Medical News

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The American Academy of Dermatology will hold its Academy 2000 summer scientific meeting in Nashville, Aug. 2-6.

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A biodegradable arterial stent, a tube that is inserted into clogged blood vessels to restore proper blood flow, has been successfully tested in human patients for the first time, researchers report in Circulation (7-24-00).

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EBCT, a non-invasive test that measures calcium in the blood vessels, may, in some groups of patients, be about 70 percent specific for detecting blocked arteries, according to a new study reported in Circulation (7-24-00).

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Teenagers and young adults who have risk factors for heart disease have fatty plaques in their arteries that indicate varying stages of atherosclerosis, according to a study in Circulation (7-24-00).

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Use of the recreational drug Ecstasy causes a severe reduction in the amount of serotonin in the brain, according to a study in the July 25 Neurology.

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A panel of scientific experts told researchers attending the 41st Annual Meeting of the American Society of Pharmacognosy that not all Ginkgo biloba extracts are the same.

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The first controlled study of muscle dysmorphia found that weightlifters with the disorder differed strikingly from normal weightlifters on many measures, including body dissatisfaction, eating attitudes, prevalence of anabolic steroid use, and lifetime prevalence of mood, anxiety and eating disorders (American Journal of Psychiatry, 8-00).

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College-aged men in the U.S., Austria and France said they want -- and believe women would prefer -- a body with at least 27 more pounds of muscle than what they possess. Austrian females actually preferred an ordinary, less muscular male physique (American Journal of Psychiatry, 8-00).

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The Internet has emerged as a place to find virtual support groups for a wide variety of medical disorders. However, there are people who misuse these groups, offering false stories of personal illness or crisis, says a UAB psychiatrist.

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A link between how primary care physicians structured their questions in e-mails and whether specialist consultants answered the questions without requesting a formal consultation was found by a University of Iowa Health Care study (Archives of Family Medicine, 6-00).

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A novel family of anti-cancer compounds called acylfulvenes, discovered by two scientists at the University of California, San Diego, more than 10 years ago from toxins of the poisonous jack-o'-lantern mushroom, is showing promise as a highly effective chemotherapy agent.

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In the July 17 The Weekly Standard, the head of Johns Hopkins psychiatry comments on his specialty's checkered course, from the dark days when Freud stood on a pedestal, to the present, which he likens to "Russia after the fall of communism."

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The new UCSD School of Pharmacy, which will accept its first class in Sept. 2001, will provide academically based professional training for pharmacists, and foster pharmaceutical sciences research and public service programs to advance the science and practice of pharmacy.

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Following a national search, Duke University Dean and Vice Chancellor Edward W. Holmes has been named as the new UCSD vice chancellor for health sciences and dean of the school of medicine.

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LASIK surgery is far better at correcting farsightedness than photorefractive keratectomy, ophthalmologists at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas have discovered (Transactions of the American Ophthalmological Society).

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A drug currently used to fight other viral diseases also may be effective against the West Nile virus that caused the outbreak of encephalitis in New York last summer, a UC Irvine research team has found.

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The Association of American Medical Colleges announces the online availability of the journal Academic Medicine for the first time; Academic Medicine is the oldest English-language peer-reviewed journal devoted to issues related to the training of physicians.

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Press conference will be held to announce new coalition of hospitals, health systems, national hospital associations and businesses focused on preserving access to health care services for communities across America.

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A $200,000 gift from Marla Oros, an assistant dean at the University of Maryland School of Nursing, and her entrepreneur husband, David Oros, will make it possible for the school to purchase and outfit a third mobile health clinic to serve uninsured children and adults in Maryland.

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Radiologists do better than other professionals on the examination given to those vying to be certified or recertified readers of radiographs for potential occupational lung disease patients, according to a commentary (American Journal of Roentgenology, 8-00).

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In a study comparing the effectiveness of neural network software and experienced human observers, three Boston radiologists have found that the computer makes an excellent consultant (American Journal of Roentgenology, 8-00).

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Curious children and developmental biologists have long pondered the question: what makes a thumb a thumb, a pinky a pinky. The answer Wisconsin researchers have found may force scientists to revise theories of the way developing cells become fingers or spines (Science, 7-21-00).

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1- A greater rate of hospitalization associated with occupational asthma; 2- A high incidence of clinically silent acid reflux detected among asthma patients; 3- Diesel exhaust tests show tiny particles cause airway inflammation in normal subjects.

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Steven D. Douglas, director of the Section of Immunology at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, received the Erwin Neter Award of the Association of Medical Laboratory Immunologists; this national award recognizes major lifetime accomplishments.

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In the July 20 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) report on the largest study ever done on screening the entire colon for cancer in people without symptoms.

