May 20, 2009, 5:20 AM CT

Protein erbin could become treatment target

A new protein identified as critical to insulating the wiring that connects the brain and body could one day be a therapy target for divergent diseases, from rare ones that lower the pain threshold to cancer, Medical College of Georgia scientists say.

They report this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Online Early Edition that in the peripheral nervous system that controls arms and legs, the protein erbin regulates the protein neuregulin 1, stabilizing and interacting with the ErbB2 receptor on Schwann cells so they can make myelin, which insulates the wiring.

Their studies in mice have shown that when erbin is missing or mutated, the insulation is inadequate, slowing communication.

"Erbin is like a tuner to make signaling stronger or weaker," says Dr. Lin Mei, the study's corresponding author and director of MCG's Institute of Molecular Medicine and Genetics.

Without erbin, the myelin production system falls apart. Eventually raw, over-exposed nerves can die.

"Receptors for neuregulin 1 just get degraded and lost," says Dr. Mei, Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Neuroscience. "Schwann cells can see neuregulin 1 sitting there but they can't do anything without the receptor".

Impaired myelin formation and maintenance is implicated in a variety of neurological and psychiatric diseases including schizophrenia, multiple sclerosis and Charcot-Marie-Tooth neuropathy, a genetic, progressive disease that weakens muscles......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

May 20, 2009, 5:17 AM CT

Health Care Workers Train Through Medical Simulation

Soldiers and pilots use simulation training to learn accuracy, safety and confidence. Now, University of Missouri medical, nursing, health professions and University of Missouri- Kansas City pharmacy instructors are using medical simulation to train students to recognize safety risks, communicate effectively and work with other health professionals.

"Effective training is needed to help students recognize safety issues, such as assuring that medicine and infection risks are minimized, before they enter professional health care settings," said Carla Dyer, assistant professor in the MU School of Medicine. "We are addressing this need by emphasizing lessons in patient safety and quality of care through clinical simulation training for students".

MU medical and nursing students, respiratory treatment students, health management and informatics students, and UMKC pharmacy students participate in interdisciplinary simulations that mimic busy emergency rooms. A typical simulation is hectic - crying babies, people shouting in pain and asking for help. Students are orientated to the scenario and then must work together to efficiently treat several patients. Students are instructed to identify and alleviate various safety risks while communicating with the 'patients' and each other......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

May 8, 2009, 5:16 AM CT

The cardiovascular benefits of daily exercise

School children as young as 11 can benefit from a daily exercise programme in reducing their levels of several known risk factors for cardiovascular disease. A research study that's ongoing, which began four years ago in the German city of Leipzig, shows already that children assigned to daily exercise lessons reduced their overall prevalence of obesity, improved their exercise capacity, increased their levels of HDL-cholesterol, and reduced their systolic blood pressure.

"It's clear that children today have different lifestyles from the past," says investigator Dr Claudia Walther from the Heart Centre of the University of Leipzig. "They're less active, and it was our hypothesis that an increase in their exercise activity would result in fewer risks of cardiovascular disease during the later part of life".

The study, whose first-year results are reported at EuroPRevent 2009, randomised 188 school children with a mean age of 11.1 years (from seven classes at three different high schools) to either an active exercise programme in their school routine, or to a conventional curriculum of just two sports lessons a week. The exercise programme comprised daily supervised exercise which included at least 15 minutes of endurance training. "So it was well controlled," says Dr Walther, "with the teachers making sure that the programme was followed"......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

May 8, 2009, 5:07 AM CT

No insurance? No colonoscopy

John M Inadomi highlights the disparity in colorectal cancer screening (CRCS) among different socioeconomic and ethnic groups in US society in a recent review published by F1000 Medicine Reports (www.f1000medicine.com/reports).

Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related death in the developed world. In this report, John Inadomi, chief of Clinical Gastroenterology at the San Francisco General Hospital and a frequent contributor to F1000 Medicine, writes that the uptake of certain types of screening has been associated with inadequate medical insurance amongst the poorer socio-economic and ethnic groups.

