Body

Barcelona, Spain, 1 September: The wider use of reperfusion therapy in patients with heart attack (AMI) can save millions of lives in Europe. Effective reperfusion therapy in an AMI patient can cut the individual risk of dying by half. AMI is caused by a sudden blockage of a coronary artery, one of the vessels supplying the heart muscle with oxygen and nutrients. Effective reperfusion therapy provides a timely and sustainable reopening of the blockage.

Barcelona, Spain, 1 September: Mortality rate following a heart attack has fallen by more than 50% in Europe over the past 25 years. However, because only minor advances in the medical treatment of AMI are expected over the next decade, it is through organisational changes in the pre-hospital phase that mortality rate will continue this decline to below 5%.

Lausanne, Switzerland– Gene Signal, a company focused on developing innovative drugs to manage angiogenesis based conditions, today announced the publication of interim results from a phase II study suggesting that the antisense oligonucleotide GS-101 (eye drops) is safe and effective at inhibiting and regressing corneal neovascularisation (abnormal new blood vessel growth). Neovascularisation in this part of the eye is a major risk factor in corneal graft rejection, the most common transplantation procedure that saves the sight of approximately 46,000 people worldwide each year.

MAYWOOD, Il -- A therapy called cardiac resynchronization can significantly delay the progression of heart failure, according to a major international study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

BETHESDA, Md. (September 1, 2009) — Chronic alcohol consumption blunts the biological clock's ability to synchronize daily activities to light, disrupts natural activity patterns and continues to affect the body's clock (circadian rhythm), even days after the drinking ends, according to a new study with hamsters.

The study describes the changes that drinking can produce on the body's master clock and how it affects behavior. The research provides a way to study human alcoholism using an animal model, said researcher Christina L. Ruby.

Steep reductions in the abundance of fish, shellfish, and other aquatic fauna in recent centuries are not restricted to animals that live in the sea: historical records show that species in rivers and lakes worldwide also experienced sharp declines. Yet the significance of these declines in freshwater species is frequently overlooked by natural resource managers, according to an article in the September 2009 issue of BioScience.

CHAPEL HILL – Black patients with high blood pressure experience poorer communication with their doctors than white patients do, a study led by a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researcher has found.

"This is an important finding because poorer communication is associated with worse patient satisfaction, adherence to therapy and blood pressure control, which in turn may lead to worse disease outcomes for black patients compared to white patients," said Crystal Wiley Cené, M.D., M.P.H., an assistant professor in the UNC School of Medicine and lead author of the study.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA–Highlights of September's Ophthalmology, the journal of the American Academy of Ophthalmology (Academy), include a 2009 review by the Academy of the safety and efficacy of a widely used corneal transplant procedure and a warning about an unusual but serious reaction to systemic fluroquinolones, a class of antibiotics used to treat a variety of bacterial infections.

DSEK Deemed Safe, Effective Treatment for Corneal Diseases

Bethesda, MD (Sept. 1, 2009) — There has been much debate about the relationship between gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) and sleep. Three new studies in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology explore GERD's effect on sleep quality and the health-care system as well as how a widely prescribed sleeping pill may mask the disease. Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology is the official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) Institute.

Central Asian ethnic groups are more defined by societal rules than ancestry. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Genetics found that overall there are more genetic differences within ethnic groups than between them, indicating that separate 'ethnic groups' exist in the mind more than the blood.

Warfarin therapy for patients with atrial fibrillation – the most common type of significant heart rhythm disorder – appears to be most beneficial for the oldest patients, those who have had a prior stroke and for patients with multiple risk factors for stroke, according to a new study by Kaiser Permanente and Massachusetts General Hospital researchers. This comparative effectiveness research study – examines how much a treatment's potential benefits outweigh its risks, in the usual clinical care of patients with atrial fibrillation – appears in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Screening tests used to predict asthma activity in patients may have little tracking success when applied to people with persistent disease who are adhering to their health care regimens, UT Southwestern Medical Center physician report.

Previous reports have suggested that certain clinical findings and laboratory tests could help predict future asthma attacks. Those earlier conclusions, however, were based on observations of patients with poorly controlled asthma who had not received care based on current guidelines.

Exposure to carbon monoxide, even at levels well below national limits, is associated with an increased risk of hospitalization for the elderly with heart problems, according to a study published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

Breast cancer detection rates and sensitivity were higher, but so were false-positive rates, among mammography centers that offered clinical breast examination in addition to mammography, according to new study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

There is controversy about whether adding clinical breast examination to mammography improves the accuracy of breast screening.

While smoking cigarettes significantly increases a person's risk of developing multiple sclerosis, using Swedish snuff does not, according to a study published in Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.