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Astrocytes are part of the brain's communication network; and levels of calcium necessary to stimulate glutamate release from astrocytes are in the normal physiological range, says Iowa State University research (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 7-18-00).

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The FDA recently approved the testing of a new artificial kidney machine co-developed by a Professor Emeritus at the University of Missouri School of Medicine; the personal hemodialysis system provides daily, effortless home dialysis.

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By moderately increasing the intensity of your workout, you can gain the same health benefits from weight training twice a week as you would from working out three days a week, say Arkansas exercise scientists.

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The use of electrocardiograms (ECGs) to detect heart disease in competitive athletes has definite limitations and its results should be confirmed with other tests, according to a recent study of Italian Olympians published in today's Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

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Cancer researchers hailed the recent study of cancer in twins in the New England Journal of Medicine as continuing evidence of the importance of diet in the prevention of cancer.

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The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and its partners on the Quality Interagency Coordination Task Force are sponsoring a national summit on medical errors and patient safety research on September 11, 2000, in Washington, DC.

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In a study published in the July issue of the journal Stroke, Dr. Mitchell S.V. Elkind found that people infected with Chlamydia pneumoniae were four-and-a-half times more likely to have suffered a first ischemic stroke than their counterparts who had not been exposed to the bacterium.

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The pacemaker has taken on an increasingly important role in recent years. Originally used to fix electrical abnormalities in people with irregular heart rhythms, it is now in favor for heart failure patients as a way to "resynchronize" a weak and struggling heart.

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When a car crash in Indiana took the life of 18-year-old Jonathon in mid-June, his mother and other family members decided to offer his organs for transplantation to save other lives. One of those was the life of John Bender, 62, a resident of southern California, who was distantly related to the donor on both his mother's and father's sides of the family.

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Strong evidence that cognitive tests may be useful for signaling Alzheimer's Disease years before other symptoms appear has been reported in the June issue of the Archives of Neurology.

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A significant percentage of all school-age children may be incorrectly diagnosed as having ADHD, when, in fact, they have CAPD. The good news, according to Frank Musiek, Ph.D., Director of Audiology at the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, is that CAPD is treatable if correctly diagnosed.

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The American College of Chest Physicians has issued new recommendations to assist physicians in the diagnosis of a serious and often fatal condition, ventilator-associated pneumonia (CHEST).

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Aerobic exercise -- and physical work -- are much harder for women who do not have adequate iron in their systems but who are not yet anemic, according to a Cornell University study in the Journal of Applied Physiology (Vol. 88, 2000).

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Chewing gum containing xylitol, a sweetener with antimicrobial properties, temporarily suppresses bacteria that cause tooth decay, according to university researchers in a study in the July Journal of the American Dental Association.

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Two studies comparing the triple nucleoside regimen of Ziagen(r) (abacavir sulfate) plus Combivir(r) (lamivudine/zidovudine) with triple-drug regimens containing protease inhibitors as first-line antiretroviral therapy were presented at the 13th International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa.

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Preliminary results of a study of the protease inhibitor Agenerase(r) (amprenavir), presented at the 13th International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa, suggest that plasma levels of amprenavir are raised by adding a low dose of the PI ritonavir.

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One of the fastest growing trends in the field of pharmacy is the third-party payment plan, where insurance companies sign contracts with drug companies to provide certain medications at a set price with a small professional fee provided for the pharmacist.

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To better understand disease, first understand normal, healthy conditions. That's the rationale for the first comprehensive MRI study of normal brain development in children.

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Wearing a special kind of contact lens while sleeping may help a nearsighted person go without contacts or glasses during the day, a new Ohio State study has found (Optometry and Vision Science).

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The hypothesis that the composer of one of the world's best known lullabies suffered from a common sleep disorder was advanced in a special article in the July issue of CHEST.

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A two-year study conducted at an urban teaching hospital's medical and surgical intensive care units showed that 147 persons (almost 30 percent) of 492 critically ill patients who had a bloodstream infection received inadequate antimicrobial therapy, with 91 of those individuals (about 62 percent) dying (CHEST, 7-00).

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In separate reports this month, two groups of scientists announce they have restored eyesight to patients with previously untreatable corneal damage, using novel tissue bioengineering techniques. One report appears in the July 13 NEJM; the other in the July Cornea.

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The 52nd Annual Meeting of the American Association for Clinical Chemistry being held July 23-27, 2000 in San Francisco updates recent progress in HIV viral load, phenotyping and genotyping; Down syndrome screening; male infertility treatments; prostate and ovarian cancer markers; identifying heavy drinkers; and the genetic diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease.

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UIC researchers are studying a simple, objective measure of levels of sleepiness to help diagnose and treat disorders such as narcolepsy and sleep apnea.

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Of the 850 paralyzing spinal cord injuries that result from diving accidents each year, more than 300 occur at home pools.