May 17, 2007, 10:32 PM CT

Chronic pain can drive you to distraction

Anyone who has experienced chronic pain knows that it affects the ability to work, sleep and perform other activities essential to leading a full life. Now scientists at the University of Alberta have confirmed that chronic pain doesnt just cause physical discomfort; it can impair your memory and your concentration.

In a study recently conducted at the universitys Multidisciplinary Pain Centre in Edmonton, Canada, two-thirds of participants with chronic pain showed significant disruption of attention and memory when tested.

After studying 24 patients, Drs. Bruce D. Dick and Saifudin Rashiq seem to have zeroed in on one of the cognitive mechanisms affected by chronic pain. Their findings, reported in the latest issue of Anesthesia and Analgesia, suggest that pain may disrupt the maintenance of the memory trace that is mandatory to hold information for processing and retain it for storage in longer-term memory stores. In other words, chronic pain can, quite literally, drive people to distraction.

Participants in the studyall of whom had pain lasting six months or longerwere given computerized tests of working memory and a neuropsychological test of attention on separate "pain" and "less pain" days.

On the "less pain" day, participants were tested after receiving a pain-reducing procedure as part of their ongoing therapy at the Centre. On the "pain" day, participants were tested without having received a pain-reducing procedure, when their pain was reported to be at a high level. Sixteen participantsa startling 67 per centshowed clinical impairment due to pain on their pain testing day. The remaining eight participants, or 33 per cent, showed no clinical impairment due to pain......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

Tue, 15 May 2007 05:45:19 GMT

NHS: Invisible Killer

This anti-smoking integrated advertisement campaign was launched by the British National Health Service. The campaign was launched with a view to highlight health reasons behind the new law to make workplaces and other public places smoke free. In addition to it, the campaign also underlines the fact that up to 85 percent of secondhand smoke is invisible and odorless, and just as harmful as the smoke you can see. The advertisements are showing how smoking affecting people around smokers and reflects how dangerous second hand smoke could be.

The campaign also aimed at making people aware that after 1 July, 2007 smoking in all enclosed workplaces will be considered against the law. In the meanwhile, eyebrows were raised on the television advertisement of the campaign. The Advertising Standards Authority has so far received 26 complaints that alleged that the ad was scaremongering, would cause undue fear to non-smokers and challenged whether there is a proven link between second-hand smoke and a raised risk of contracting specific diseases.

The ASA however, is expected to ask the Department of Health to substantiate claims made about the dangers of passive smoking.

Via Hout Lust Posted by: Balendu      Read more     Source

Tue, 15 May 2007 05:42:34 GMT

Controversial Milk Ad Campaign to End: FTC

A national advertising campaign that connects dairy products with weight loss will be withdrawn as research does not support the claim, according to the Federal Trade Commission. The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine insisted that the weight loss claims were false and misleading. The group, in a 2005 petition, had asked the commission to order a ban to the dairy advertisements.

The two marketing campaigns involved with the issue are the ‘Milk your diet. Lose Weight!” ads on television, Internet and in magazines, and the ‘3-A-Day. Burn More Fat, Lose Weight’ advertisements, which are mainly Web-based. The advertisements, formulated by the promotional division of the dairy industry and watched over by the Agriculture Department, feature slogans like ‘Milk your diet. Lose weight!’ and suggest that three servings of dairy products a day can help people be slim.

The affirmation that there is a linkage between weight loss and dairy consumption has long been challenged by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, an advocacy and research group that promotes a diet free of animal products.

On the other hand, Susan Ruland, a spokeswoman for the ‘Milk your Diet’ campaign, has said there was nothing misleading about the ads. However, she added that the board is planning to phase out the milk ads and focus the campaign instead on how dairy can help promote a healthy diet.

Read Posted by: Balendu      Read more     Source

Tue, 15 May 2007 05:38:03 GMT

Federal Loans for Coal Plants Raises Worry for Global Warming

Despite criticism, U.S government allows soft loans to built coal plants even as Congress promises to take possible measure to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Scientists blame that coal plant disgorges carbon dioxide, which is responsible for global warning.

