide aims to inform a range of mental health workers about different ways to address the issue of suicide with their clients...

Adaptimmune announces opening of Phase I/IIa clinical trial in ovarian cancer

Date: Jul-29-2013
Adaptimmune has announced that it has opened a Phase I/IIa, multiple-site, two-cohort, open-label clinical trial in ovarian cancer at Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI) in Buffalo, N.Y., and City of Hope (COH) in Duarte, Calif. Researchers will investigate the safety, bioactivity and effectiveness of treating patients with their own T cells after genetically engineering the cells to enhance their anti-tumor properties...

Waking up to new treatments for stroke - WAKE-UP trial starts in the UK

Date: Jul-29-2013
WAKE-UP - a large European clinical trial to test whether current 'clot dissolving' treatments can be used in people who wake up with the symptoms of stroke enrolled the first UK patients at the Southern General Hospital this week.  Every year about two million patients have a stroke in the EU. Up to 20 per cent of stroke patients wake up with stroke symptoms so the time the stroke started is unknown. This makes patients ineligible for the only approved treatment for acute stroke- the delivery the thrombolytic or 'clot dissolving' drug rtPA...

Less is sometimes more in the immune system

Date: Jul-29-2013
As part of the innate immune system natural killer cells (NK cells) play an important role in immune responses. For a long time they have been known as the first line of defense in the fight against infectious diseases. Therefore, researchers assumed that the body needs as many active NK cells as possible. However, scientists at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) have now shown that the principle "the more the better" does not apply to this type of immune cells...

How obesity impacts advanced non-small cell lung cancer

Date: Jul-29-2013
Obesity increases health risks for many things. Researchers wanted to know the impact of obesity on outcomes of patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer. In the September issue of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer's journal, the Journal of Thoracic Oncology (JTO), researchers conclude that obese patients had superior outcomes early on in the study, but then experienced increased hazards...

EGFR mutation testing dropped substantially once funding from the pharmaceutical industry was discontinued

Date: Jul-29-2013
Significant advances have taken place in the management of patients with advanced and metastatic non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) over the last 5 years. Traditionally, all advanced NSCLC patients were treated in a similar manner. More recently, the importance of pathologic subtype has been recognized. Data from several randomized trials demonstrate that epidermal growth factor (EGFR) mutation status is predictive of improved survival and quality of life with selected systemic therapies...

Emergency physicians distinguish between Bell's palsy and stroke

Date: Jul-29-2013
Emergency physicians correctly identified nearly 100 percent of patients with Bell's palsy, the symptoms of which are nearly identical to potentially life-threatening diseases such as stroke and brain tumors. The results of a study of 6 years of California patient records were published online yesterday in Annals of Emergency Medicine ("Potential Misdiagnoses of Bell's Palsy in the Emergency Department")...