In a small but significant number of breast cancer patients, cancerous cells can move through the bloodstream from breast tissue to secondary sites in other parts of the body where they may remain in a dormant state, clinically undetected, for an extended period of time, before suddenly becoming metastatic. …
A Merck & Co drug designed to unmask tumor cells and mobilize the immune system into fighting cancer helped shrink tumors in 38 percent of patients with advanced melanoma in an early-stage study, U.S. researchers said on Sunday. Based on the findings about the drug lambrolizumab, published in the New England Journal of Medicine and presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in Chicago, Merck says it will move directly into a late-stage clinical trial, which will start in the third quarter. “This is a top priority at Merck,” Dr. Gary Gilliand, senior vice present and head of oncology at Merck Research Laboratories said in a meeting with investors. “We're going flat out to deliver benefit to patients with this novel mechanism.” The moves may heap pressure on market leader Bristol-Myers Squibb, maker of Yervoy - the only approved immune system drug for the treatment of advanced melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer. Bristol-Myers is conducting three phase-three studies of its own drug called nivolumab in advanced melanoma, and is studying the drug's effect on a range of other cancers, including lung cancer. Both nivolumab and lambrolizumab are part of a promising new class of drugs that disable programmed death 1 or PD-1, a protein that keeps the immune system from spotting and attacking cancer cells. “Even though it's (lambrolizumab) the second player in the field and even though it's all early, it impressed me,” said Dr. Antoni Ribas of the University of California Los Angeles' Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, the lead author of the study. Last month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration deemed the treatment a “breakthrough therapy,” a designation FDA cancer drugs chief Dr. Richard Pazdur described as “knock-your-socks-off therapies.” Results of an early-stage study of nivolumab in advanced melanoma released at the cancer meeting showed 31 percent of patients overall responded to different doses of the drug. Among those who took the 3 milligram per kilogram dose, 41 percent of patients responded. The drug response lasted an average of two years, and in many patients the drug kept working even after they stopped taking it. Analysts expect the drugs to generate billions of dollars in sales. Nivolumab alone is forecast to have sales of $1.2 billion in 2017, according to Wall Street analysts tracked by Thomson Reuters Pharma. Merck's study Merck's results are from the first clinical trial of lambrolizumab in advanced melanoma. They are based on analysis of 135 patients with metastatic melanoma who were divided into three groups with different treatment regimens. Overall, lambrolizumab resulted in 38 percent of patients having confirmed improvement of their cancer across all dose levels given after 12 weeks of treatment. But there was a wide range among doses, with only a 25 percent rate among patients who got the lowest dose and 52 percent among those who got the highest dose. In the highest dose group, 10 percent had a complete response, meaning their tumors could not be detected on scans. Side effects were generally mild and included fatigue, fevers, skin rash, loss of skin color and muscle weakness. More severe side effects were seen in 13 percent of patients, including inflammation of the lung or kidney and thyroid problems. “This study is showing the highest rate of durable melanoma responses of any drug we have tested thus far in this cancer, and it is doing it without serious side effects in the great majority of patients,” Ribas said. Merck said it plans to start a late-stage randomized trial of the drug in melanoma and in non-small cell lung cancer in the third quarter of this year. The company recently started a global, randomized mid-stage study of the drug versus standard chemotherapy in patients whose disease had progressed. And it is studying the drug as a treatment for triple negative breast, metastatic bladder and head and neck cancers. Researchers at the meeting marveled at responses to new immune system treatments after decades of failed studies among patients with melanoma. Only about one in five patients respond to Yervoy, approved in 2011 as the first immunotherapy to extend survival in patients with advanced melanoma. Yervoy works by blocking CTLA-4, a different molecule that also keeps the immune system from attacking cancer. Ribas said he has followed one patient on Yervoy for 12 years now. “She's not supposed to be around, and she's alive and well and melanoma free. That is why we've been doing these immunotherapies,” he said. With Yervoy, Ribas said these types of responses were few and far between. With the new PD-1 drugs, they are much more common, with fewer side effects. However, an early-stage Bristol-Myers' study released this month showed that 53 percent of patients who got a combination of Yervoy and nivolumab had at least a 50 percent reduction in tumor size, with fewer side effects. Tim Turnham, executive director of the Melanoma Research Foundation, said combination treatments would make a major difference for patients because they help overcome cancer's “sneaky” ability to evade treatment. But, at this point, he said, “Nobody knows which one is better.”source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/06/03/merck-melanoma-drug-shrinks-tumors-in-38-percent-patients/