Government pledges to generate pollution free power sources to fight global warming, but the nation’s rural electric cooperatives are getting biggest booty out of government generosity. Co-op plan to spend $35 billion to build conventional coal plants over the next 10 years, which totally offset federal efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Office of Management and Budget seek to curtail loans for new power plants, but the powerful National Rural Electric Cooperative Association pressurizing Congress to keep the program going arguing that it is necessary to keep electricity cheap in rural areas. Environmentalists have shown their apprehensions over the program and urge the government to focus on renewable resources.

Rural co-ops get their 80 percent power from coal plants compare with 50 percent for the rest of the country. The customers own Rural-utility cooperatives, and the federal loan reduced the cost of new power generation by 15 percent. Co-ops claims for the soft loans to meet the current demand on the reasonable costs as its members per capita is 15 percent lower than the national average.

Via: washingtonpost

Posted by: Rahulbhandari      Read more     Source

May 14, 2007, 10:32 PM CT

Patient-Specific Stem Cell Lines

UC Irvine neurobiologist Hans Keirstead and his research team today launched a project to develop stem cell lines that genetically match human patients. These lines would allow researchers to better study conditions ranging from diabetes to Parkinson's disease, and they would provide the basis for potential patient-specific stem cell therapys.

Keirstead will use a technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) in which a patient's DNA is transplanted into a donated unfertilized egg cell in order to generate stem cell lines with the same genetic makeup of the patient. These lines have tremendous treatment potential because the human immune system is less likely to attack genetically identical cells. Only a few laboratories in the world are attempting this technique in human stem cell research and, thus far, no human stem cell lines have been derived using this method.

"This technique holds tremendous promise to advance our knowledge of stem cells and their potential to cure disease," said Keirstead, associate professor of anatomy and neurobiology and co-director of UCI's Sue and Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center. "I am excited to embark on this line of research and look forward to the day when patient-specific stem cells are utilized to treat people suffering from debilitating injuries and health conditions"......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

May 11, 2007, 5:13 PM CT

Minimizing Incontinence After Prostatectomy

Thousands of men facing surgical removal of the prostate due to cancer may someday have one less thing to worry about: post-surgical urinary incontinence.

That's because a team of expert urologic surgeons at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center has devised a simple, effective means of reconstructing key anatomical structures that ensure continence.

They describe the success of the procedure in the journal Urology.

"Modifying existing tissues, our technique added only a few minutes to standard robotic prostatectomy, yet attained a 95 percent continence rate among patients 16 weeks after their surgeries," explains lead researcher Dr. Ashutosh K. Tewari, director of robotic prostatectomy and outcomes research at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell and the Ronald P. Lynch Associate Professor of Urologic Oncology at Weill Cornell Medical College.

"This is a real breakthrough in prostate cancer care, as a significant number of patients have post-prostatectomy urinary incontinence," adds senior researcher Dr. E. Darracott Vaughan, attending urologist at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell and The James J. Colt Professor of Urology at Weill Cornell Medical College. He is also Weill Cornell's senior associate dean for clinical affairs......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

May 10, 2007, 5:44 AM CT

Low Level Of Resistance To Tamiflu

New data published by the World Health Organisation (WHO) has confirmed a low frequency of resistance to Tamiflu (oseltamivir) over 3 influenza seasons (2003 2006)1.

The information, published by the Neuraminidase Inhibitor Susceptibility Network in the WHOs Weekly Epidemiological Record, has shown that resistance of around 0.3% to oseltamivir was seen during the influenza seasons in which there had been substantial Tamiflu use in Japan (35 million patients), the highest use in any market. This level of resistance is extremely low in comparison to rates of 65% seen in Japan with another antiviral, amantadine2.

"These results confirm that the potential for the development of resistance to Tamiflu is very low, even when used extensively in the management of seasonal influenza," commented Dr. David Reddy, Pandemic Task Force Leader, Roche. "This provides reassurance to the scientific community that since the introduction of Tamiflu in 1999, the levels of resistance have remained similar to those seen in the clinical development programme. Roche and the NISN continue to maintain high vigilance to keep on top of the evolving virus. ".

