The ability of cells to move and change shape is significant in many biological processes. White blood corpuscles gather at "hotspots" like infections and inflammations. Stem cells in the embryo move off in different directions to make the organs of the body. One unwanted movement is the movement of tumour cells, which lead to cancer metastasis…
The ability of cells to move and change shape is significant in many biological processes. White blood corpuscles gather at "hotspots" like infections and inflammations. Stem cells in the embryo move off in different directions to make the organs of the body…
The Food and Drug Administration approved label changes incorporating lower dosages for sleep medications containing zolpidem, a drug that can continue to affect patients' mental alertness even a day after its use. The regulator approved changes to the labels of Sanofi SA's Ambien, Ambien CR and Meda AB's Edluar on Tuesday. The agency said patients who take zolpidem extended-release drugs, such as Ambien CR, should not drive or take part in activities that require complete mental alertness the next day. The FDA in January asked zolpidem manufacturers, including NovaDel Pharma Inc and Swedish drugmaker Meda, to reduce recommended dosages on the drugs' labels. The regulator also said that women were more susceptible to the risk as they eliminated the drug from the blood more slowly than men. The FDA recommended doses of 5 mg for women and either 5 mg or 10 mg for men for immediate-release zolpidem products such as Sanofi's Ambien. The initial dose of extended-release products is 6.25 mg for women and either 6.25 or 12.5 mg for men, according to the FDA.source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/14/fda-approves-labels-with-lower-doses-for-sleep-drugs-like-ambien/
A woman who was the first to have a successful womb transplant from a dead donor has had her pregnancy terminated after the embryo showed no heart beat, doctors in Turkey said on Tuesday. Derya Sert, 22, who was born without a womb, had been receiving in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment after the transplant in August 2011. Her pregnancy was announced in April. “Derya Sert's pregnancy was terminated after her end-of-8-weeks examination showed no embryo heartbeat,” Akdeniz University Hospital in Turkey's Mediterranean city of Antalya said. “The general health status of the patient is fine,” the statement said. “IVF will be continued when she is ready, in appropriate conditions.” One in every 5,000 women globally is born without a womb, while thousands more have the organ removed due to cancer or other diseases, leaving them unable to get pregnant.source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/14/turkish-woman-who-had-womb-transplant-patient-loses-baby/
The life of an individual suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is often a debilitating one, as patients are frequently plagued by intense nightmares, flashbacks and emotional instability.    There are a number of psychotherapeutic treatments and cognitive behavioral therapy options to aid sufferers of PTSD, but these interventions are not always available to patients.  And while medications tend to be the first line of defense for these individuals, no pharmaceutical treatments have been developed yet to specifically target PTSD. But now, new research may help dramatically change the course of treatment for PTSD patients.  In the first study of its kind, researchers at New York University Langone Medical Center have utilized brain imaging technology to highlight a connection between the number of cannabinoid receptors in the brain and PTSD.  Cannabinoid receptors, known as CB1 receptors, are activated in the brain when a person uses cannabis, which can lead to impaired memory and reduced anxiety. The researchers’ findings pave the way for the development of the first every medication designed explicitly to treat trauma – something, they say, is desperately needed. “The first line of treatment (for PTSD patients) is selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, which is a class of medication generally used with good effects in people with depression,” lead author Dr. Alexander Neumeister, director of the molecular imaging program in the departments of psychiatry and radiology at NYU School of Medicine, told FoxNews.com.   “These medications do not really do the job for people with PTSD, so clinicians use anything else that is legally available on the market.  They often use different classes of medications developed for things like depression, schizophrenia, or bipolar disorder, and overall there’s consensus that these do not work.” Affecting nearly 8 million Americans each year, PTSD is an anxiety disorder that is developed after an individual experiences a dangerous or painful life event – such as a sexual assault, a tragic accident, surviving an act of extreme violence or the experience of fighting in a war.  Of the 1.7 million American men and women in the military who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, approximately 20 percent have been diagnosed with PTSD. During the past decade, Neumeister and his team have studied the impact PTSD has on the brain’s physiology and have found that exposure to severe trauma can considerably alter how the brain functions.  