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Feb 22
Green tea may be good for your eye
A new study suggests drinking green tea often mat help protect against common eye diseases like glaucoma.

The study in the current issue of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry found that catechins are absorbed by the lens, retina and other parts of the eye and reduce oxidative stress in the eye.

Catechins found in green tea are known antioxidants which are believed to prevent damage caused by oxidation.

This is an animal model study in which the authors gave green tea to rats and then tested their eyes to see if catechins had any effort on their eyes.

Chi Pui Pang and colleagues from the Chinese University of Hong Kong found the green tea compounds did reduce oxidative stress in the eye for up to 20 hours.

Previously known green tea health benefits include prevention of cancer and depression and weight loss among other things. It is known that green tea components like EGCG promote death of cancerous cells or apoptosis.

Feb 20
Brain damage treatment breakthrough
Accident victims and soldiers with severe head injuries could soon be treated with a contraceptive pill if the results of a major trial prove successful.

Research has suggested that progesterone, a steroid used to fool a woman's body into thinking it is pregnant, could also be used to protect damaged brain tissue.

An earlier study of 100 patients showed that injections of the hormone soon after a head injury safely reduced the risk of death and long-term disability.

The new Phase III trial conducted at 17 medical centres around the US will enrol around 1,140 brain damaged patients over three to six years.

The ProTECT III study will be led by scientists from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, where the neuro-protective properties of progesterone were first discovered more than 25 years ago.

Trial leader Dr David Wright, who announced the research at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Diego, California, said: "No new treatment for severe TBI (traumatic brain injury) has been approved in over 30 years.

"With such promising success in laboratory testing and in our previous clinical trial, we hope to conclude in this national trial that progesterone - along with standard medical trauma care - works better than standard medical care alone in reducing brain damage caused from a TBI."

Traumatic brain injuries are common among road accident victims, and are also the "signature wound" of soldiers injured in modern conflict zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

Around two million adults and children in the US suffer a significant TBI each year, the researchers said.

The injuries led to 50,000 deaths and 80,000 new cases of long-term disability.

Feb 20
Personalised blood tests for cancer developed
In what could be claimed a major breakthrough, scientists have developed personalised blood tests for cancer, using whole genome sequencing .

A team at Johns Hopkins University has used data from the whole genome sequencing of cancer patients to develop individualised blood tests which they say can help physicians tailor patients' treatments.

According to the scientists, the genome-based blood tests, believed to be the first of their kind, may be used to monitor tumour levels after therapy and even determine cancer recurrence.

"We believe this is the first application of newer generations of whole genome sequencing that could be clinically useful for cancer patients. Using this approach we can develop biomarkers for potentially any cancer patient," lead scientist Victor Velculescu said.

For their research, the scientists scanned patients' genomes for alterations -- rearrangements of large chunks of DNA rather than changes in a single DNA letter among billions of others. They call their new approach Personalised Analysis of Rearranged Ends (PARE).

"In sequencing individuals' genomes in the past, we focused on single-letter changes, but in this study, we looked for the swapping of entire sections of the tumour genome," co- scientist Bert Vogelstein said. "These alterations, like the reordering of chapters of a book, are easier to identify and detect in the blood than single-letter changes," he added.

Feb 19
MCI issues new ethics code for doctors
The Medical Council of India (MCI) has finalised a code of conduct restraining doctors from getting influenced by drug makers through gifts and other disguised bribes to bring down costs for patients.

"Our efforts of the past three years have finally borne fruits and we have been able to bring out an enforceable code of ethics for doctors," said Dr Ketan Desai, president, MCI.

The MCI's code prohibits doctors from receiving gifts, travel facilities, hospitality, monetary grants, medical research, endorsements, etc.

The notification on December 10, 2009, amended the 'Indian Medical Council (Professional Conduct, Etiquette and Ethics), Regulations 2002', stipulating guidelines to be followed by medical practitioners in the country.

The doctors' self-regulatory body has been looking for ways to prevent corruption in the profession. This is probably the best step the body could have taken, although there is a belief that it may not be effective given that it won't be able to supervise lakhs of doctors spread throughout the country.

MCI is an appellate body regulating the country's medical practitioners through various state medical councils. The council started working on the draft regulations in 2006.

With this code, medical practitioners are prohibited from receiving gifts, cash or monetary grants, accepting tours, paid vacations or any hospitality from any representatives of pharma or health care companies under any pretext.

They will not be allowed to endorse any drug or product publicly and ensure that their professional autonomy is not compromised.

They may, however, work for pharmaceutical and allied healthcare industries in advisory capacities, as consultants, as researchers, as treating doctors or in any other professional capacity.

Through this amendment to the existing code of ethics, MCI aims to fulfill two chief objectives. "First, no medical professional should be influenced by any pharma company.

Secondly, since pharma companies will save on their marketing spend on doctors, we expect that they will pass on the benefit to the patients by reducing the prices of drugs," informs Dr. Desai.

The code lays down the summary of dos and don'ts to be followed by the doctors - leaving many questions unanswered.