Information gathering and results

As with any antiviral medication, there is a theoretical risk that a virus may emerge with decreased sensitivity to a drug. The Neuraminidase Inhibitor Susceptibility Network undertook screening for susceptibility to oseltamivir of influenza viruses randomly submitted to the national WHO Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza and other Respiratory Diseases in Tokyo, Japan. Influenza virus isolates collected were tested by neuraminidase inhibition assay (IC50 or sequence analysis) to detect mutations linked to drug-resistance......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

May 7, 2007, 10:55 PM CT

Bipolar spectrum disorder may be underrecognized

A new study supports earlier estimates of the prevalence of bipolar disorder in the U.S. population, and suggests the illness may be more accurately characterized as a spectrum disorder. It also finds that a number of people with the illness are not receiving appropriate therapy. The study, reported in the May 2007 issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, analyzed data from the National Comorbidity Survey Replication (NCS-R), a nationwide survey of mental disorders among 9,282 Americans ages 18 and older. The NCS-R was funded by the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).

NIMH researcher Kathleen Merikangas, Ph.D. and his colleagues identified prevalence rates of three subtypes of bipolar spectrum disorder among adults. Bipolar I is considered the classic form of the illness, in which a person experiences recurrent episodes of mania and depression. People with bipolar II experience a milder form of mania called hypomania that alternates with depressive episodes. People with bipolar disorder not otherwise specified (BD-NOS), sometimes called subthreshold bipolar disorder, have manic and depressive symptoms as well, but they do not meet strict criteria for any specific type of bipolar disorder noted in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), the reference manual for psychiatric disorders. Nonetheless, BD-NOS still can significantly impair those who have it......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

May 7, 2007, 10:47 PM CT

Why Blacks Do Not Successfully Donate Kidneys

In one of the first studies of its kind, scientists from Wake Forest University School of Medicine explored why blacks are less likely than other races to become living kidney donors, and the reasons are obesity and failure to complete the donor evaluation.

"Obesity is a growing problem in the African-American community, especially among women, and this reflects what we found in the study," said Amber Reeves-Daniel, D.O., an instructor in internal medicine-nephrology. "The other issue is the social reasons for non-donation, including failure to complete the donor evaluation process. This issue is just not well understood".

Reeves-Daniel reported the results today at the 2007 American Transplant Congress in San Francisco.

Donor questionnaires and charts for 541 disqualified potential donors were evaluated. The disqualified donors were all identified by documented information race, gender and cause of donor exclusion. In some cases, disqualified donors had more than one reason for exclusion.

About 30 percent of blacks were excluded because of obesity, in comparison to 16.6 percent of whites. Obesity was defined by body mass index (BMI) greater than or equal to 32 kg/m. Twelve percent of blacks were excluded because they didnt complete the evaluation process, in comparison to 1.8 percent of whites. For whites, the biggest reason for exclusion was kidney stones, at 7.3 percent, in comparison to 1.5 percent in blacks......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

Tue, 08 May 2007 02:29:10 GMT

Improve the Quality of Air We Breathe

The American Lung Association of Chicago had launched this ambient advertisement campaign to urge people to increase their contribution and efforts to improve quality of air. The Association has been orga since more than 10 years. The organization came out with a new perfume that people had never experienced- clean air. About 250 samples of were handed out to people.

The strategy was to catch people off guarded by giving them empty perfume vial to draw their attention to the real cause of improving the quality of air. Still the effectiveness of the advertisement is a bit difficult to ascertain and the other part is the campaign had targeted only a small chunk of mass.

The copy of the ad reads, ‘The American Lung Association of Chicago is working hard to improve the quality of air we breathe. OfficeMax is a proud sponsor of the 10th annual Hustle Up The Hancock & American Lung Association of Chicago’. The campaign was developed by OfficeMax.

Via Coolzor Posted by: Balendu      Read more     Source