Is there a doctor on board? Surprisingly often, there is - in half of in-flight medical emergencies - and sick airline passengers almost always survive, a new study finds. The research is the largest look yet at what happens to people who develop a medical problem on a commercial flight - about 44,000 of the 2.75 billion passengers worldwide each year, researchers estimate. Most cases don't require diverting a plane as the study's leader, Dr. Christian Martin-Gill, advised a pilot to do two years. He works for MD-STAT, a service at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center that advises about 20 major airlines on how to handle in-flight emergencies. Another large service is based in Phoenix. Martin-Gill handled a call when a passenger seemed to be having a heart attack on a flight from Europe to the U.S. The man's implanted defibrillator had shocked his heart five times to try to restore normal rhythm. “The aircraft was in the middle of its destination, flying over the Atlantic,” so he recommended landing at Newfoundland off the Canadian coast to get the man to the nearest hospital, Martin-Gill said. The federally funded study reviewed about 12,000 cases handled by the Pittsburgh center over nearly three years. Results are in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine. Researchers found: -The odds of a medical emergency are 1 per 604 flights, or 16 per 1 million passengers. -Planes had to be diverted for emergency help in only 7 percent of cases. -Doctors were on board and volunteered to help in 48 percent of cases; nurses and other health workers were available in another 28 percent. Only one-third of cases had to be handled by flight attendants alone. -The most common problems: Dizziness or passing out (37 percent of cases); trouble breathing (12 percent) and nausea or vomiting (10 percent). -About one-fourth of passengers were evaluated at a hospital after landing and 9 percent were admitted, usually with stroke, respiratory or cardiac symptoms. -Out of nearly 12,000 cases, a defibrillator was applied 137 times, including in 24 cases of cardiac arrest, where the heart had stopped. (Sometimes defibrillators are used to analyze an irregular heart rhythm to help doctors figure out what to do, not necessarily to deliver a shock.) -Of the cases in this study, only 36 deaths occurred, 30 of them during the flight and the others after landing. -Pregnancy-related problems were generally rare - 61 cases, in this study - and two-thirds of them involved women less than 24 weeks along with possible miscarriages. Air travel is considered safe up to the 36th week, or the last month, of pregnancy. Only three cases of women in labor beyond 24 weeks of pregnancy led to a plane being diverted. Dr. Lisa Rosenbaum, a University of Pennsylvania cardiologist, helped in a case like that in 2007, on a flight from Boston to Portland, Ore. The passenger was three months from her due date but was having contractions every minute - something that can often be stopped with drugs and treatment at a hospital but not in midair. “It was clear to me that labor was imminent and that we needed to land the plane,” so, on her advice, the pilot diverted to upstate New York, Rosenbaum said. “It was one of the scariest experiences of my life. It's not like taking care of a patient in the hospital.” Dr. David Rogers, a pediatric surgeon at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine, felt that fear five years ago when an elderly woman had trouble breathing during a flight to Atlanta from Toledo, Ohio. Being a specialist at treating children rather than adults, “my first reaction was to look around and hope there would be somebody else” more qualified to help, he said. Luckily, a flight attendant had already given the woman an oxygen mask and she seemed to be improving, so he felt the plane could continue to Atlanta, the woman's home. Trying to determine whether to divert a plane was a tough call, he said. “I'm making a decision that's going to affect a plane full of people,” not just the patient, Rogers said. Some passengers may fear liability if they help in such situations, but a Good Samaritan law protects those who do so, the study notes. And although health workers are not legally obliged to help, they have a moral obligation to do so, the authors write. And you never know what kind of help will be requested. Martin-Gill said a partner once was consulted when a dog suffered a cardiac arrest during a flight. He didn't know how things turned out.source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/30/most-travelers-survive-in-flight-medical-emergencies-study-shows/