Feb 19
Chronic migraineurs more likely to be sick
A new research has shown that chronic migraine sufferers tend to be in poorer general health, less well off, and more depressed than those with episodic migraine.

The results are based on the study of almost 12,000 adults with episodic - a severe headache on up to 14 days of the month - or chronic migraine - headache on 15 or more days of the month.

All participants were already part of the American Migraine Prevalence and Prevention (AMPP) study, a long term US population based study of 24,000 headache sufferers, which has included regular surveys since 2004. The researchers analysed data collected in the 2005 survey on socioeconomic circumstances and other health problems.

They found that those with chronic migraine had significantly lower levels of household income, were less likely to be working full time, and were almost twice as likely to have a job related disability, than their peers with episodic migraine.

They were twice as likely to be depressed, anxious, and experiencing chronic pain. And they were significantly more likely to have other serious health problems.

These included asthma, bronchitis, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol and obesity. They were also around 40 percent more likely to have heart disease and angina and 70 percent more likely to have had a stroke.

The research point out that chronic migraine "can be an especially disabling and burdensome condition." The study has been published in the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery and Psychiatry.

Feb 18
New Way to Predict Women's Heart Risk
New guidelines for predicting women's heart disease risk, updated in 2007 by the American Heart Association (AHA), work well, according to researchers who put the new strategy to the test.

The guidelines recommend a simplified approach to assessing a woman's heart disease risk, categorizing it as high risk, at-risk, or optimal risk.

The researchers evaluated how well the guidelines worked by testing them with participants in the Women's Health Initiative (WHI), which enrolled more than 160,000 women, ages 50 to 79. Next, they compared it to a commonly used approach for predicting cardiovascular disease risk from the long-running Framingham Heart Study.

''The advantage to the 2007 AHA guideline is that it's simple," says study researcher Judith Hsia, MD, director of clinical research at AstraZeneca, who conducted the study while a professor of medicine at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

"One drawback is, it's only for women," she says, although ''there is no reason it shouldn't work for men."

Hsia and colleagues categorized the women from the WHI study as high risk, at-risk, or optimal or low risk, depending on risk factors. (The WHI study evaluated the effect of hormone therapy, diet, calcium, and vitamin D on heart disease and cancers.) Here are the characteristics of each category:

* High-risk women have known cardiovascular disease, diabetes, or end-stage or chronic kidney disease.
* At-risk women have more than one major risk factor for heart disease (such as cigarette smoking, poor diet, inactivity, obesity, family history of early heart disease, high blood pressure or cholesterol, evidence of ''subclinical'' vascular disease, metabolic syndrome, or poor treadmill test results).

Optimal or low-risk women have a healthy lifestyle and no risk factors. A healthy lifestyle included exercising the equivalent of 30 minutes of brisk walking six days a week and eating less than 7% of total calories from saturated fat.
The Framingham Heart Risk Method

Hsia's team compared the new AHA approach to one commonly used approach from the Framingham Heart Study, a long-running study of heart disease launched in 1948, that uses seven characteristics to compute the predicted risk of heart problems over the next 10 years:

* Age
* Gender
* Total cholesterol
* HDL "good" cholesterol
* Systolic blood pressure (upper number)
* Need for blood pressure medication
* Cigarette smoking

For instance, a woman who is 50 with healthy cholesterol levels (175 total and 60 HDL), doesn't smoke, is on blood pressure medication, and keeps systolic pressure at 120 would have a 10-year risk of 1% for heart attack or coronary death.

Those categorized as high-risk using this method have a 10-year risk of more than 20% and a history of heart disease or diabetes.
Testing the AHA Guidelines

Hsia and her colleagues found that 11% of the WHI participants were high risk, 72% were at risk, and 4% at optimal or low risk using the AHA guidelines.

Another 13% could not be categorized as they lacked risk factors but didn't have good lifestyle habits. That group may need to be addressed in future version of the guidelines, says Hsia.

At the follow-up about eight years later, women in the high-risk group were more likely to have a heart attack or die of coronary disease than were the lower-risk women. While 12.5% of the high-risk women had a heart attack or died from heart disease, 3.1% of the at-risk women did, and just 1.1% of the optimal-risk women did over 10 years.

When Hsia's team compared the new guidelines with the Framingham risk prediction, they found the new guidelines predicted heart problems with accuracy similar to the Framingham categories of less than 10%, 10% to 20%, and over 20%.

The AHA guidelines were less accurate, however, than another Framingham approach, which uses risks of less than 5%, 5% to 20%, and over 20%.

The new guideline, however, ''is more accessible," Hsia says. "It's easier for practitioners to use, easier for patients to understand. I am not saying this [AHA] guideline is preferable to Framingham, but it's worth considering," Hsia tells WebMD.

Based on the risk category, a doctor can then work with the woman to control or eliminate the risk factors.

Feb 17
Statins heart benefits outweigh diabetes risks
The diabetes risk posed by cholesterol-lowering statins is low compared to their beneficial effect in preventing heart attacks, new research suggests.