Of the several screening modalities currently available, colonoscopy, sigmoidoscopy and fecal occult blood testing (FOBT) have been shown to reduce colorectal cancer incidence or mortality. Inadomi draws attention to the high prevalence of 'flat' colonic lesions since some screening methods are less likely to detect flat lesions, patients who opt for these modalities (e.g. for financial reasons) could be at risk of lesions being missed.

One study cited in Inadomi's report observed that "African-American women were half as likely as white women to report having undergone screening by colonoscopy." Added to this, awareness of the different tests for CRCS was significantly lower among African-Americans than whites. Correspondingly, there was a similar significant difference in lack of medical insurance coverage between these groups......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

May 7, 2009, 10:14 PM CT

Preventing osteo-necrosis of the jaw from bisphosphonates

Patients with breast cancer, individuals at risk for osteoporosis and those undergoing certain types of bone cancer therapies often take drugs containing bisphosphonates. These drugs have been found to place people who are at risk for developing osteonecrosis of the jaws (a rotting of the jaw bones). Dentists, as well as oncologists, are now using X-rays to detect "ghost sockets" in patients that take these drugs and when these sockets are found, it signals that the jawbone is not healing the right way. Early detection of these ghost sockets can help the patient avoid permanent damage to their jawbone, as per an article in the March/April 2009 issue of General Dentistry, the Academy of General Dentistry's (AGD) clinical, peer-evaluated journal.

A ghost socket occurs when the jawbone is not healing and repairing itself the right way. "The good news is that even though these ghost sockets may occur, by using radiographic techniques we can see that the soft tissue above these sockets can still heal," as per Kishore Shetty, DDS, MS, MRCS, main author of the report. Dr. Shetty states these findings are important news to learn about because early prevention and detection can halt permanent damage from happening to a patient's jawbone.

In 2006, about 191 million prescriptions of oral bisphosphonates worldwide were written. The National Osteoporosis Foundation estimates that nearly 44 million people in the United States are at risk for developing osteoporosis. Currently, approximately 10 million Americans suffer from the disease......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

May 5, 2009, 5:24 AM CT

What teens don't know about OTC medications

Teens, who are starting to make more decisions about their own health care, may not know enough about over-the-counter pain medications to avoid complications or inadvertent misuse.

A University of Rochester Medical Center study surveyed almost 100 young people between 14 and 20 years old and observed that the average score on series of questions about knowledge of over-the-counter medicine was 44 percent. Despite that obvious knowledge gap, more than 75 percent of them had taken over-the-counter medications in the prior month.

"This tells health professionals that we need to teach our young people about safe use of over-the-counter pain medications," said Karen Wilson, M.D., M.P.H., senior instructor of Pediatrics and author of the abstract at the Pediatric Academic Society meeting in Baltimore today.

The teens reported that they most often took Tylenol and ibuprofen. Eventhough 35 percent of the teens reported knowing what acetaminophen was, 37 percent of these teens did not correctly identify acetaminophen and Tylenol as the same medication.

"Taken properly, acetaminophen is a safe and effective medication, but chronic misuse and overdoses can cause liver damage," Wilson said. "Plus, they are in a lot of compound medications that include acetaminophen and ibuprofen, so it's easy to accidentally take a more than you should"......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

May 4, 2009, 5:21 AM CT

Moving gene therapy forward

Gene treatment is the introduction of genetic material into a patient's cells resulting in a cure or a therapeutic effect. In recent years, it has been shown that gene treatment is a promising technology to treat or even cure several fatal diseases for which there is no attractive alternative treatment. Gene treatment can be used for hereditary diseases, but also for other diseases that affect heart, brain and even for cancer. Indeed, recent results suggest that gene treatment can be beneficial for patients suffering from aggressive brain cancer that would otherwise be lethal.

A safe delivery of the genes?

