February 4, 2010, 7:34 AM CT

Test to Predict preeclampsia

Scientists at Yale School of Medicine have developed a simple urine test to rapidly predict and diagnose preeclampsia, a common, but serious hypertensive complication of pregnancy.

Dubbed the "Congo Red Dot Test" by the research team, the test accurately predicted preeclampsia in a study of 347 pregnant women, allowing health care providers to offer better preventive care to pregnant women. The research will be presented February 4 at the Annual Scientific Meeting of the Society for Maternal Fetal Medicine (SMFM) in Chicago.

The World Health Organization estimates that about 63,000 pregnant women die each year because of severe preeclampsia, as well as a related condition called eclampsia, which can cause sudden, convulsive seizures.

"There is a critical need in the developing world for low-cost diagnostics for preeclampsia," said lead researcher Irina Buhimschi, M.D., associate professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences at Yale School of Medicine. "This test will help identify high-risk patients that should be transported from remote settings to facilities where there is access to specialized care for preeclampsia, such as magnesium sulfate treatment".

Buhimschi said that despite its effectiveness in preventing eclamptic seizures, magnesium sulfate is underutilized in developing countries. This is due in part to the lack of consistent and low-cost ways to identify preeclampsia patients who are in need of intervention, which the test could provide. She said that the test could also identify women who needed to deliver their babies immediately, in turn reducing the occurence rate of unnecessary early birth, because delivery is the only effective therapy for preeclampsia......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

February 3, 2010, 2:31 PM CT

Imaging method for eye disease

Researchers in Poland are describing how a medical imaging technique has taken on a second life in revealing forgery of an artist's signature and changes in inscriptions on paintings that are hundreds of years old. A report on the technique, called optical coherence tomography (OCT), is in ACS' Accounts of Chemical Research, a monthly journal.

Piotr Targowski notes that easel paintings prepared as per traditional techniques consist of multiple layers. The artist, for instance, first applies a glue sizing over the canvas to ensure proper adhesion of later layers. Those layers may include an outline of the painting, the painting itself, layers of semitransparent glazes, and finally transparent varnish. Art conservators and other experts resort to a variety of technologies to see below the surface and detect changes, including forged signatures and other alterations in a painting. But those approaches may damage artistic treasures or not be sensitive enough to detect finer details.

The researchers describe how OCT, used to produce three-dimensional images of the layers of the retina of the eye, overcomes those difficulties. They used OCT to analyze two oil paintings from the 18th and 19th centuries. In one, "Saint Leonard of Porto Maurizio," OCT revealed evidence that the inscription "St. Leonard" was added approximately fifty years after completion of the painting. In the other, "Portrait of an unknown woman," OCT found evidence of the possible of forgery of the artist's signature......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

February 3, 2010, 2:26 PM CT

How antiviral drugs bind to and block flu virus

Antiviral drugs block influenza A viruses from reproducing and spreading by attaching to a site within a proton channel necessary for the virus to infect healthy cells, as per a research project led by Iowa State University's Mei Hong and reported in the Feb. 4 issue of the journal Nature

Hong, Iowa State's John D. Corbett Professor of Chemistry and an associate scientist for the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory, said the findings clarify previous, conflicting studies and should pave the way to development of new antiviral drugs against influenza viruses, including pandemic H1N1.

Two papers published by Nature in 2008 came to different conclusions about where the antiviral drug amantadine binds to a flu virus and stops it from infecting a healthy cell. A paper based on X-ray studies concluded the drug attached to the lumen of the proton channel, the area inside the channel, and stopped the virus by blocking the channel. Another paper based on solution nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) technology concluded the drug attached to the surface of the virus protein near the proton channel and stopped the virus by indirectly changing the channel structure.

Hong's research concluded that when amantadine is present at the pharmacologically relevant amount of one molecule per channel, it attaches to the lumen inside the proton channel. But the paper also reports that when there are high concentrations of amantadine in the membrane, the drug will also attach to a second site on the surface of the virus protein near the channel......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

February 3, 2010, 8:18 AM CT

Not using Established Criteria

A new study led by Mark Zimmerman, MD, of Rhode Island Hospital indicates that a majority of non-psychiatrist physicians and a substantial minority of psychiatrists reported that they often do not use the criteria outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV) when diagnosing major depressive disorder (MDD) in patients. The study appears online ahead of print in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.

