Feature Channels: Blood

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Patients with unexplained low blood counts and abnormally mutated cells who do not fit the diagnostic criteria for recognized blood cancers should be described as having clonal cytopenias of undetermined significance (CCUS), suggest University of California, San Diego School of Medicine researchers in a recent paper published in the journal Blood. The researchers found the condition surprisingly common in older patients with low blood counts.

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Blood drawing for patients with hard-to-reach veins just became a lot easier and less painful at The Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, NJ, thanks to a small hand-held device that lights up veins like a roadmap. With the AccuVein illumination device, the need for multiple needle sticks to try to hit a good vein for a blood draw is a thing of the past.

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Hematology researchers have safely and effectively treated children and young adults for autoimmune blood disorders in a multicenter clinical trial. Patients had a durable, complete response in one of those conditions, called ALPS.

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• Hypoxia-inducible factor prolyl hydroxylase inhibitors (HIF-PHIs) create a low-oxygen state to stimulate the body to make more red blood cells. • The drugs generated promising results in several phase 2 clinical trials in kidney disease patients with anemia.

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Mayo Clinic researchers in Rochester, Minnesota, collaborated with the University of Mississippi Medical Center on a recent study, “Troponin T as a Predictor of End-Stage Renal Disease and All-Cause Death in African-American and Whites From Hypertensive Families.”

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A team led by Brown’s George Karniadakis, is using the Cray XK7 Titan supercomputer to simulate hundreds of millions of red blood cells in an attempt to develop better drug delivery methods and predictors to fight against tumor formation and sickle cell anemia.

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A unique study at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles of newborns treated with hypothermia for hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) – a condition that occurs when the brain is deprived of an adequate oxygen supply – confirms its neuroprotective effects on the brain.

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Researchers in Manchester have demonstrated for the first time the relative safety and effectiveness of treatment, eltrombopag, in children with persistent or chronic immune thrombocytopenia (ITP), as part of an international duo of studies.

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An electronic system that monitors how physicians give blood to patients after an operation has enabled a 22-hospital system with thousands of doctors to significantly reduce the amount of blood transfusions patients receive, cutting costs by $2.5 million over two years.

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Numerous studies have identified obesity and poor diet as risk factors for insulin resistance and diabetes. Now, a new study adds another risk factor to the list: inflammatory lung disease. The article is published ahead-of-print in the American Journal of Physiology - Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology.

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With the world’s elderly population expected to double by 2050, understanding how aging affects the body is an important focus for researchers globally. Cardiovascular disease, the No. 1 cause of death worldwide, often is associated with aging arteries that restrict blood flow. Now, University of Missouri researchers have identified an age-related cause of arterial dysfunction, a finding that could lead to future treatments for some forms of vascular disease.

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September is National Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) Awareness Month, and Mount Sinai Health System is reminding the community of the importance of newborn screening performed soon after birth with a blood test, education for families with this inherited condition and comprehensive care for children and adults including regular visits with a specialist can reduce complications of this illness.

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Symmetric peripheral gangrene and venous limb gangrene are identified and a rational approach to treating these conditions explored.

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Results of a phase one trial show that an investigational topical drug, resiquimod gel, causes regression of both treated and untreated tumor lesions and may completely remove cancerous cells from both sites in patients with early stage cutaneous T cell lymphoma (CTCL) – a rare type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma that affects the skin. Currently, there is no cure for CTCL aside from a bone marrow transplant. However, the new study shows that the topical gel can eliminate malignant T cells, leading to diminished lesions.

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The Endocrine Society today issued a Clinical Practice Guideline (CPG) on strategies for treating Cushing’s syndrome, a condition caused by overexposure to the hormone cortisol.

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Johns Hopkins researchers say their review of 128 medical case histories suggests that financial penalties imposed on Maryland hospitals based solely on the total number of patients who suffer blood clots in the lung or leg fail to account for clots that occur despite the consistent and proper use of the best preventive therapies.