Despite the overall progress, there is still a need to develop improved and safer approaches to deliver genes into cells. The success of gene treatment ultimately depends on these gene delivery vehicles or vectors. Most vectors have been derived from virusses that can be tailor-made to deliver therapeutic genes into the patients' cells. However, some of these viral vectors can induce side-effects, including cancer and inflammation.

Marinee Chuah, Thierry VandenDriessche, Eyayu Belay and their fellow VIB scientists at K.U. Leuven in collaboration with Zsuzsanna Iszvak and Zoltan Ivics and his colleagues at the Max Delbrck Center in Berlin (Gera number of) have now developed a new non-viral approach that overcomes some of the limitations linked to viral vectors......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

May 1, 2009, 5:09 AM CT

Institution of a bedtime routine improves sleep

A study in the May 1 issue of the journal SLEEP demonstrates that the use of a consistent bedtime routine contributes to improvements in multiple aspects of infant and toddler sleep, bedtime behavior and maternal mood.

Results indicate that the establishment of a nightly bedtime routine produced significant reductions in problematic sleep behaviors for infants and toddlers. Improvements were seen in latency and sleep onset and in the number and duration of night wakings. Toddlers were less likely to call out to their parents or get out of their crib/bed during the night. Sleep continuity increased and there was a significant decrease in the number of mothers who rated their child's sleep as problematic. Maternal mood also significantly improved.

As per the study, sleep problems are one of the most common concerns of parents of young children; approximately 20 to 30 percent of infants and toddlers experience sleep difficulties. Prior studies have observed that successful therapy of children's sleep problems with behavioral interventions also result in improvements in parental well-being.

As per principal investigator, Jodi Mindell, PhD, professor of psychology at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia, PA., creating a bedtime routine is an easy change that can significantly improve both the child's sleep and the mother's quality of life......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

April 30, 2009, 5:23 AM CT

Limping rat provides sciatica insights

A newly developed animal model for the painful nerve condition known as sciatica should help scientists diagnose and treat it, as per Duke University bioengineers and surgeons.

Sciatica is not a single disorder, but rather a diverse range of symptoms, such as numbness or pain from the lower back to the feet, radiating leg pain or difficulty in controlling the leg. It is often caused by compression, or pinching, of any of the five nerve roots that combine to make up the sciatic nerve. These roots are the parts of the nerve that pass through openings in the spine to the spinal cord.

Surgical simulation of nerve compression in rats was led by Mohammed Shamji, a neurosurgery resident and recent Ph.D. graduate working in the laboratory of senior researcher Lori Setton, professor of biomedical engineering and surgery at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering. Shamji and post-doctoral research fellow Kyle Allen found that the animals' gait became asymmetric, and that they over-responded to temperature changes and touch in their limbs after the surgery.

They also found, for the first time, that the physical symptoms experienced by the affected animals seemed to be associated with an increase in levels of interleukin-17 (IL-17), a protein involved in regulating the inflammatory response. Elevated levels of IL-17 have already been implicated in such autoimmune diseases as rheumatoid arthritis and asthma......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

April 30, 2009, 5:15 AM CT

Simulated gene therapy

In a recent issue of The Journal of Chemical Physics, published by the American Institute of Physics (AIP), a group of scientists at the University of California, Berkeley and Los Alamos National Laboratory describe the first comprehensive, molecular-level numerical study of gene treatment. Their work should help researchers design new experimental gene therapies and possibly solve some of the problems linked to this promising technique.

"There are several barriers to gene delivery," says Nikolaos Voulgarakis of Berkeley, the main author on the paper. "The genetic material must be protected during transit to a cell, it must pass into a cell, it must survive the cell's defense mechanisms, and it must enter into the cell's guarded nucleus".

If all of these barriers can be overcome, gene treatment would be a valuable technique with profound clinical implications. It has the potential to correct many human diseases that result from specific genes in a person's DNA makeup not functioning properly -- or at all. Gene treatment would provide a mechanism to replace these specific genes, swapping out the bad for the good. If doctors could safely do this, they could treat or even cure diseases like cystic fibrosis, certain types of cancer, sickle cell anemia, and many rare inherited disorders......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source