Archive for the ‘News’ Category

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CDC Urges New HIV Testing for Donors

Friday, March 18th, 2011

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is recommending hospitals test living donors for the virus that causes AIDS no more than seven days before their organs are removed and transplanted, following the first documented U.S. case of HIV transmission from a live organ donor in more than two decades.

According to an investigation by the CDC and New York city and state health officials, a kidney transplant recipient contracted the virus from a donor in an unnamed New York City hospital in 2009. The male donor acknowledged that he had engaged in unprotected sex with another man after he was screened for HIV, but before he donated the organ. The New York hospital tested the donor 79 days before transplant, when he showed no evidence of infection, but did not re-test him closer to the surgery that removed the organ.

The centers’ 1994 guidelines for organ-donor screening, which are being revised, did not address the timing of screening tests.

The CDC is also recommending the use of a test that detects the virus within eight to 10 days of infection.

Of the three major transplant centers serving the city, Mount Sinai Medical Center said the event did not occur there; a spokesman for another, New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, said, “We don’t have any information about this.” New York University Langone Medical Center said that it would be “inappropriate” to comment. (more…)

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Gene therapy treats Parkinson’s disease

Friday, March 18th, 2011

Treating Parkinson’s disease with gene therapy has been shown to be successful in clinical trials for the first time, say US researchers.

The illness causes uncontrolled shaking, stiffness and slow movement as part of the brain dies.

The small study in The Lancet Neurology used a virus to add genes to brain cells, which resulted in reduced symptoms for half of patients.

Parkinson’s UK welcomed the study, but said further research was needed.

The disease affects 120,000 people in the UK, mostly in the over-50s.

There is no cure, although drugs and deep brain stimulation have been shown to reduce symptoms.

Gene treatment
Patients with Parkinson’s have reduced levels of a chemical – GABA – in part of the brain known as the subthalamic nucleus.

The researchers created a virus which “infects” cells with a gene to increase GABA production.

In the trial, 22 patients had the virus injected into their brains while 23 patients had “sham surgery”, to make them think they had the virus injected. (more…)

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Scientists try to determine whether life on Earth is quickly heading toward extinction

Thursday, March 3rd, 2011

Life on Earth is hurtling toward extinction levels comparable with those after the dinosaur-deleting asteroid impact of 65 million years ago, propelled forward by human activities, according to scientists from UC Berkeley.

This week, scientists announced that if current extinction rates continue unabated, and vulnerable species disappear, Earth could lose three-quarters of its species as soon as three centuries from now.

“That’s a geological eyeblink,” said Nicholas Matzke, a graduate student at UC Berkeley and author of a paper describing the doom-and-gloom scenario. “Once you lose species, you don’t get them back. It takes millions of years to rebound from a mass extinction event.”

This means that not too far in the future, backyards might not be buzzing with bees, bombarded by seagulls or shaded by redwood trees. And while that might seem far off, species already are disappearing on a global scale. In recent history, we’ve lost the dodo bird and the passenger pigeon, the Javan tiger and the Japanese sea lion, and now, maybe the eastern cougar — declared extinct by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Wednesday. Amphibians, mammals, plants, fish — none are immune to going the way of the dinosaurs, courtesy of the human impact on fragile ecosystems.

Such enormous losses have only occurred five times in the past half-billion years, during events known as “mass extinctions.” The best-known of these events occurred 65 million years ago — a “really bad day,” according to paleontologists — when an asteroid collided with Earth, sending fiery dust into the atmosphere and rapidly cooling the planet. These “Big Five” events set the extinction bar high: to reach mass-wipeout status, 75 percent of all species need to disappear within a geologically short time frame, meaning that Earth is currently on the brink of the sixth mass extinction. (more…)

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Scientists Spot Another Gene Behind Type 2 Diabetes

Thursday, March 3rd, 2011

Finding might someday lead to targeted treatment, researchers say

Scientists have identified a gene variant present in some people of white European descent who have type 2 diabetes.

Although it’s not yet clear how the gene works, it may prove a future target for treatments, among other benefits, say the authors of a study published March 2 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

As with so many gene studies, however, these findings aren’t likely to translate into anything clinically meaningful soon.

“This shows an association between this gene and an increased risk of diabetes compared to the general population,” said Dr. Steven D. Wittlin, clinical director of the endocrine-metabolism division and director of the Diabetes Service at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

“If we can find out how this gene is associated with diabetes from a pathophysiological point of view, then we can figure out how to intervene, but that’s a lot of ifs, and right now we have 92.5 percent of people with diabetes who don’t have this gene,” said Wittlin, who was not involved in the study. (more…)

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Gene driver for breast cancer discovered

Monday, February 21st, 2011

A rare but hard-to-treat form of breast cancer is driven by a newly discovered gene, researchers have found.

ZNF703 is the first oncogene to be discovered in five years, and it could lead to more effective treatments down the road, Cancer Research UK said.

Oncogenes tell healthy cells to divide when needed. But in tumours, they are overactive and the cancer multiply unstoppably. The oncogene act like a stuck accelerator that leads a car to speed out of control.

In Friday’s online issue of the journal EMBO Molecular Medicine, scientists from Cancer Research UK’s Cambridge Research Institute and the British Columbia Cancer Agency in Vancouver said evidence strongly suggests ZNF703 is a new oncogene.