Long-term high-dose use of painkillers such as ibuprofen or diclofenac is “equally hazardous” in terms of heart attack risk as use of the drug Vioxx, which was withdrawn due to its potential dangers, researchers said on Thursday. Presenting the results of a large international study into a class of painkillers called non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), the researchers said high doses of them increase the risk of a major vascular event - a heart attack, stroke or dying from cardiovascular disease - by around a third. This means that for every 1,000 people with an average risk of heart disease who take high-dose diclofenac or ibuprofen for a year, about three extra would have an avoidable heart attack, of which one would be fatal, the researchers said. This puts the heart risks of generic NSAIDs on a par with a newer class of NSAIDs known as COX-2 inhibitors or coxibs, which includes Vioxx - a painkiller that U.S. drugmaker Merck pulled from sale in 2004 because of links to heart risks. Other drugs in the coxib class include cerecoxib, sold by Pfizer under the brand name Celebrex, and etoricoxib, sold by Merck under the brand name Arcoxia. “What we are saying is that they (coxibs, ibuprofen and diclofenac) have similar risks, but they also have similar benefits,” said Colin Baigent of the clinical trial service unit at Britain's Oxford University, who led the study published in The Lancet medical journal on Thursday. He stressed that the risks are mainly relevant to people who suffer chronic pain, such as patients with arthritis who need to take high doses of painkillers - such as 150mg of diclofenac or 2400mg of ibuprofen a day - for long periods. “A short course of lower dose tablets purchased without a prescription, for example, for a muscle sprain, is not likely to be hazardous,” he said. BALANCING RISKS AND BENEFITS The study team gathered data, including on admissions to hospital for cardiovascular or gastrointestinal disease, from all randomized trials that have previously tested NSAIDs. This allowed them to pool results of 639 randomized trials involving more than 300,000 people and re-analyze the data to establish the risks of NSAIDs in certain types of patients. In contrast to the findings on ibuprofen and diclofenac, the study found that high doses of naproxen, another NSAID, did not appear to increase the risk of heart attacks. The researchers said this may be because naproxen also has protective effects that balance out any extra heart risks. Baigent said it was important patients should not make hasty decisions or change their treatment without consulting a doctor. “For many arthritis patients, NSAIDs reduce joint pain and swelling effectively and help them to enjoy a reasonable quality of life,” he said. “We really must be careful about the way we present the risks of these drugs. “They do have risks, but they also have benefits, and patients should be presented with all those bits of information and allowed to make choices for themselves.” Donald Singer, a professor of clinical pharmacology and therapeutics at Britain's Warwick University, who was not involved in the study, said its findings “underscore a key point for patients and prescribers: powerful drugs may have serious harmful effects”. “It is therefore important for prescribers to take into account these risks and ensure patients are fully informed about the medicines they are taking,” he said in an emailed comment.source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/30/high-doses-common-painkillers-increase-heart-attack-risks/
Chinese scientists have developed the first vaccine to protect children against a virus called enterovirus 71, or EV71, that causes the common and sometimes deadly hand, foot and mouth disease. The new inactivated EV71 vaccine, made by Beijing Vigoo Biological, was developed for use in the Asia-Pacific region, which accounts for most of the serious cases of the disease that can cause potentially fatal meningitis and encephalitis. Since its discovery in 1969, EV71 has caused major outbreaks of hand foot and mouth disease around the world, affecting mostly children. According to the World Health Organization, outbreaks of HFMD occur every few years in different parts of the world. But in recent years these have occurred more in Asia. Places with recent large increases in the number of reported cases include China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. A large outbreak of HFMD infected about 35,000 people and killed 17 in China's Hunan province in June 2012. Symptoms of the disease