March 6, 2007, 3:27 PM CT

Photodynamic therapy for periodontal disease

Photodynamic treatment (PDT) may be an effective way to treat the bacteria linked to periodontal diseases, and could provide a better option than antibiotics or other mechanical methods for treating periodontal diseases, as per a new study reported in the recent issue of the Journal of Periodontology.

Scientists at So Paulo State University observed that using PDT was an effective method to minimize destruction of periodontal tissue which can accompany therapy for periodontal diseases. In a rat population, PDT did minimal damage to periodontal tissues, compared to other techniques including scaling and root planing and antibiotic treatment.

"We observed that PDT is significantly less invasive than other therapys for periodontal diseases," said study author Dr. Valdir Gouveia Garcia, from the Department of Periodontology at So Paulo State University. "It can provide improved dentin hypersensitivity, reduced inflammation of the tissues surrounding the teeth, and allows tissues to repair faster".

PDT may be an alternative to antibiotic therapy, which is becoming increasingly important as antibiotic resistance increases. PDT involves two stages; first, a light-sensitive drug is applied to the area. Second, a light or laser is shone on that area. When the light is combined with the drug, phototoxic reactions induce the destruction of bacterial cells. PDT was first approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1999 to treat pre-malignant skin lesions of the face or scalp......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

March 5, 2007, 4:39 PM CT

Designs For Clean Water

An MIT engineer working toward clean drinking water in Nepal describes in a recent issue of the Journal of International Development how people from developed and developing countries can work together to solve key humanitarian problems, ultimately meeting the basic human needs for security, broadly defined.

Such a collaboration "begins with a relationship among partners in the global village, taking into consideration the specific conditions of the local culture, environment and location," said Susan Murcott, a senior lecturer in MIT's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE).

Murcott haccording tosonal experience of a global engineering partnership of this kind--she calls it "co-evolutionary engineering design"--through her work in developing countries.

She and students in MIT's CEE master of engineering program have worked for years with citizens of Nepal and, since 2005, of Ghana, to design, test and distribute inexpensive household water filters that simultaneously remove arsenic and microbial contamination from the available water supply. Murcott notes that some 150 million people worldwide are affected by arsenic-tainted water, while an estimated 1 to 5 billion people worldwide lack access to microbially safe water.

As of December 2006, more than 5,000 such filters are operating across Nepal, serving some 40,000 people. An additional 5,000 filters are slated for sales and distribution in 2007 in Nepal, with further outreach into Vietnam, Cambodia and Bangladesh underway......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

March 5, 2007, 5:08 AM CT

Severe PTSD damages children's brains

Severe stress can damage a child's brain, say researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. The researchers found that children with post-traumatic stress disorder and high levels of the stress hormone cortisol were likely to experience a decrease in the size of the hippocampus - a brain structure important in memory processing and emotion.

Although similar effects have been seen in animal studies, this is the first time the findings have been replicated in children. The researchers focused on kids in extreme situations to better understand how stress affects brain development.

"We're not talking about the stress of doing your homework or fighting with your dad," said Packard Children's child psychiatrist Victor Carrion, MD. "We're talking about traumatic stress. These kids feel like they're stuck in the middle of a street with a truck barreling down at them".

Carrion, assistant professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the medical school and director of Stanford's early life stress research program, and his collaborators speculate that cognitive deficits arising from stress hormones interfere with psychiatric therapy and prolong symptoms.

The children in the study were suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, as a result of undergoing physical, emotional or sexual abuse, witnessing violence or experiencing lasting separation and loss. This type of developmental trauma often impairs the child's ability to reach social, emotional and academic milestones......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

March 5, 2007, 4:55 AM CT

Preemie Lung Treatments Turn Out To Be Safe

Preemies between 28 and 32 weeks are not harmed by a therapy no longer used to help their lungs mature before birth, as per findings of a study in this months Pediatrics. Even though prior findings based on observation suggested that repeated courses of steroids in the womb may result in brain damage, this study shows that the babies brains are virtually unaffected.