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Researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have established the safety and dosing of a new drug for treating blood cancers.

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‘A lab at the tip of your finger’: New technology is the first of its kind to utilize only a single drop of capillary or whole blood

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A new study by researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine reveals a protein’s critical – and previously unknown -- role in the development and progression of acute myeloid leukemia (AML), a fast-growing and extremely difficult-to-treat blood cancer. The study was published July 23 in Cell Stem Cell.

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Researchers in the Division of Hematology, Oncology and Blood & Marrow Transplantation at CHLA have shown greatly improved outcomes in using stem cell transplantation to treat patients with a serious but very rare form of chronic blood cancer called juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia (JMML).

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Other topics include nursing research, treating hep C and HIV, and more

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Researchers at the University of California, School of Medicine found a new combination that effectively treats hepatitis C (HCV) patients co-infected with human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV).

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Although the causes of many age-related diseases remain unknown, oxidative stress is thought to be the main culprit. Oxidative stress has been linked to cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases including diabetes, hypertension and age-related cancers. However, researchers at the University of Missouri recently found that aging actually offered significant protection against oxidative stress. These findings suggest that aging may trigger an adaptive response to counteract the effects of oxidative stress on blood vessels.

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Indiana University School of Medicine emergency room physicians compared treatment between rivaroxaban and warfarin for deep vein thrombosis or pumonary embolism and found advantages for the patient and improved outcomes from rivaroxaban.

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On the hunt for better cancer screening tests, Johns Hopkins scientists led a proof of principle study that successfully identified tumor DNA shed into the blood and saliva of 93 patients with head and neck cancer. A report on the findings is published in the June 24 issue of Science Translational Medicine.

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The costs associated with cancer drug prices have risen dramatically over the past fifteen years, which is of concern to many top oncologists. In a new analysis, researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center concluded the majority of existing treatments for hematologic, or blood, cancers are currently priced too high to be considered cost-effective in the United States.

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Guidelines developed by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement recommend that a patient suffering from blood poisoning receive a series of care processes known as the sepsis resuscitation bundle within six yours of diagnosis. About half the time that doesn’t happen. Collaborating with researchers at Mayo Clinic, professor Huitian Lu of the South Dakota State University Department of Construction and Operations Management used a systems engineering approach to identify bottlenecks. Simulations suggest that improvements in six areas may improve the sepsis resuscitation bundle compliance rate by 21 percent.

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In preliminary experiments with mice and lab-grown cells, Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center scientists have found that a protein-signaling process accelerates the work of the gene most frequently mutated in a common form of adult leukemia and is likely necessary to bring about the full-blown disease.

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Blood and Marrow Transplantation (BMT) is a potentially curative treatment for patients with leukemia or other life-threating blood diseases. With a goal of increasing survival rates, a research team led by Roswell Park Cancer Institute (RPCI) investigators verified patient outcome data submitted by more than 150 U.S. transplant centers over an 11-year period to the Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research (CIBMTR). The detailed investigation — published in the journal Biology of Blood and Marrow Transplantation — offers insight into different causes of death. The results of this genome-wide association study led to the development of a first-of-its-kind definition of specific causes of mortality after unrelated-donor, or allogeneic, BMT.

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Older patients who received stem cells from younger, unrelated donors with higher numbers of so-called killer T cells (CD8 cells) had significantly reduced risk of disease relapse and improved survival compared to those who received stem-cells from donors with low numbers of CD8 cells, including older matched siblings.

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Bone marrow transplant and hematology specialist Hillard M. Lazarus, MD, Professor of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) School of Medicine

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New technology developed by Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) researchers makes it possible to test for current and past infections with any known human virus by analyzing a single drop of a person's blood. The method, called VirScan, is an efficient alternative to existing diagnostics that test for specific viruses one at a time.

