Newsline — Tuesday, December 25, 2012 8:00
MRIs Show Signs of Mild Traumatic Brain Injuries Not Found in CT Scans
Cancer Patients May Not be Receiving Best Treatment for Debilitating Fatigue
Monday, December 24, 2012 8:00
Many people who have been through cancer and its treatment have trouble with their recovery due to severe, debilitating fatigue that can last for months or even years. But even though a variety of treatments exist for cancer-related fatigue, few doctors recommend them to patients, according to a recent Mayo Clinic study that is published in Supportive Care in Cancer. The study found that few available treatment strategies are being offered or prescribed by physicians. Regular physical activity, such as walking with a pedometer, has been shown to ease fatigue. Learning stress reduction and coping techniques also can help patients alter daily habits and increase restfulness. However, only one-tenth of patients said their oncology teams instructed them to become more active or try other non-medication-related fatigue-reducing measures. In addition, more than 35 percent of patients had been offered sleep-enhancing medication, even though drugs have been shown to be the least effective approach. For more information, click here to read the full release.
Johns Hopkins’ Armstrong Institute to Help The Leapfrog Group Grade Safety, Quality of U.S. Hospitals
Friday, December 21, 2012 8:00
A team of researchers at Johns Hopkins’ Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality has been selected to provide scientific guidance to The Leapfrog Group — a national nonprofit known for publishing report cards detailing how hospitals perform in key quality and safety measures. The Johns Hopkins experts will apply their knowledge and research of health-care performance measures to guide the methodology behind the two primary mechanisms Leapfrog uses to assess hospitals: the Leapfrog Hospital Survey and the Hospital Safety Score. “Patients should have access to the most accurate and current data on hospital safety and quality when making important decisions on where they and their loved ones should receive care,” says Peter Pronovost, MD, PhD, senior vice president of quality and safety at Johns Hopkins Medicine. “This collaboration highlights The Leapfrog Group’s commitment to bringing the best information available to health care consumers.” For more information, click here to read the full release.
Methodist Hospital, Remeditex Ventures LLC Developing Brain Tumor Drug
Thursday, December 20, 2012 12:39
The Methodist Hospital in Houston and Dallas-based Remeditex Ventures LLC have entered into an exclusive agreement to develop an investigational drug for glioblastomas, the most malignant of all primary brain cancers. Current treatments only prolong survival for an average of five months. The drug MP-MUS was developed by David S. Baskin, MD, and Martyn A. Sharpe, PhD, Department of Neurosurgery researchers at the Methodist Neurological Institute and The Methodist Hospital Research Institute. This novel substance has been shown in recent studies to kill human glioblastoma cells in cell culture and in an animal model. The drug works by selectively targeting mitochondria in glioblastoma cells and destroying mitochondrial activity. Methodist’s sponsored research agreement with Remeditex could help move the drug toward human clinical trials. For more information, click here to read the full release.
Study Finds Further Evidence That Vitamin D Reduces Risk of Autism
Thursday, December 20, 2012 8:00
A study just published online in the peer-reviewed journal Dermato-Endocrinology found additional evidence that vitamin D reduces the risk of developing autism. The study examined the variation of autism prevalence by state for those aged 6-17 years in 2010. It found that states with higher solar ultraviolet-B (UVB) doses in summer or autumn had half the rate of autism as states with the lowest doses. The study also found that in the states with the least solar UVB, black-Americans had a 40 percent higher rate of autism than white-Americans. Black-Americans have lower vitamin D or serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] concentrations due to their darker skin and since solar UVB is the primary source of vitamin D for most Americans. Similar geographical variations have been noted for incidence and mortality rates for about 15 types of cancer in the U.S. The UVB-vitamin D-cancer hypothesis was proposed in 1980 based on variations in colon cancer mortality rates in the U.S. and now has strong support from observational studies and laboratory studies of mechanisms, and limited support from…
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Scientist Receives $3 Million Grant to Study Most Common Inherited Neurological Disorder
Wednesday, December 19, 2012 14:14
A Cedars-Sinai physician-scientist has been awarded a $3 million grant from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine to study Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease using new stem cell technology, the most common inherited neurological disorder, which damages nerves that control muscles. Robert H. Baloh, MD, PhD, director of the Neuromuscular Division of Cedars-Sinai’s Department of Neurology and a member of the brain program at the Cedars-Sinai’s Regenerative Medicine Institute, will lead the study of the disease, named for the three doctors who first described it in 1886. He and scientists in his Neurodegenerative Diseases Laboratory will employ induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) created at the Regenerative Medicine Institute, which conducts stem cell research and produces stem cells for study at other institutions through its iPSC Core Facility. For more information, click here to read the full release.