"The consensus in recent years has been to no longer give women in preterm labor more than one course of steroids because of possible adverse effects, but it means more babies are born needing ventilation," said Sanjiv Amin, M.D., assistant professor of Pediatrics at the University of Rochester Medical center and author of the study. "These findings may give us back a tool to help give these fragile babies a better chance of survival."

Before concerns arose in 2000 about safety of multiple courses of steroids, a number of mothers in on-and-off preterm labor received several rounds before delivering. Now, when mothers go into preterm labor, obstetricians will often administer only a single course of steroids to help strengthen the babys lungs upon birth. But if the birth is successfully held off for more than seven days, the mother does not receive another course of medicine and the babys lungs may not be protected......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

March 2, 2007, 5:09 AM CT

Hot tubs hurt fertility

Exposure to hot baths or hot tubs can lead to male infertility, but the effects can sometimes be reversible, as per a new study led by a University of California, San Francisco urologist.

Results from a three-year study analyzing data from infertile men who had been repeatedly exposed to high water temperatures through hot tubs, Jacuzzis or hot baths are published in the March-April 2007 issue of "International Braz J Urol," the official journal of the Brazilian Society of Urology. Study findings will be available online at www.brazjurol.com.br

"It has been believed for decades that wet heat exposure is bad for fertility, as an old wives tale, but this effect has rarely been documented," said Paul J. Turek, MD, lead investigator who is a professor in the UCSF Department of Urology and director of the UCSF Male Reproductive Health Center. "We now have actual evidence to show patients that these recreational activities are a real risk factor for male infertility".

Eventhough this was only a pilot study, Turek said, "these activities can be comfortably added to that list of lifestyle recommendations and things to avoid as men attempt to conceive".

Dry heat exposure, for instance, as presented with fevers or through applied external heat, is a well-documented cause of impaired sperm production in both animals and humans, as per Turek. This is the first published study to show that total body exposure to wet heat can also impair both sperm production and motility. Study findings also showed that the negative effect of this exposure was reversible in nearly half of the infertile men who discontinued the practice......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

March 1, 2007, 9:55 PM CT

Steroid Use Fails To Boost Pregnancy Rates

There is no clear benefit from a hormone commonly prescribed to enhance the effectiveness of infertility treatments, according to a new review of studies.

The steroid hormones called glucocorticoids have potent effects on the bodys inflammatory and immune responses, so many fertility specialists prescribe them in hopes of making the lining of the uterus more receptive to embryo implantation. But lead review author Carolien Boomsma says that routine practice should stop.

This meta-analysis shows that empirical use of glucocorticoids is not supported by evidence from studies, she said. Moreover, we dont know enough about the possible adverse effects of glucocorticoids in early pregnancy. Therefore, at present, glucocorticoids should not be prescribed in this way, said Boomsma, a researcher at the University Medical Centre Utrecht in the Netherlands.

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

The review compares success rates between would-be mothers who took glucocorticoids around the time of embryo implantation and those who did not. All of the women underwent one of two types of assisted reproductive technology. In vitro fertilization (IVF) involves removing mature eggs from a womans ovary, mixing them with sperm in the laboratory, and placing the embryos in the womans reproductive tract. Intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) is another in vitro fertilization practice where a single sperm is injected directly into a harvested egg......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

March 1, 2007, 5:03 AM CT

Few Primary Care Practitioners Offer HIV Tests

Even as the AIDS epidemic in Los Angeles County has shifted largely to Hispanics, primary care practitioners serving this segment of the population often fail to offer either HIV testing or safer sex advice to their patients, as per a new UCLA AIDS Institute study.

The study, reported in the recent issue of the Journal of the National Medical Association, observed that only 41 percent of these primary care providers including doctors, nurse practitioners and doctor assistants surveyed between March and June 2004 had regularly offered advice about sexually transmitted infection or safe sex to patients during the previous six months. Only 36 percent had offered more than 20 HIV tests during the same period, despite a recommendation by the Centers for Disease Control in 2001 that physicians in high HIVprevalence areas routinely offer HIV testing to their patients.