With this knowledge in mind, the researchers decided to examine CB1 receptors in the brain due to a common trend observed among PTSD patients: Marijuana use.  In an attempt to cope with their symptoms, many PTSD patients end up using and abusing cannabis, which helps to temporarily relieve them of their incapacitating episodes. According to Neumeister, PTSD patients often report that smoking marijuana works better for them than any other legal medication, leading the researchers to believe that the manipulation of CB1 receptors in the brain may have a beneficial impact on trauma symptoms. “About 8 years ago, the first animal study was published showing that everybody has endogenous cannabinoids, or endocannabinoids, in the brain – meaning this substance is in the brain of every person,” Neumeister said, noting that endocannabinoids act like cannabis, binding to CB1 receptors to help extinguish traumatic memories. “Animal studies have suggested that increasing cannabinoids in the brain helps them to forget painful events and form new memories, so they start to learn to digest what they went through and get over it.  We thought this may be relevant to PTSD.” To test this idea, the researchers performed positron emission tomography (PET) imaging on the brains of 60 participants who had been divided into three groups – those with PTSD, those with a history of trauma, but no PTSD, and those with no history of trauma or PTSD.  Each participant was injected with a harmless radioactive tracer, which was designed to travel to the CB1 receptors in the brain and illuminate them under the PET scan. The images revealed what the researchers had expected.  The individuals with PTSD had higher levels of CB1 receptors in areas of the brain associated with fear and anxiety than the volunteers without PTSD.  Those with PTSD also had lower levels of the neurotransmitter anandamide, an endocannabinoid that binds to CB1.  Neumeister explained that lower levels of anandamide prompts the brain to compensate by increasing the number of CB1 receptors, resulting in an imbalanced endocannibinoid system. Because CB1 receptors help regulate mood and anxiety, the scientists advised against creating medications to destroy them in the brain, as that would lead to depression.  Instead, Neumeister said their PTSD medication would rely on promoting CB1 equilibrium. “We want to increase the concentration of these endocannabinoids,” Neumeister said.  “So we are currently working on the methods to do this, and we have developed a compound that is able to increase the concentration of endocannabioniods without attacking the receptors. It helps restore a normal balance of this chemical in the brains of those with PTSD.” Neumeister claims the compound is very safe and does not come with the added health problems caused by chronic marijuana use. “Very soon, we will be able to start clinical trial of this medication in people,” Neumeister said.  “It’s the first medication developed for people with PTSD, so I hope that it will open up a new generation of treatment for people.” The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, was published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/14/marijuana-like-compound-could-lead-to-first-ever-medication-for-ptsd/
Despite public health progress in cutting calories, as well as salt and fat from fast foods and supermarket products, neighborhood restaurants are still packing big helpings of each into their meals, a trio of studies suggests. Small independent eateries are not required to display nutritional information for consumers - if they did, the researchers report, patrons would routinely see single meals containing nearly a full day's worth of calories and fat plus one and half times the daily recommended intake for salt. “It's really a disgrace. Every day the newspapers say things about the obesity epidemic… To a large extent, you can trace that to too many calories,” said Susan Roberts, director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Energy Metabolism Lab and professor of nutrition at Tufts University, in Boston. About two thirds of Americans are considered overweight or obese, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health. And as American waistlines continue to expand, public health policy has focused on the quality of food available in supermarkets and restaurants. President Barack Obama's 2010 Affordable Care Act, for example, contains a requirement that restaurants with at least 20 outlets in the U.S. make their nutritional information available to customers. But one of three new studies published in JAMA Internal Medicine on Monday points out that policy only applies to about half of the nation's restaurants. The other half is made up of smaller chains or independent restaurants exempt from the requirement. For their analysis, Roberts and her colleagues measured the calories in 157 meals at small Mexican, American, Chinese, Italian, Japanese and Thai restaurants in and near Boston between June and August 2011. Overall, the researchers found the average meal at those restaurants contained 1,327 calories. That's about 66 percent of the 2,000 daily calories recommended