Health News

Multiple Sclerosis Drug Lemtrada™ Submitted For Approval

Date: Jun-14-2012
Sanofi (EURONEXT: SAN and NYSE: SNY) and its subsidiary Genzyme announced on Tuesday that the company has submitted a supplemental Biologics License Application (sBLA) to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and a marketing authorization application (MAA) to the European Medicines Agency (EMA) seeking approval of LEMTRADA™ (alemtuzumab) for treatment of relapsing multiple sclerosis (RMS). Genzyme is developing LEMTRADA in MS in collaboration with Bayer HealthCare...

Teaching Social Skills To Autistic Teens Proves Effective Over Long Term

Date: Jun-14-2012
Teenagers with autism spectrum disorder are in a bind. The disorder is characterized by impairments in communication and social interaction, but it's a continuum, so some teens diagnosed with ASD are considered high functioning and healthy enough to be "mainstreamed" in school. But without the proper social skills, even mainstreamed teens don't quite fit into the general social milieu of middle school or high school. As a result, they suffer from all the slings and arrows of that world...

Depression Often Untreated In Poor Pregnant Women With HIV

Date: Jun-14-2012
It seems logical that programs to screen and manage depression in pregnant, HIV-positive Medicaid patients should already be in place, but they aren't. It's the kind of glaring oversight that Rajesh Balkrishnan, associate professor at the University of Michigan College of Pharmacy, said he finds all the time in his research on health disparities. Balkrishnan also has an appointment in the School of Public Health. "We find that many of these things are such common sense that they should already be in place and being done," said Balkrishnan...

How Kids With Asthma Are Stigmatized By The Media

Date: Jun-14-2012
This summer, superheroes like Spider-Man, Batman, and even Snow White will showcase their staggering strengths on the big screen. A Rutgers-Camden professor says that children with asthma are the real-life superheroes, facing down breathlessness and operating life-saving devices whenever and wherever asthma attacks strike. Cindy Dell Clark, who teaches anthropology at Rutgers-Camden, recently published research that analyzes Hollywood's portrayal of children with asthma in the journal Medical Anthropology Quarterly...

Main Causes Of Unprofessional Behavior Identified Among Hospitalists

Date: Jun-14-2012
Unprofessional behavior among hospitalists is rare, but those who do behave poorly share common features, according to research published in the Journal of Hospital Medicine. American researchers spoke to 77 Illinois hospitalists - doctors who provide care tailored to the needs of hospitalized patients as a general internist, rather than focusing on an organ, disease or a specific patient age-group. The three-center study found four key factors or patterns underlying unprofessional behavior: making fun of others, conduct in the learning environment (i.e...

Nevirapine Based Treatment For HIV Is Effective In African Women

Date: Jun-14-2012
In African women, an anti-AIDS treatment regimen that includes the drug nevirapine is as effective as a treatment regimen with the more expensive drugs, lopinavir/ritonavir, according to a study by a team of international researchers published in this week's PLoS Medicine. This finding is important as it confirms the recommendations from the World Health Organization that an increasingly common nevirapine-based treatment regimen is an affordable and effective option for the initial treatment of HIV in resource-limited settings...

Neuroblastoma: Multi-Center Clinical Study Intensifies First Strike At High-Risk Cancer In Kids

Date: Jun-14-2012
An experimental treatment that combines intense chemotherapy with a radioactive isotope linked to synthesized neurotransmitter is being tested in newly diagnosed cases of high-risk neuroblastoma - a deadly, hard-to-cure childhood cancer. The experimental radiopharmaceutical, 131I-MIBG, has already been tested in children with relapsed and resistant neuroblastoma, with encouraging results in reducing tumor size...

In Chronic Leukemia, Marker Distinguishes More-Aggressive From Less-Aggressive Forms

Date: Jun-14-2012
Researchers have identified a prognostic marker in the most common form of chronic leukemia that can help to distinguish which patients should start treatment quickly from those who can safely delay treatment, perhaps for years.  The study, led by researchers at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center - Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC - James), focused on chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), a malignancy expected to occur in 16,000 Americans this year and cause 4,600 deaths...

Researchers Create Powerful New Method To Analyze Genetic Data

Date: Jun-14-2012
University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston researchers have developed a powerful visual analytical approach to explore genetic data, enabling scientists to identify novel patterns of information that could be crucial to human health. The method, which combines three different "bipartite visual representations" of genetic information, is described in an article to appear in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. The work won a distinguished paper award when it was presented at the AMIA Summit on Translational Bioinformatics in March 2012...

Creation Of Mosquitoes Incapable Of Transmitting Malaria Provides Genetic Options For Controlling Spread Of Deadly Disease

Date: Jun-14-2012
Mosquitoes bred to be unable to infect people with the malaria parasite are an attractive approach to helping curb one of the world's most pressing public health issues, according to UC Irvine scientists. Anthony James and colleagues from UCI and the Pasteur Institute in Paris have produced a model of the Anopheles stephensi mosquito - a major source of malaria in India and the Middle East - that impairs the development of the malaria parasite. These mosquitoes, in turn, cannot transmit the disease through their bites...