"What this study shows is that despite the number of new AIDS cases increasing among Hispanics in Los Angeles County, the primary care providers do not appear to be increasing their offering of HIV testing to the patients," said Dr. Rosa Solorio, assistant professor of family medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a co-author of the study.

The providers served in primarily Hispanic communities, and 57 percent reported that they spoke Spanish with the majority of their patients......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

March 1, 2007, 4:56 AM CT

New details in schizophrenia trial

Two new studies from the Clinical Antipsychotic Trials for Intervention Effectiveness (CATIE) provide more insights into comparing therapy options, and to what extent antipsychotic medications help people with schizophrenia learn social, interpersonal and community living skills. The new studies are reported in the March 2007 issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry. CATIE, a $42.6 million, multi-site study, was funded by the National Institutes of Healths National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).

Comparing Newer Antipsychotic Medications After Older One Fails

Quetiapine, and to some extent olanzapine, may be more effective than risperidone among patients who were originally taking, but had to discontinue, perphenazinean older, first generation antipsychotic medication. However, patient responses varied considerably.

"CATIE continues to fine-tune our understanding of how our arsenal of antipsychotic medications work in real-world settings, but it also is revealing to us what questions we still must address," said NIMH Director Thomas R. Insel, M.D.

Of the 257 patients who were initially randomized to perphenazine in the CATIE study, 192 discontinued the medicine for various reasons, including ineffectiveness and intolerable side effects. Among those who discontinued, 114 agreed to be re-randomized to one of three newer antipsychotic medicationsolanzapine, quetiapine or risperidone......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

February 28, 2007, 9:39 PM CT

Internet Does Not Provide Behavioral Counseling

A national survey of commercial health plans has found that most plans provide online information regarding mental health and substance abuse but few provide clinical services such as counseling via the Internet. The nationally representative health plan survey, published in Psychiatric Services, and led by Dr. Constance Horgan at Brandeis University, is one of the first to examine the prevalence of health plan-sponsored online resources for behavioral health.

"Our study is part of an ongoing effort to determine how health insurers allocate resources for alcohol and substance abuse treatmenthistorically an undermet need," said Horgan, director of the Institute for Behavioral Health, The Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis.

The survey sampled 60 nationally representative markets and included health maintenance organizations, preferred provider organizations and point-of-service plans. Most private health plans offered online provider directories; 81 percent offered educational information; two thirds offered behavioral self-assessment tools, and almost half offered online referral. About one-third offered personalized responses to questions or problems. Only two percent offered online counseling.

"Delivering behavioral health services such as counseling certainly raises more complex clinical, professional, privacy, and legal issues, than, for example, offering educational information," said Horgan. "At least in the short term, increasing use of Internet-based tools designed to facilitate and complement, rather than replace, traditional clinical services seems most likely"......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

February 27, 2007, 8:21 PM CT

To Differentiate Human Embryonic Stem Cells

Molecular researchers at the Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine for the Prevention of Human Diseases (IMM) - which is part of the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston - have developed a new procedure for the differentiation of human embryonic stem cells, with which they have created the first transplantable source of lung epithelial cells.

The process, created in the laboratory of Rick A. Wetsel, Ph.D., a professor of molecular medicine at the IMM, is described in this week's edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Research scientist Dachun Wang, M.D., is lead author of the article, "A pure population of lung alveolar epithelial type II cells derived from human embryonic stem cells".

"We have developed a reliable molecular procedure which facilitates, via genetic selection, the differentiation of human embryonic stem cells into an essentially pure population of lung epithelial cells," said Wetsel, noting the procedure also can be used to create other types of highly-specialized cells.

Researchers at the IMM used the in vitro method to create lung epithelial cells known as alveolar epithelial type II. The cells were derived from a human embryonic stem cell line approved by the National Institutes of Health (NIH)......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source