include mouth sores, skin rashes and fever. Until now, there have been no effective vaccines against EV71. But in trial data published in The Lancet medical journal on Tuesday, researchers said Beijing Vigoo's vaccine gave 90 percent protection against EV71-associated hand, food and mouth disease, with 80.4 percent protection for at least 12 months. The trial took place at four sites across China - three in Jiangsu province and one in Beijing. It involved 10,245 babies and children aged 6 to 35 months who were randomly assigned to get two doses of the vaccine, or two doses of a placebo. Commenting on the results, Nigel Crawford and Steve Graham from the University of Melbourne and Murdoch Children's Research Institute in Australia said “the gains made in (this) trial need to be shared internationally.” This should include an assessment of potential cross-protection for other types of EV71 prevalent in other epidemic countries such as Singapore, Malaysia and Japan, they added. The Chinese researchers, led by Feng-Cai Zhu of the Jiangsu Provincial Center for Disease Control, said the vaccine was safe and well-tolerated and side-effects were similar in both the vaccine and placebo groups. But they cautioned that there was no evidence the vaccine would cross-protect against another virus called coxsackievirus A 16, which is often found circulating with EV71 and also causes hand foot and mouth disease. This and several other viruses can cause hand foot and mouth disease, they added, so using a vaccine against only EV71, even if it is highly effective, may have only a minimal impact on reducing the overall number of cases of the disease.source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/29/new-vaccine-protects-kids-against-hand-foot-and-mouth-disease/
The sudden and widespread appearance of a swine virus deadly to young pigs - one never before seen in North America - is raising questions about the bio-security shield designed to protect the U.S. food supply. The swine-only virus, the Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea Virus (PEDV), poses no danger to humans or other animals, and the meat from infected pigs is safe for people to eat. Though previously seen in parts of Asia and Europe, the virus now has spread into five leading hog-raising U.S. states. How it arrived in the United States remains a mystery. While the U.S. imports millions of pigs each year from Canada, it imports pigs from virtually no other country, and no Canadian cases of PEDV have been confirmed. Veterinarians and epidemiologists say pigs are infected through oral means, and that the virus is not airborne and does it not occur spontaneously in nature. In recent years, with the emergence of dangerous pathogens such as H1N1, also known as swine flu, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or mad cow disease, the United States and other countries have sought to secure defenses both on the farm and at the national borders to protect against barnyard epidemics. “We're just trying to get a handle on what's happening,” said Tom Burkgren, executive director of the American Association of Swine Veterinarians. “It's like drinking water out of a fire hose. We're getting hits from all over the place.” Overall numbers of confirmed cases and mortality rates are not yet available, though anecdotal evidence suggests there are devastating losses for farms that are hit. “If you've got it, it's bad,” said Mark Greenwood, vice president of agri-business capital at AgStar Financial Services, who said none of his clients have been affected. “I spoke to a farmer in the Midwest who had it show up in a 2,000-head barn of pigs, and had a 40 percent death loss.” A spokeswoman for U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service told Reuters the agency is working with state agencies and pork industry officials to discover where the virus originated. THE VIRUS SPREADS Confirmed cases have been reported in five hog-raising states including Iowa, the largest U.S. hog producer with 20 million hogs, according to the USDA. While only seven farms have had confirmed cases since May 17, more cases are expected as labs sift through samples, say sources investigating the outbreak. Colorado, Indiana, Illinois and Minnesota reportedly have positive tests for PEDV, according to state veterinarians and agriculture department officials, and the National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Ames, Iowa. PEDV, most often fatal to very young pigs, causes diarrhea, vomiting and dehydration. It also sickens older hogs, though their survival rate tends to be high. Known as a “coronavirus” because of the crown-like spikes on its surface, the virus afflicted China in recent years and killed more than 1 million piglets. PEDV is spread most commonly by pigs ingesting contaminated feces. Investigators are focused on physical transmission, perhaps a PEDV infected pig, equipment marred with feces, or even a person wearing dirty