To come to that conclusion, they tested gene activity in 1,172 breast tumour samples that were estrogen receptor-positive. (more…)

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Speaking Two Languages Keeps Brain Active, Delays Alzheimer’s Disease

Monday, February 21st, 2011

New research suggests that being bi-lingual offers more benefits than just being able to converse in two languages. In fact, the ability to speak two languages has shown an increased ability in multi-tasking, plus it may protect the brain against significant health risks like dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

Research has found the benefits to exist whether or not the language was learned during childhood or not. Learning a second language at any point in life may combat brain decline just as well.

The study explains that individuals who spoke just one language started experiencing symptoms of dementia more than 5 years sooner than individuals who were bi-lingual. Additionally, full-blown Alzheimer’s was diagnosed more than 4 years earlier for those who knew just one language.

While this study appears to show many benefits of being bi-lingual, other studies have suggested otherwise. While results have not been concluded, preliminary results allude to the fact that overall brain function is affected very little whether the individual can speak one or two languages. (more…)

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Space Shuttle Discovery’s Astronaut Crew Arrives at Florida Launch Site

Monday, February 21st, 2011

The six astronauts who will fly the space shuttle Discovery on its final mission to the International Space Station arrived at NASA’s Florida spaceport today (Feb. 20), four days ahead of their historic launch.

The crewmembers all touched down here at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center by about 3:45 p.m. EST (2045 GMT).

Shuttle commander Steve Lindsey, pilot Eric Boe and mission specialists Michael Barratt, Alvin Drew, Nicole Stott and Steve Bowen flew into Florida on supersonic T-38 jets from the agency’s training headquarters at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

NASA administrator Charles Bolden was on hand to greet the astronauts upon their arrival.

“We’re back here for another attempt at this,” Lindsey told reporters who had gathered for the crew’s arrival. “We’re pretty confident about this one. The external tank problem we’ve been working for the last several months is probably the most difficult, technical challenge we’ve faced in recent years. The team did a great job of coming together, figuring out a very difficult engineering problem, and coming up with a solution that I think gives us a really good tank to go launch with this week.”

Lindsey also spoke about the challenges that have been faced on the crew side – mission specialist Steve Bowen was selected by NASA less than six weeks ago to replace Tim Kopra, who was injured in a bike accident on Jan. 15. (more…)

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NASA spacecraft passes the point of closest contact with a comet

Tuesday, February 15th, 2011

On Valentine’s Day, as the world was celebrating the message of love, a NASA spacecraft reached the point of closest contact with a comet calculated to be half the size of Manhattan.

The periodic comet, Tempel 1, was discovered by German astronomer Ernst Wilhelm Leberecht Tempel in 1867. In every 5.5 years, the comet completes one orbit around the Sun with its orbital paths lying in between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

Tempel 1 was previously visited by NASA’s Deep Impact spacecraft on July 4, 2005. The current fly-by of the comet by NASA’s Stardust spacecraft is the first time that a comet has been re-visited to look for changes on its surface.

During the encounter phase, the spacecraft will carry out many important milestones which include turning the spacecraft to point its protective shields between it and the anticipated direction from which cometary particles would approach. Another important milestone includes scientific imaging of the comet’s nucleus. (more…)

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Study: Hospital budgets expanding due to IT reform

Tuesday, February 15th, 2011

Hospital executives are planning for budget increases during the next five years and are prioritizing strategic initiatives that had previously been on hold due to economic constraints. Healthcare insurance reform is also causing hospital management to re-evaluate how they select and purchase medical devices and other services, according to a survey from L.E.K. Consulting.

Nearly 60 percent of 196 surveyed hospital executives expected budget increases in 2011. During the next five years, 70 percent of respondents predicted larger budgets and are planning to increase purchasing in multiple areas, including IT (58 percent), facilities (38 percent), large medical devices (37 percent), small medical devices (21 percent) and disposables (28 percent), according to the Boston-based consulting firm’s survey.

Supplier negotiations will be central to controlling costs, which has hospitals increasingly turning to group purchasing organizations (GPOs) to help negotiate the best rates possible, L.E.K. stated. According to the L.E.K. survey, more than half of respondents expect to use GPOs more by 2015. Some hospitals have also started to approach GPOs to procure high-priced capital equipment in addition to low-price, high-volume items. (more…)

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Governors Get Advice for Saving on Medicaid

Friday, February 4th, 2011

Fearing wholesale cuts in Medicaid by states with severe budget problems, the Obama administration told governors on Thursday how they could save money by selectively and judiciously reducing benefits, curbing overuse of costly prescription drugs and attacking fraud.

However, the administration refused to say whether it would allow states to adopt stricter eligibility standards that would, in effect, throw low-income people off the Medicaid rolls and eliminate their insurance coverage.

Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, said she was still studying that question.

Governors said the ideas, though constructive, were not nearly enough. They said they wanted waivers of some federal requirements and relief from Congress, and they noted that the new health care law would greatly increase Medicaid rolls in 2014.

In a letter to governors on Thursday, Ms. Sebelius said, “I have heard the urgency of your state budget concerns.” Ms. Sebelius emphasized that states already had substantial discretion to alter benefits and establish or increase co-payments. (more…)

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