The criteria for MDD in DSM-IV have remained relatively unchanged for nearly 30 years. In a previous study, Zimmerman and colleagues questioned the clinical utility of the criteria. This study looks at the habits of physicians in using the criteria. The researchers asked physicians attending a continuing medical education conference to complete a brief questionnaire. A total of 291 physicians responded to the six questions, with one question asking about the use of the diagnostic criteria for depression.

The question read: "When diagnosing depression, how often do you determine whether the patients meet the DSM-IV diagnostic criteria for major depressive disorder?" A multiple choice response offered the following answers: a) less than 25% of the time; b) 26-50% of the time; c) 51-75% of the time and d) more than 75% of the time......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

February 3, 2010, 8:16 AM CT

Mechanical forces could affect gene expression

University of Michigan scientists have shown that tension on DNA molecules can affect gene expression---the process at the heart of biological function that tells a cell what to do.

Researchers understand the chemistry involved in gene expression, but they know little about the physics. The U-M group is thought to bethe first to actually demonstrate a mechanical effect at work in this process. Their paper is reported in the current edition of Physical Review Letters

"We have shown that small forces can control the machinery that turns genes on and off. There's more to gene regulation than biochemistry. We have to look at mechanics too," said Jens-Christian Meiners, associate professor in the Department of Physics and director of the biophysics program.

A better understanding of how cells regulate themselves could lead to new insights into how the process could fail and lead to disease.

"When cells start to misinterpret regulatory signals, cardiac disease, birth defects, and cancer can result. In fact, mechanical signals have been implicated as a culprit in a variety of pathologies," said Joshua Milstein, a research fellow in the Department of Physics.

To perform their experiment, the researchers used custom "optical tweezers," or lasers, to pull on the ends of bacterial DNA strands with 200 femtonewtons of force, said Yih-Fan Chen, a doctoral student in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. Chen designed and built the tweezers......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

February 3, 2010, 8:12 AM CT

Social barriers in Parkinson's disease

People with Parkinson's disease suffer social difficulties simply because of the way they talk, a McGill University researcher has discovered. Marc Pell, at McGill's School of Communication Sciences and Disorders, has learned that a number of people develop negative impressions about individuals with Parkinson's disease, based solely on how they communicate. These perceptions limit opportunities for social interaction and full participation in society for those with the disease, reducing their quality of life. Pell's research offers the public a better understanding of the difficulties these patients face as well as an opportunity to promote greater inclusiveness.

The research was conducted in collaboration with Abhishek Jaywant, a research trainee in McGill's Neuropragmatics and Emotion Lab, and with financial support from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Fonds de la recherche en sant du Qubec. Aging adults both with and without Parkinson's were recorded as they described visual scenes. Their voices were then played to listeners who were unaware of the speaker's health status. Those with Parkinson's disease were perceived as less interested, less involved, less happy and less friendly than aging speakers without the disease. Negative impressions of their personality were specifically correlation to changes in the speaking voices caused by the disease, not the ability to describe the scenes......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

February 1, 2010, 8:21 AM CT

Earlier Surgery Can Stop Seizures

When medicine fails to control seizures in children with tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC), a rare genetic disorder that affects multiple organ systems and frequently causes epilepsy, surgery to remove part of the brain is often necessary. But pre-surgical testing, which involves the implanting of electrodes into a child's head, can lead to longer hospital stays and greater risks from surgery.

Now, a study by scientists with UCLA's Pediatric Epilepsy Surgery Program has observed that an alternative, non-invasive approach to pre-surgical testing, along with earlier consideration for surgery, is linked to the best seizure-free surgical outcome in patients with TSC.

"Surgery to remove the portion of the brain causing the epilepsy is the most successful therapy for children with TSC and intractable epilepsy, but mapping which parts to take out can be challenging in a disease with multiple tubers in the brain and therefore multiple potential seizure-generating regions," said lead study author Dr. Joyce Wu, an associate professor of pediatric neurology at Mattel Children's Hospital at UCLA.