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Chronic myelomonocytic leukemia (CMML) is a rare type of myelodysplastic, myeloproliferative neoplasm characterized by increased numbers of peripheral monocytes and less than 20 percent blasts. CMML has few treatment options and patients only survive on average for 12 to 24 months. Preclinical studies suggest that JAK2 inhibitors may be an effective treatment option for CMML. Eric Padron, M.D., assistant member of the Malignant Hematology Program at Moffitt Cancer Center will report on the first phase 1 study of the JAK2 inhibitor ruxolitinib in CMML patients at the 2015 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting in Chicago.

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Experts from the Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, Stanford, PENN, UNC, and the NIH will offer education and networking opportunities for people, families, and friends living with vasculitis, a family of rare autoimmune diseases.

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Trending news releases with the most views in a single day. Topics include: gun regulation, psychology and altruism, big data, threats to coral reefs, extra-terrestrial life, personalized diets, metabolic syndrome and heart health, new drug target to treat arthritis, and archeologists find oldest tools.

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Researchers found that the presence of a few remaining leukemia cells, called minimal residual disease (MRD), at the end of induction chemotherapy was not predictive of risk or outcome in children with T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). This opens the possibility for patients with T-cell ALL who have MRD to achieve complete remission without undergoing intensified cancer treatments and their associated toxicities.

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A study revealing fresh insight about chromosome “tails” called telomeres may provide scientists with a new way to look at developing treatments or even preventing a group of blood cell disorders known as myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS).

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Diamond Blackfan anemia (DBA), a rare inherited bone marrow failure syndrome is typically treated with glucocorticoids that cause a host of often dangerous side effects. Using a mouse model, Whitehead scientists have determined that combining the drug fenofibrate with glucocorticoids could allow for dramatically lower steroid doses in the treatment of DBA and other erythropoietin-resistant anemias. These promising results are the foundation for a clinical trial that will begin soon.

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Scientists have identified a protein on the surface of human red blood cells that serves as an essential entry point for invasion by the malaria parasite. This discovery opens up a promising new avenue for the development of therapies to treat and prevent malaria.

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UAB discovery gives better understanding of and potential therapies for septic shock and reperfusion injuries.

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Children with hemophilia A require three to four infusions each week to prevent bleeding episodes, chronic pain and joint damage. A new, extended therapy combines recombinant factor VIII with a fusion protein that allows the molecule to remain in the circulation longer – translating into a need for less frequent treatment.

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Professor Jonathan Stamler’s latest findings regarding nitric oxide have the potential to reshape fundamentally the way we think about the respiratory system – and offer new avenues to save lives. His findings were recently published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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A transgenic mouse model is a proof-of-concept that platelet blood cells that are loaded with the enzyme ADAMTS13 can be an effective treatment in murine models of thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura.

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Adults with sickle cell disease who report trouble with sleep could actually have a clinical diagnosis of sleep disordered breathing which could lower their oxygen levels at night.

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Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute have found a particular enzyme in blood stem cells that is key to maintaining healthy periods of cell inactivity; if these cells become too active and divide too often, they risk acquiring cell damage and mutations.

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Using gene therapy to produce a mutant human protein with unusually high blood-clotting power, scientists successfully treated dogs with the bleeding disorder hemophlia, without triggering an unwanted immune response.

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New Research from San Raffaele Telethon Institute for Gene Therapy and the University of North Carolina showed that a reprogrammed retrovirus could successfully transfer new clotting genes into animals with hemophilia B to safely and dramatically decrease spontaneous bleeding.

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Researchers at Johns Hopkins have successfully corrected a genetic error in stem cells from patients with sickle cell disease, and then used those cells to grow mature red blood cells, they report. The study represents an important step toward more effectively treating certain patients with sickle cell disease who need frequent blood transfusions and currently have few options.

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Treatment for painful episodes of blood vessel obstruction in sickle cell anemia is currently limited to controlling pain, but an investigational therapy might be able to interfere with the underlying cause of these events, known as vaso-occlusion crises, researchers at Duke Medicine report.