Culture

Bethesda, MD (Jan. 28, 2013) – Despite conflicting data in support of the practice, some overweight Americans looking for an easy fix have turned to gastric botox injections to help them lose weight. This month in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, the official clinical practice journal of the American Gastroenterological Association, researchers from the Mayo Clinic publish a definitive study finding that Botox doesn't promote weight loss.

Sophia Antipolis, 28 January 2013: The radial approach for percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI) was developed 20 years ago and is used for more than 50% of procedures in France, Scandinavian countries, the UK, Spain and Italy. Despite the advantages of radial access some countries in Europe such as Germany use radial access for fewer than 10% of PCI.

Minimally invasive islet transplantation for patients with type 1 diabetes achieves insulin independence and reverses the progression of atherosclerosis in the first few years after transplant, according to a University of Illinois at Chicago study.

The research is published in the February issue of the journal Diabetes Care and is available online.

PORTLAND, Ore., January 28, 2013—For people with diabetes, meeting the recommended guidelines for blood pressure and cholesterol is even more important than meeting the guidelines for blood sugar control in reducing the risk of heart attack or stroke, according to a new Kaiser Permanente study published today in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

LA JOLLA, Calif., January 27, 2013 – Most patients with an inherited heart condition known as arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia/cardiomyopathy (ARVD/C) don't know they have a problem until they're in their early 20s. The lack of symptoms at younger ages makes it very difficult for researchers to study how ARVD/C evolves or to develop treatments. A new stem cell-based technology created by 2012 Nobel Prize winner Shinya Yamanaka, M.D., Ph.D., helps solve this problem. With this technology, researchers can generate heart muscle cells from a patient's own skin cells.

A newly-released study on early adoptees of the Primary Care Network initiative proposes that their success lies with three key elements: strong leadership, a redefined, inclusive workspace and allowance for creative discord.

Cincinnati, OH, January 25, 2013 -- Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), such as ibuprofen and naproxen, are commonly used to treat pain and reduce fever in children. However, the use of NSAIDs has been shown to cause acute kidney injury (AKI) in some children. A new study scheduled for publication in The Journal of Pediatrics reports the findings on the number of children diagnosed with AKI caused by NSAIDs in one hospital over an 11 ½ year span.

Highlights

New York, NY—January 24, 2013—Samuel K. Sia, associate professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia Engineering, has taken his innovative lab-on-a-chip and developed a way to not only check a patient's HIV status anywhere in the world with just a finger prick, but also synchronize the results automatically and instantaneously with central health-care records—10 times faster, the researchers say, than the benchtop ELISA, a broadly used diagnostic technique.

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Health care practitioners now can access patients' data using electronic medical records, which often include information systems that assess individuals' medical histories and clinical research to facilitate doctors' diagnoses. A University of Missouri researcher says the increased use of computerized clinical decision support systems (CDSSs) leads to greater patient dissatisfaction and could increase noncompliance with preventative care and treatment recommendations.

A study by health economists at the University of York has, for the first time, produced an estimate of the impact on other NHS patients of new and more costly drugs and other treatments.

This research suggests a refinement of the way the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) gauges the cost-effectiveness of new interventions. It also has implications for the prices that the NHS can afford to pay for new drugs when the value-based pricing scheme for all new drugs is introduced by the Government in 2014.

DETROIT – Here's a wake-up call for snorers: Snoring may put you at a greater risk than those who are overweight, smoke or have high cholesterol to have thickening or abnormalities in the carotid artery, according to researchers at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.

The increased thickening in the lining of the two large blood vessels that supply the brain with oxygenated blood is a precursor to atherosclerosis, a hardening of the arteries responsible for many vascular diseases.

Though controversial, medical cannabis has been gaining ground as a valid therapy, offering relief to suffers of diseases such as cancer, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, ALS and more. The substance is known to soothe severe pain, increase the appetite, and ease insomnia where other common medications fail.

A Phase 3 clinical trial demonstrates that tofacitinib improves disease activity and inhibits progression of joint damage in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients who did not respond to methotrexate (MTX). Results of the 12-month interim analysis of the efficacy of tofacitinib appear in Arthritis & Rheumatism, a journal published by Wiley on behalf of the American College of Rheumatology (ACR).

Researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center and colleagues have investigated the safety, efficacy and the maximum tolerated dose of pomalidomide for patients with multiple myeloma who have disease relapsed after treatments with other drugs, such as bortezomib and lenalidomide. This phase I clinical trial enrolled 38 patients, and pomalidomide provided a minimal or better response for 42 percent of the patients, a partial response or better for 21 percent, and a complete response for 3 percent.