September 18, 2006, 7:12 PM CT

Chronic Hepatitis C

The hepatitis C virus (HCV) is one of the most important causes of chronic liver disease in the United States. It accounts for about 15 percent of acute viral hepatitis, 60 to 70 percent of chronic hepatitis, and up to 50 percent of cirrhosis, end-stage liver disease, and liver cancer. Almost 4 million Americans, or 1.8 percent of the U.S. population, have antibody to HCV (anti-HCV), indicating ongoing or previous infection with the virus. Hepatitis C causes an estimated 10,000 to 12,000 deaths annually in the United States.

A distinct and major characteristic of hepatitis C is its tendency to cause chronic liver disease. At least 75 percent of patients with acute hepatitis C ultimately develop chronic infection, and most of these patients have accompanying chronic liver disease.

Chronic hepatitis C varies greatly in its course and outcome. At one end of the spectrum are patients who have no signs or symptoms of liver disease and completely normal levels of serum liver enzymes. Liver biopsy usually shows some degree of chronic hepatitis, but the degree of injury is usually mild, and the overall prognosis may be good. At the other end of the spectrum are patients with severe hepatitis C who have symptoms, HCV RNA in serum, and elevated serum liver enzymes, and who ultimately develop cirrhosis and end-stage liver disease. In the middle of the spectrum are many patients who have few or no symptoms, mild to moderate elevations in liver enzymes, and an uncertain prognosis.........

Posted by: Jenn      Permalink         Source

September 14, 2006, 8:29 PM CT

Can Handle Flu Pandemic

The most cost effective and quickest way to respond to a flu pandemic within the next five years is to use existing facilities to make vaccines from cell cultures, new research suggests.

In a study led by University of Michigan professor of chemical and biomedical engineering Henry Wang and doctoral student Lyle Lash, researchers examined the economics of producing egg versus cell culture vaccines in the event of a flu pandemic. They found that training personnel to make cell culture vaccines in existing facilities is the only way to make enough doses to cover the United States in a short time without requiring huge capital investments to build new dedicated flu vaccine cell culture facilities.

The study builds upon research presented last year at the American Chemical Society National Meeting. This research will be also be presented at ACS in the "Economics of Biopharmaceutical Processes" session at 2 p.m. on Sept. 14. The research presented last year focused on how the use of existing cell culture facilities and other vaccine development and manufacturing changes can cut down the time to respond to a pandemic.

Currently, flu vaccines are made from hen eggs, but in light of a possible pandemic and ongoing shortages even during normal flu season, the government and private corporations have been scrambling for new and faster ways to make a flu vaccine. Some options include building new and bigger facilities or to retrofit existing facilities.........

Posted by: Jenn      Permalink         Source

September 13, 2006, 9:39 PM CT

Diabetics And Lower Limb Amputations

A number of people suffering foot and leg pain falsely attribute their aches to temporary discomfort or simply "growing old," when something far more serious and often preventable is frequently taking place.

People that neglect foot and leg pain especially the 20.8 million people in the U.S. with diabetes can be at risk for amputation. This neglect has contributed to a sharp rise in amputations, with the Centers for Disease Control finding the number of diabetes-related lower limb amputations to have increased by 227 percent between 1980 (33,000) and 2003 (75,000).

Diabetics are prone to amputation as the condition often causes blood vessels in the foot and leg to narrow, causing poor circulation. This makes diabetics susceptible to infection, making it difficult for these wounds to heal. In fact, nine out of 10 non-traumatic lower extremity amputations are instigated by an infection, as per a research studyled by Texas A&M University. The American Diabetes Association says that diabetes is the most frequent cause of non-traumatic lower limb amputations.

The unfortunate result of these trends is that each year, 75,000 people lose their foot, leg or toe due to diabetes, and 85 percent of these losses could have been avoided, as per the International Diabetes Federation.........

