Health News

News From The Annals Of Internal Medicine: June 18, 2013

Date: Jun-19-2013
1. Two Independent Reviews, Made Possible through Unprecedented Data Release, Raise Questions about rhBMP-2 rhBMP-2 provided little or no benefit compared to bone graft and may be associated with more harms, possibly including cancer Two independent reanalyses of trial data, based on an unprecedented data release by Medtronic, Inc., indicate that the current evidence shows little benefit and potential harms are associated with the use of recombinant human bone morphogenetic protein-2 (rhBMP-2), an orthobiologic agent used to promote bone growth, in spinal surgery...

Overweight Women Who Lose Weight Experience Improved Memory

Date: Jun-19-2013
Memory improves in older, overweight women after they lose weight by dieting, and their brain activity actually changes in the regions of the brain that are important for memory tasks, a new study finds. The results were presented at The Endocrine Society's 95th Annual Meeting in San Francisco. "Our findings suggest that obesity-associated impairments in memory function are reversible, adding incentive for weight loss," said lead author Andreas Pettersson, MD, a PhD student at Umea University, Umea, Sweden...

Transgender Adolescents Can Safely Receive Hormone Treatment To Halt Puberty

Date: Jun-19-2013
Hormone treatment to halt puberty in adolescents with gender identity disorder does not cause lasting harm to their bones, a new study finds. The results were presented at The Endocrine Society's 95th Annual Meeting in San Francisco. "Hormonal interventions to block the pubertal development of children with gender dysphoria are effective and sufficiently safe to alleviate the stress of gender dysphoria," said the study's lead author, Henriette Delemarre-van de Waal, MD, PhD, a professor of pediatric endocrinology at Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, The Netherlands...

MRI May Detect Meningitis From Tainted Steroids

Date: Jun-19-2013
People who may have been injected with contaminated steroids can undergo an MRI scan to check for signs of infection, even if they do not have symptoms, according to a new study published in JAMA. A group of researchers examined 172 people who were injected with methylprednisolone from a New England Compounding Center (NECC) lot that may have been tainted with meningitis and fungi, and identified 36 unusual test results in these subjects - including 13 subjects who had no new or worsening symptoms such as pain or weakness near the injection site...

Speed Vital For Stroke Patients' Survival

Date: Jun-19-2013
The sooner stroke patients receive thrombolytic treatment, the lower their risk of in-hospital mortality and intracranial hemorrhage, says a new study published in JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association). In addition, the prompter the treatment, the higher the rate of walking ability at discharge. Intravenous (IV) tissue-type plasminogen activator (tPA) is a form of treatment proven to help stroke patients within 4.5 hours of onset of symptoms...

Whole Exome Sequencing Seeks Out Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma

Date: Jun-19-2013
Adenoid cystic carcinoma (ACC) is a slow-growing and often fatal malignancy that can occur at multiple organ sites, but is most frequently found in the salivary glands. The primary treatment is surgical removal; however, the majority of patients develop metastatic disease. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, researchers led by Andrew Futreal at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, MA, performed a type of genetic sequencing known as whole exome sequencing of 24 ACC cases...

Facebook Boosts Organ Donor Registration

Date: Jun-19-2013
Social media site 'Facebook' boosted the number of people who registered themselves as organ donors 21-fold in just one day, according to a new study by Johns Hopkins researchers. The report, published in the American Journal of Transplantation, indicates that social media may be a successful way to make people more aware of the organ shortage in the U.S. The rise was seen in May 2012 when Facebook developed a way for people to share their organ donor status with friends...

Stress Hormones Found In Healthy, Full-Term Babies Different From Those Of Their Mothers

Date: Jun-19-2013
A University of Calgary researcher has identified how a steroid hormone may indicate infant distress during labour and delivery. The study, published by PLOS ONE this month, suggests that a full-term, healthy baby preferentially secretes a different stress hormone than its mother does. That stress hormone, corticosterone, has not been previously studied in human development. "Fetal corticosterone, which is related to cortisol, could serve as a biomarker of fetal stress," says study lead author Katherine Wynne-Edwards, PhD, Jack Manns Professor of Comparative Endocrinology...

In A Mouse Model Of Polycystic Kidney Disease, Vitamin B3 Blocks Cyst Formation

Date: Jun-19-2013
Autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD) is an inherited systemic disorder caused by mutations in PKD1 or PKD2 that predominately affects the kidneys and is characterized by the formation of cysts in the kidneys and other organs. Xiaogang Li and colleagues at the University of Kansas Medical Centr used a mouse model of ADPKD to explore the role of the protein sirtuin 1 in cyst formation. They found that inhibition of sirtuin 1 activity using vitamin B3 can reduced cyst formation in the kidneys of ADPKD mice...

Autistic Kids May Not Find Pleasure In Voices

Date: Jun-18-2013
Some autistic kids may not find pleasure in human voices, according to a new brain-imaging study from Stanford University. The research, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, might help explain why kids with autism have difficulty with the social and emotional aspects of human speech...