Researchers Uncover Cause of Microcephaly, a Rare Neurodevelopmental Disorder
Tuesday, December 18, 2012 12:00
About one in ten thousand babies is born with an abnormally small head. The cause for this disorder, known as microcephaly, is a defect in the development of the embryonic brain. Children with microcephaly are severely retarded, and their life expectancy is low. Certain cases of autism and schizophrenia also are associated with the dysregulation of brain size. The causes underlying impaired brain development can be environmental stress (such as alcohol abuse or radiation) or viral infections (such as rubella) during pregnancy. In many cases, however, a mutant gene causes the problem. David Keays, a group leader at The Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP), has found a new gene that is responsible for microcephaly. Together with PhD-student Martin Breuss, he was able to identify TUBB5 as the culprit. The gene is responsible for making tubulins, the building blocks of the cell’s internal skeleton. Whenever a cell moves or divides, it relies on guidance from this internal structure, acting like a scaffold. For more information, click here to read the full release.
Pitt Cancer Institute Discovers New Targets for Drugs to Defeat Glioblastoma Multiforme
Tuesday, December 18, 2012 8:00
University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI) researchers have identified more than 125 genetic components in a chemotherapy-resistant, brain tumor-derived cell line, which could offer new hope for drug treatment to destroy the cancer cells. The potential drug targets were identified after testing more than 5,000 genes derived from glioblastoma multiforme — the most common and aggressive type of brain tumor in adults, which accounts for about 15 percent of all brain tumors, and typically occurs in people between the ages of 45 and 70 years. The genes were evaluated for their role in responding to the chemotherapy drug temozolomide. Study results will appear in the December issue of the journal Molecular Cancer Research, also available online. “The current standard of care for people with this type of cancer is to remove as much of the tumor as possible, and then treat with radiation and temozolomide,” says lead author David Svilar, PhD, a student in the Medical Scientist Training Program at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. “However, glioblastoma multiforme is highly resistant to this…
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Sports-Related Concussion Rates Just as Much a Concern for Females as Males
Monday, December 17, 2012 14:49
Today’s sports fan can’t help coming across reports about concussions, whether the focus is a player who has sustained one or a new study about how many are sustained and their potential long-term implications. The stories usually concern the most popular, visible sports, such as football, or a sport’s bigger names, past or present. But concussions aren’t only a concern in the so-called major sports, and they’re not sustained only by males Female athletes suffer their share of brain injuries, too — in some sports, at rates higher than males, and in others, at rates that are close. Concussion rates for girls are on the rise, as they are throughout high school sports in the U.S. The Centers for Disease Control’s latest report found that emergency room visits for sports-related traumatic brain injuries in young athletes rose almost 60 percent between 2001 and 2009 to nearly 175,000 annually. For more information, click here to read the full article.
Writer Describes ‘Life After Your Brain Explodes’
Monday, December 17, 2012 10:08
After having suffered a ruptured cerebral aneurysm that wiped out much of his memory and left him partially blind, writer Ashok Rajamani followed the advice of neurologists, therapists and counselors, and joined a brain injury support group. But it took him nearly four years to actually attend a meeting. It was not until he became so lonely and depressed that he felt he had no choice but to go. “Most of all, I had become painfully envious of everyone around me,” Rajamani writes. “To live in the outside world again, I needed to cope with non-brain-injured folk … They would never understand what had happened to me.” Rajamani describes his experience in a new book, “The Day My Brain Exploded.” For more information, click here to read the full article.