Posted by: Jenn      Permalink         Source

September 13, 2006, 9:35 PM CT

Teens and depression

There has been much controversy in recent years regarding the connection between teenage suicide and the use of antidepressant drugs. At an FDA meeting reviewing this topic, the majority of clinical trials examined did not show that the drugs were effective in treating depression in children and adolescents.

In a recent study reported in the recent issue of the Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, Dr. Richard Malone, from the Department of Psychiatry at Drexel University College of Medicine and Philadelphia Health & Education Corporation, and his colleagues suggest that the short duration of depressive symptoms in this age group makes it difficult to distinguish drug efficacy from placebo.

Using a naturalistic study design, the scientists advise using multiple assessments to establish a continuous baseline before randomizing patients to therapy, which would remove those who spontaneously recover in a very short period of time. In addition to having an impact on the accuracy of future clinical trials, this approach may help decrease the number of children who are exposed to unnecessary long-term drug treatment and possible side effects, since those who spontaneously recover quickly would not be started on drug treatment.

The article "Impersistence of Depression in Youth: Implications for Drug Study Design" can be accessed at no-charge for a limited time at The Journal of Clinical Pharmacology's web site at www.jclinpharm.org/cgi/reprint/46/9/1044.........

Posted by: Jenn      Permalink         Source

September 11, 2006, 8:46 PM CT

Ulcerative Colitis Responds To Arthritis Drug

In good news for patients with stubborn cases of ulcerative colitis, a serious intestinal disorder, a new research review suggests that the drug infliximab can be a useful alternative if other treatments don't work.

The drug is currently used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn's disease.

"For people with active ulcerative colitis who do not respond to corticosteroids or immunosuppressive agents, infliximab is effective in inducing clinical remission, inducing clinical response, promoting mucosal healing and reducing the need for colectomy, at least in the short term," said review co-author Dr. Anthony Kwaku Akobeng.

Akobeng, a gastroenterologist at Manchester Children's University Hospitals in England, and colleagues examined seven randomized controlled studies comprising 860 patients that evaluated infliximab as a treatment for ulcerative colitis.

The review of studies appears in the latest issue of The Cochrane Library, a publication of The Cochrane Collaboration, an international organization that evaluates medical research. Systematic reviews like this one draw evidence-based conclusions about medical practice after considering both the content and quality of existing medical trials on a topic.

"Infliximab is another option if steroids fail," said Peter Higgins, M.D., an assistant professor in gastroenterology at the University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor.........

Posted by: Jenn      Permalink         Source

September 9, 2006, 9:46 AM CT

Gene Silencing In Plants

Biologists at Washington University in St. Louis have made an important breakthrough in understanding a pathway plant cells take to silence unwanted or extra genes using short bits of RNA. Basically, they have made it possible to see where, and how, the events in the pathway unfold within the cell, and seeing is believing, as the old saying goes.

Craig Pikaard, Ph.D., Washington University professor of biology in Arts & Sciences and his collaborators have described the roles that eight proteins in Arabidopsis plants play in a pathway that brings about DNA methylation, an epigenetic function that involves a chemical modification of cytosine, one of the four chemical subunits of DNA. Without proper DNA methylation, higher organisms from plants to humans have a host of developmental problems, from dwarfing in plants to certain tumors in humans, and death in mice.

One role of DNA methylation is to turn off repetitive genes, such as transposable elements that can move or spread throughout a genome and disrupt other gene functions if left unchecked. There is also interest in DNA methylation because understanding how some genes are selectively silenced and how silenced alleles can be turned on again may someday have practical benefits. For instance, tumor suppressor genes that normally help keep cells from dividing uncontrollably are often silenced by DNA methylation and histone (proteins that wrap DNA) modifications in cancer cells, contributing to tumor growth. And certain blood disorders resulting from defective genes expressed in adults might be alleviated if versions of those same genes that are only expressed very early in development, but are then silenced in adults, could only be turned on again.........

Posted by: Jenn      Permalink         Source

September 9, 2006, 9:30 AM CT

Towards Rejection-free Limb Transplantation

Years ago, the idea of attaching a donor limb onto a patient's body would have been the stuff of science fiction. But to date about two-dozen people around the world have received hand transplants. Thomas Tung, M.D., conducts research within this relatively unorthodox realm of surgery, investigating therapies that could potentially allow the body to accept donor tissue without the use of immunosuppressive medication.