by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. About 8 percent of the meals exceeded 2,000 calories. The meals from small restaurants also contained up to 18 percent more calories than comparable dishes from larger chains - suggesting the requirement to display nutritional information is keeping the large-chain restaurant meals healthier, according to the researchers. In another of the studies published Monday, Canadian researchers led by Mary Scourboutakos from the University of Toronto found similarly high calorie counts in more than 3,500 meals from Ontario restaurants they analyzed. What's more, Scourboutakos and her fellow researchers found that individual meals contained an average of 89 percent of the daily recommended amount of fat and 151 percent of the daily recommended amount of salt. A third study also zeroed-in on salt as a major area of concern. Several organizations, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Department of Health and Human Services, the American Medical Association, the American Heart Association and the World Health Organization have all called for reductions in the amount of sodium people consume. The Institute of Medicine recommends that most healthy people get 1,500 milligrams (mg) of sodium per day, with an upper limit of 2,300 mg. But the average American eats closer to 3,600 mg each day, largely in processed foods. For their new study, Dr. Stephen Havas of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago and his colleagues analyzed 402 processed foods and 78 fast-food products to see if their salt content had changed between 2005 and 2011. They found a small decrease in the amount of salt in processed foods over that period but also a similarly-sized increase in the amount of salt in fast-food products. The differences in each category, however, were small enough that they could have been due to chance. Havas said the results show that the calls for voluntary reductions in salt have been a “total failure.” “The only thing that will solve this problem is for the amount of salt in our food to be regulated,” he added. But regulating food and what goes into it has been a controversial topic, according to Dr. Mitchell Katz, from the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services in California. Instead, he suggests in a commentary accompanying the three studies that doctors should advocate for their patients' right to know what they're eating. “As we debate the controversial role of government in stemming the interrelated endemics of obesity, diabetes mellitus, and heart disease, we must insist on the right of our patients (as well as ourselves) to know what we are eating, whether fast food or slow, whether large chain, small chain, or individual restaurant,” he wrote. One encouraging finding from the study of Toronto restaurant meals highlighted by Scourboutakos and her colleagues is that entrees identified on the restaurant menus as “healthy” were generally at least healthier - with about 474 calories, 20 percent of the day's value of fat and 50 percent of the recommended daily intake of sodium. Roberts told Reuters Health she'd like to see restaurants add a few healthy choice options to their menu to at least give people an alternative. “That would mean the restaurant doesn't have to calculate the whole menu and that would give people choices,” she said.source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/14/small-restaurants-serving-big-calories-salt-studies-find/
U.S. health officials say last year was the worst ever for West Nile virus deaths. The final tally reported Monday was 286 deaths - or two more than the record set in 2002. But there were far fewer illnesses overall, and fewer serious cases than in previous years. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had predicted it would be a bad year because of weather conditions that promote breeding of the mosquitoes that spread the virus to people. The CDC report Monday showed Texas had nearly a third of the serious cases, and about a third of the deaths. West Nile virus was first diagnosed in Uganda in 1937, but no cases were reported in the U.S. until 1999 in New York. It gradually spread to the West Coast.source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/14/deaths-from-west-nile-virus-hit-record-last-year/
With summer approaching, you might spend time preparing for swimsuit season. Rather than dreading this time of year, here are some tips to begin to practice appreciating your body so you can enjoy the sun. 1.   Accept your weight. You may think the more you fight your weight, the more you’ll succeed in losing weight. This simply isn’t true. Accepting doesn’t mean not taking steps towards changing your weight, it means not letting your weight hold you back from your life. If you’re waiting until you lose weight to apply for jobs or start online dating, your weight is going to weigh you down. Do what you care about now. 2.   Go on a weight-talk diet. It’s tempting to ask your friends if you’ve lost weight, ask them about what they’re doing to lose weight, or discuss together who you think needs to lose weight. There is way more to talk about than weight. When the topic comes up, practice moving the topic to something more fun! 3.   