_ Sleep Health Get Back to Sleep - Without Drugs By Jane Farrell article From the Cleveland Clinic We’ve all been there. You are wide awake at 3 a.m., your mind racing with a rising sense of panic about the difficult day ahead if you don’t fall back to sleep. What you’re experiencing is a type of insomnia, says sleep disorders specialist Harneet Walia, MD, DABSM, of Cleveland Clinic’s Sleep Disorders Center.
Monitoring Reactions to AD Risk Status By article A new clinical trial will begin soon at the University of Pennsylvania to test whether early medical intervention in people at risk for Alzheimer's can slow down progression of disease before symptoms emerge. As part of the overall prevention trial, Penn Medicine neurodegenerative ethics experts will monitor how learning about their risk of developing Alzheimer's impacts trial participants. The trial was outlined in March 2014 in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
_ PCPs Must Know More About Menopause By article According to Susan G. Kornstein, MD, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Women's Health, "It is essential that new curricula be developed to train internists in the core competencies needed to manage menopausal symptoms."
_ A Discovery That Could Help Control Blood Sugar By Jane Farrell article Researchers have found that a molecule may help control high blood sugar, and the discovery could lead to new targeted therapies for 25 million Americans who have type 2 diabetes. Scientists from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center showed that lipid molecules called phosphatidic acids enhance glucose production in the liver. So inhibiting the production of phosphatidic acids could do the opposite, helping to control blood sugar.
_ The Aging Brain Needs REST By article Researchers at the Harvard Medical School have discovered that a gene regulator called REST, which is active during fetal brain development, switches back on later in life to protect aging neurons from stresses including the toxic effects of abnormal proteins. The team also showed that REST is lost in critical brain regions of people with Alzheimer's and mild cognitive impairment.
_ Mental & Emotional Health Reducing Anxiety? ThereΓÇÖs an App for That. By article Playing a science-based mobile gaming app for 25 minutes can reduce anxiety in stressed individuals, according to research done at Hunter College in NYC and the City University of New York and published in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The study suggests that "gamifying" a scientifically-supported intervention could offer measurable mental health and behavioral benefits for people with relatively high levels of anxiety.
Five Questions to Ask Your Surgeon Before An Operation By Jane Farrell article From the Mayo Clinic The news that you will need surgery can prompt many questions and a lot of anxiety. Beyond details about your medical condition and treatment options, what should you ask your surgeon before the operation? Whatever you need to ask to be comfortable with the decisions you make about your care, says Robert Cima, M.D., a colon and rectal surgeon and chair of Mayo’s surgical quality subcommittee.
_ Too Many Unnecessary Brain Scans By Jane Farrell article The cost of brain scans for headache patients has reached $1 billion annually, a study has found. But many of the scans are unnecessary. Research from the University of Michigan Medical School found that 12 percent of doctor visits in the U.S. for headache resulted in a brain scan. Several national guidelines for physician advise against scanning the brains of patients who complain of headache and migraine. Still, the rate of brain scans is rising, not falling, since the guidelines were issued.
_ Androgen Deprivation Therapy Ineffective For Early-Stage Prostate Cancer By Jane Farrell article Men who got androgen deprivation therapy as the primary treatment in the early stages of prostate cancer didn’t live any longer than those who got no treatment at all, a study shows. The researchers say that this conclusion, along with the risk of serious side effects such as heart disease and diabetes, “mitigates against any clinical or policy rationale for use of primary androgen deprivation therapy [PADT] in these men.”
_ Heart Health "Bendopnea" = Heart Failure Symptom By article University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center cardiologists have defined a novel heart failure symptom in advanced heart failure patients: shortness of breath while bending over, such as when putting on shoes. The cardiologists dubbed he condition “bendopnea”, which is pronounced “bend-op-nee-ah”/ The easily detectable symptom can help doctors diagnose excessive fluid retention in patients with heart failure, according to the findings published in a March 2014 edition of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology: Heart Failure.
Heart Health New "Heart Attack Gene" Discovered By Jane Farrell article Researchers have found a previously undiscovered gene variation that reduces heart attack risk, and the discovery could lead to better treatment of high cholesterol and related disorders. The finding, by a team from the University of Michigan and the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, took six years of analysis.
_ Doctors Prescribe Medicines that May Not Be Best for Patients By Jane Farrell article When it comes to choosing which medications to prescribe, patients may have as much influence as physicians, a study has found. Researchers said that that patient requests for specific medications—often spurred by direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising—have a substantial impact on doctors' prescribing decisions. "A patient request for a specific medication dramatically increases the rate at which physician s prescribe that medication," said lead researcher John B. McKinlay, PhD, of New England Research Institutes, Watertown, Mass.
_ When Medicine Does More Harm Than Good By Jane Farrell article About 20 percent of older Americans with chronic conditions are taking medicines that work against each other, according to a new study. In other words, the medication being used to treat one condition can make another condition worse. The problem affects millions of Americans, since three out of four older adults have multiple chronic conditions.
_ PSA Screening Down Since 2012 By article Researchers at Case Western Reserve University and University Hospitals Case Medical Center have assessed the impact of the 2012 U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommendations against routine prostate specific antigen (PSA) cancer screenings. The 2012 report cited evidence that the risks of screening outweigh the benefits. Results of the current study indicate that the USPSTF recommendations have resulted in a decrease in the number of PSA screenings ordered by doctors, with the greatest decline seen among urologists.
_ Tx Guidelines for MRSA Skin Infections By article Cases of skin infections caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) have increased greatly since the early 2000s. Skin abscesses such pus-filled boils or pimples with discharge characterize these infections, according to a March 12th 2014 release from the University of California, Los Angeles written by Rachel Champeau. She reports the more virulent form of the infection can result in potentially lethal conditions including necrotizing pneumonia, fasciitis, and sepsis.
_ Fillers Can Cause Bacterial Infections By article Many people have fillers injected into their facial tissue to give them “bee-stung lips” or to smooth out their wrinkles. Unfortunately, a lot of cosmetic treatment customers experience unpleasant side effects in the form of tender subcutaneous lumps that are difficult to treat and which - in isolated cases - have led to lesions that simply will not heal.
_ Solving The Lithium Problem By Jane Farrell article A safer form of lithium is on the horizon, researchers say. The drug, one of the most widely used to treat bipolar disorder has a serious drawback of toxicity. But investigators from the University of South Florida discovered that an oral variation, lithium salicylate, maintains steady levels of the drug for up to 48 hours without the toxic “spike” that happens with the rapid absorption of FDA-approved lithium carbonate. Their study results appear in RSC Advances, the journal of the Royal Society of Chemistry.