A team from Glasgow University analysed 13 statin trials from 1994 to 2009. It concluded statin use increased the risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 9%.

But the "absolute risk", it concluded, was low when compared to how the drugs could help "reduce coronary events".

The findings of the study are published in the latest edition of The Lancet.

To date, research had not been able to prove whether or not taking statins raises the risk of developing diabetes.

By going over data from past trials, the team from Glasgow University's cardiovascular research centre aimed to give a more definitive answer.

Its study concluded that treating 255 people with statins over four years would result in one extra case of diabetes.

Closely monitored

However, without statin treatment five of these people would probably have a heart attack. Overall, the study said, the benefits outweigh the risks.

Writing in the Lancet, Professor Naveed Satar and Dr David Preiss said that older people were particularly prone to developing diabetes and should be monitored more closely.

They concluded: "In view of the overwhelming benefit of statins for reduction of cardiovascular events, the small absolute risk for development of diabetes is outweighed by cardiovascular benefit in the short and medium term in individuals for whom statin therapy is recommended.

"We therefore suggest that clinical practice for statin therapy does not need to change for patients with moderate or high cardiovascular risk or existing cardiovascular disease.

"However, the potentially raised diabetes risk should be taken into account if statin therapy is considered for patients at low cardiovascular risk or patient groups in which cardiovascular benefit has not been proven."

Feb 17
Meet on cancer from tomorrow
The Cancer Research and Relief Trust (CRRT), in association with the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, will organise a three-day international conference on cancer biology 'Cancercon 2010' in the city from Thursday. It would explore means of using molecular biology for early detection and treatment of cancer with minimal or no side-effects.

Addressing reporters here on Monday, C.S. Mani, one of the founders of CRRT, said: "We have to move out from single-target cancer therapies where drugs or other treatment are used to block the growth and spread of cancer to multi-target therapy. Research plays a vital role in developing affordable and effective treatment."

About 200 doctors, students and representatives of laboratories in academic centres are expected to participate in the conference to be held at IIT-M.

Feb 16
Protein That Prevent Cancer Spread
The specific protein which activate the process that releases cancer cells, is discovered. Disabled-2 or Dab2 allows the epithelial cells to spread and develop into tumors, in other parts of the body.

This process is called epithelial-mesenchymal transdifferientiation (EMT). EMT plays an important role in releasing the cells on the surface of solid tumor. This process converts them into transient mesenchymal cells. They have the ability to grow a new tumor. This often takes place in breasts, pancreas and rectum, which turns out to be cancer.


The studies found that the compound named 'transforming growth factor' triggers the evolution of Dab2 protein, which in turn activates the EMT process. EMT can be prevented if the Dab2 protein is knocked out. Further researches regarding the subject is going on.

Feb 15
Migraines and heart attack risk
People who suffer migraines may have a higher risk of heart attack or stroke than those without the painful headaches.

Previous studies have uncovered higher risks of heart problems and stroke among adults with migraine plus aura, but findings have been less consistent regarding people who have migraines without aura - the group that accounts for about 80 percent of migraine sufferers. As a group, migraine sufferers might have a relatively higher risk of cardiovascular problems, but their absolute risk is small.

Researchers studied 6,100 migraine patients where 4 percent reported a history of heart attack. The rate was 2 percent among the 5,243 people in the comparison group without migraine. Similarly, 2 percent of the migraine group reported a history of stroke, versus 1.2 percent of the comparison group. A further look showed that the increased stroke risk was only in the migraine with aura group; nearly 4 percent had a history of stroke, compared with just over 1 percent of migraine sufferers without aura symptoms.

It was found that the people with migraine did have higher rates of high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes than those in the comparison group. Those rates did not, however, explain the link between migraine and heart problems and stroke. So exactly why migraine is connected to cardiovascular disease remains unclear. One possibility, according to the researchers, is that some people have an underlying susceptibility to both migraines and cardiovascular disease.

The findings add to evidence linking migraines to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. They also suggest that the risks are not limited to people whose migraines are accompanied by neurological symptoms known as aura - visual disturbances, numbness, tingling or other bodily sensations that precede the headache.
The researchers agreed that the absolute risks are small but their findings should encourage migraine sufferers to be particularly careful about curbing the more common and significant risk factors for heart disease and stroke - such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol and obesity.
The precise cause of migraine headache is not fully understood, but the pain involves constriction, and then swelling, of brain blood vessels. The current findings support the notion that people with migraine may have dysfunction in the blood vessels throughout the body.

While the researchers noted that drugs that prevent migraine attacks could theoretically lower the risk of cardiovascular problems, certain medications might have negative effects; some anti-inflammatory painkillers have been linked to cardiovascular risks while migraine drugs known as "ergots" tend to constrict blood vessels throughout the body.

However, future studies are needed to look at whether certain migraine sufferers are at particular risk of heart problems and stroke - such as those with frequent headaches or frequent aura symptoms. Research should also investigate the effects of migraine treatment.

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