Only visit your scale once a week. Weight fluctuates within six pounds on any given day depending of what you’ve had to eat and drink. Rather than checking your weight compulsively and worrying you gained weight after you ate a big meal, only weigh yourself once a week and make it at a set time, like 8 a.m. Monday mornings. 4.   Go shopping.   If you are in between sizes and your clothes are uncomfortably snug, you will constantly remember you’ve gained weight and eat to cope with this negative feeling. I’ve seen a lot of clients feel better and eat better by wearing clothes that fit. Buying clothes your size is not giving up, it’s being practical. 5. If you compare, be fair. It’s weirdly tempting to compare yourself to the thinnest person you see or a celebrity you admire. Yet, this is so unfair and sets you up to feel inferior and obsess further. Rather than compare yourself to someone remarkably thin or fit, compare yourself to every eighth person you see. Better yet, don’t compare. When you notice you’re judging yourself in comparison to someone else, remind yourself that’s a judgment and let go. 6. Eat regular meals. Many people who struggle with obsessing around food get caught in this cycle: Overeat --> limit what they eat to make up for the indulgence --> feel hungry --> overeat. Rather than get caught in this cycle of feeling too full then feeling too hungry, eat three meals and two snacks. If you ate too much for breakfast, eat a normal lunch; this will prevent you from skimping on lunch and splurging on dinner. 7. Relax your face when you look in the mirror. One of the ways to improve your body image and stop engaging in negative thoughts about your appearance is to relax your face and body when you look in the mirror. There’s a facial feedback loop and the facial expressions we make solidify how we feel. Research on Botox shows people whose facial muscles are paralyzed experience less intense emotions. One way to relax your face is to ever so slightly lift the upper corners of your lips. If you don’t want your daughter to learn to grimace in front of the mirror, become a role model for self-acceptance.Jennifer Taitz & is a licensed clinical psychologist based in New York City. She is the author of End Emotional Eating: Using Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills to Cope with Difficult Emotions and Develop Healthy Relationship to Food. Visit her website drjennytaitz.com to learn more.source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/14/7-tips-to-stop-your-summer-weight-obsession/
Even if you’re not a body builder, you’ve probably heard of creatine -- and those who use it, swear by it. But no one should put supplements into their body without weighing the risks and benefits. We recently received this question from a concerned viewer: Dear Dr. Manny, My 17-year-old son is interested in taking creatine. Is it safe? Thanks, Linda Creatine is a combination of amino acids produced naturally in the body by the liver, kidneys and pancreas. It can also be found in the protein-rich foods we eat, like meat and fish. It reduces muscle fatigue by transporting extra energy to the body’s cells, and causes water weight gain – which can make muscles appear larger. “Creatine supplementation has not been adequately studied in those under 18 years old,” said Elizabeth DeRobertis, a registered dietician and nutritionist. “So for that reason, it is not recommended that your son try creatine. Once he turns 18, DeRobertis added, it’s important that he know a few things: 1. Creatine has been found to be effective in short-duration, high-intensity exercises, like sprinting. 2. He should be involved in competitive athletics if he does decide to try creatine, and he should let his coach know, his health care professional know, and of course, his parents know. 3. It’s also important that he drink enough water during the day, because creatine may contribute to dehydration – so he should drink at least 64 ounces of water every day. 4. He should not combine creatine with any other supplement, especially those containing caffeine or ephedra. As always, it’s important to talk to your doctor before making any diet or lifestyle changes. Do you have a question for Dr. Manny? Send it to DrManny@foxnews.com.source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/13/is-creatine-safe-for-teens/
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – & Saudi Arabia has confirmed four new cases of a deadly new respiratory virus related to SARS that appears centered in the Arabian Peninsula but that has also been reported in Europe. The official Saudi Press Agency said Tuesday that one patient was treated and released from a hospital, while three others remain under medical care. Saudi authorities have reported nearly 30 cases since the virus was identified last year. Other cases have appeared in France, Germany and Britain, possibly linked to travel in the Gulf region. The novel coronavirus has killed at least 18 people since September 2012. The new virus is related to SARS, which killed some 800 people in a global epidemic in 2003, and belongs to a family of viruses that most often causes the common cold.source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/14/saudi-arabia-confirms-4-new-cases-deadly-sars-linked-virus/