A Washington University plastic and reconstructive surgeon at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, Tung has reattached patients' own hands, but he has never performed a hand transplant - he feels the health risks of immunosuppressive drugs are too high to warrant the surgery. But with his research, he is working toward the day when reconstructive surgery can make use of donor tissues without the danger of complications from anti-rejection medicine or the risk of tissue rejection.

"Once we figure this out, it's going to open up a new whole field of reconstructive surgery," says Tung, assistant professor of surgery. "It will allow surgeons to replace not just injured hands, but lips, noses, ears, scalp and other specialized tissues anywhere on the body".

To reach this goal, Tung has been researching transplantation of hindlimbs to mice from unrelated donors - but here's the twist - without giving the mice immunosuppressive drugs. At this time, Tung is the only researcher in the United States investigating limb transplantation with this protocol, which uses proteins called costimulation-blocking antibodies.........

Posted by: Jenn      Permalink         Source

September 7, 2006, 8:15 PM CT

Breakthrough in Liver Diagnosis technique

That is exciting news from Mayo Clinic. Researchers based in Mayo Clinic have recently devised a new technique for safely performing biopsy of the liver. This new technology uses a painless and safe technique instead of the conventional needle biopsy of the liver. These findings are published in the current issue of general of radiology.

"This is potentially an important diagnostic advance, since conventional imaging techniques, such as CT, MRI and ultrasound are not capable of identifying liver fibrosis previous to the onset of cirrhosis," says Richard Ehman, M.D., Mayo researcher and lead investigator on the study.

The healthy liver is very soft in comparison to most other tissues and particularly in comparison to a liver with cirrhosis, which is rock hard. The development by Dr. Ehman and colleagues applies vibrations to the liver and then utilizes a modified form of MRI to obtain pictures of the mechanical waves passing through the organ. The imaging can be accomplished in as little as 20 seconds. The wave pictures are then processed to generate a quantitative image of tissue stiffness -- called an elastogram.

Scientists compared results of the process on 12 patients with biopsy-proven liver fibrosis with those of 12 healthy participants. This pilot trial of MRE showed strikingly elevated stiffness in patients with fibrosis and that the stiffness increased with the progression of the condition.........

Posted by: Jenn      Permalink         Source

September 7, 2006, 6:05 PM CT

What Is Health?

Health is the functional and/or metabolic efficiency of an organism, at any moment in time, at both the cellular and global levels. In any organism, health is the ability to efficiently respond to challenges (stressors) and effectively restore and sustain a "state of balance," known as homeostasis. Sickness is merely the absence of health. All organisms, from the simplest to the most complex, reside on a spectrum between 100% health and 0% health.

One widely accepted definition of health is that of the World Health Organization (WHO). It states that "health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity" (WHO, 1946). In more recent years, this statement has been modified to include the ability to lead a "socially and economically productive life." The WHO definition is not without criticism, as some argue that health cannot be defined as a state at all, but must be seen as a process of continuous adjustment to the changing demands of living and of the changing meanings we give to life. The WHO definition is therefore considered by many as an idealistic goal rather than a realistic proposition.

The LaLonde report suggested that there are four general determinants of health which he called "human biology", "environment", "lifestyle", and "healthcare organization"[1] Thus, health is maintained through the science and practice of medicine, but can also be improved by individual effort. Physical fitness, weight loss, healthy eating, stress management training and stopping smoking and other substance abuse are examples of steps to improve one's health. Workplace programs are recognized by an increasingly large number of companies for their value in improving health and well-being of their employees, and increasing morale, loyalty and productivity at work. A company may provide a gym with exercise equipment, start smoking cessation programs, provide nutrition, weight or stress management training. Other programs may include health risk assessments, health screenings and body mass index monitoring.........

Posted by: Jenn      Permalink         Source