"The standard test of implanting electrodes into the patient's head is uncomfortable, leads to a prolonged hospital stay with increased costs, and potentially increases the risks from surgery," she said. "Our study looked at the effectiveness of our non-invasive, diagnostic imaging approach, which appeared to work just as well"......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

February 1, 2010, 8:17 AM CT

New vaccine effective in preventing TB

Investigators from Dartmouth Medical School (DMS) have reported results of a clinical trial showing that a new vaccine against tuberculosis, Mycobacterium vaccae (MV), is effective in preventing tuberculosis in people with HIV infection. The DarDar Health Study, named for Dartmouth and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, observed that MV immunization reduced the rate of definite tuberculosis by 39 percent among 2,000 HIV-infected patients in Tanzania.

The study appears in the January 29, 2010 online issue of the journal AIDS, and it would be reported in the March print issue of AIDS.

"Since development of a new vaccine against tuberculosis is a major international health priority, particularly for patients with HIV infection, we and our Tanzanian collaborators are very encouraged by the results of the DarDar Study," said Principal Investigator Ford von Reyn, M.D., director of the DarDar International Programs for the Section on Infectious Disease and International Health at DMS.

The 7-year, randomized, placebo-controlled trial was conducted in Tanzania with collaborators at the Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS) in Dar es Salaam, and was supported by a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States. As per Kisali Pallangyo, M.D., the senior collaborator at MUHAS, "The study confirms that University institutions from the northern and southern hemispheres can establish partnerships to perform quality clinical research work with global importance. The results of the study are not only good news for people living in regions with high infection rates of HIV and tuberculosis but has also contributed to capacity building in performing TB vaccine trials among HIV infected persons in Tanzania"......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

February 1, 2010, 7:37 AM CT

Any possible risk associated with low-dose radiation exposure

Scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Center are incorporating radiation dose exposure reports into the electronic medical record, an effort that they hope will lead to an accurate evaluation of whether any cancer risk is linked to low-dose radiation exposure from medical imaging tests, as per an article in the recent issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology (JACR). The electronic medical record allows for the storage, retrieval, and manipulation of one's medical records.

There is much controversy surrounding diagnostic medical radiation exposure. "One widely publicized appraisal of medical radiation exposure suggested that about 1.5 to 2 percent of all cancers in the USA might be caused by the clinical use of CT alone," said David A. Bluemke, MD, main author of the article and director of Radiology and Imaging Sciences at the NIH Clinical Center. "Since there is no epidemiologic data directly relating Computerized axial tomography scanning to cancer deaths, scientific evaluation must instead rely on the relationship between radiation exposure and death rates from Japanese atomic bomb survivors. While the legitimacy of this approach remains debated, radiologists as well as clinicians may rightfully be confused by the ongoing controversy. Patients seeking medical help may legitimately question the rationale of, and any risks from, diagnostic radiology tests," said Bluemke......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

February 1, 2010, 7:34 AM CT

Obstructive Sleep Apnea and Brain

A study in the Feb. 1 issue of the journal SLEEP found gray matter concentration deficits in multiple brain areas of people with severe obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). The study suggests that the memory impairment, cardiovascular disturbances, executive dysfunctions, and dysregulation of autonomic and respiratory control frequently observed in OSA patients appears to be correlation to morphological changes in brain structure.

Results indicate that in newly diagnosed men with severe OSA, gray matter concentrations were significantly decreased in multiple brain areas, including limbic structures, prefrontal cortices and the cerebellum. Optimized voxel-based morphometry, an automated processing technique for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), was used to characterize structural differences in gray matter by examining the entire brain, rather than a particular region.

"Gray matter" refers to the cerebral cortex, where most information processing in the brain takes place. It is a layer of tissue that coats the surface of the cerebrum and the cerebellum and is gray in appearance, lacking the myelin insulation that makes most other parts of the brain appear to be white.

Principal investigator Seung Bong Hong, MD, PhD, professor of neurology at the Samsung Medical Center in Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine in Seoul, South Korea, said the study emphasizes the importance of diagnosing and effectively treating severe OSA......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source