boots or with dirty nails. The mystery about how the virus entered the United States is raising concern about potential holes in the bio-security shield designed to protect the U.S. food and farming sectors. “Like everything else, we screw up from time to time,” said Ronald L. Plain, professor of agricultural economics at University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri. “We know so little about the transmittal of this virus. We can't be sure if it's happening because of something we're supposed to do right and didn't - or by some mechanism we don't know that we're supposed to do differently.” Initial reporting about the virus may have been delayed, say sources, because its symptoms can be confused with a more common malady, transmissible gastroenteritis (TGE). Also, states are not required to report cases of PEDV to the federal government, and farmers are not required to report to state veterinarians. As part of its assessment of the situation, USDA will email epidemiological surveys to swine veterinarians who are dealing cases of PEDV. Meanwhile, the veterinarians are sending samples to diagnostic labs, where technicians are scrambling gathering the tools needed to check the samples for PEDV - supplies many labs did not have prior to the outbreak. While most farmers are taking a wait-and-see approach, some told Reuters they are turning away unnecessary visitors and double checking to ensure their safety protocols are being followed. LOOKING NORTH The search for leads also has turned to the nation's borders and ports of entry - specifically, Canada, where the United States imported 5.7 million head of live hogs last year. Canada has never had a confirmed case of the virus, though it does not test for it, government officials said. “Canada has very effective import measures in place to address this risk,” said Dr. Rajiv Arora, senior staff veterinarian for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's foreign animal disease section. Canada can import live breeding pigs, under permits, from either the United States or the European Union, Arora said. The animals are quarantined by CFIA for a period of time, then inspected and tested - although not for PEDV - before released. Canada imported C$1.7 million ($1.6 million) worth of live swine in 2012, including both slaughter-ready and breeder pigs, according to Canada's Agriculture Department. CHINA HARD HIT Veterinarians and agricultural epidemiologists in the United States are drawing grim lessons from the devastating effect PEDV has had in other countries where it has hit. The first reports of suspected PEDV came in 1971 in the United Kingdom. As years passed, PEDV spread across parts of Europe and Asia. Veterinary researchers later concluded that lax bio-security measures contributed to PEDV's spread in Asia. One of the worst known outbreaks of the virus hit China's pig herds in late 2010, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Emerging Infectious Diseases Journal. Vaccines had limited effectiveness and PEDV over ran southern China killing more than 1 million piglets. The death rate for virus-infected piglets ranged from 80 percent to 100 percent. Biosecurity measures in the U.S. food supply have been beefed up over the years, and especially after the outbreaks of mad cow disease and swine flu. Both outbreaks posed risks to human health. Today, trucks carrying live animals are supposed to be cleaned before entering and leaving farms. At commercial hog operations, visitors routinely shower and change clothing before stepping into a barn. Overseas visitors typically wait several days before being in the presence of a commercially raised hog. But the food shield is not impermeable. “If it becomes clear that this is not a novel way for to be transmitted, and that there had to be physical contact, that's going to be a major concern,” said William Marler, a leading food-safety attorney. “It means that there was a failure in the system.”source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/29/pork-industry-hunts-for-deadly-pig-virus/
The researchers who participated in this international research are: Marta Cascante and Vitaly Selivanov, from the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology of the Faculty of Biology of the UB and the Institute of Biomedicine of the University of Barcelona (IBUB), affiliated to the campus of International excellence Barcelona Knowledge Campus (BKC) ; Liang Zheng and Eyal Gottlieb, from Beatson Institute for Cancer Research (Scotland), and Joanna Kaplon and Daniel S. Peeper, from the Netherlands Cancer Institute, among other experts. Cellular senescence: a ‘brake’ to cell division Cellular senescence, formally described more than four decades ago by Paul Moorhead and Leonard Hayflick, is a tumour suppression mechanism which limits cell’s ability to proliferate. This process works as a ‘brake’ for tumour genesis and can be an answer to several factors (oncogene, oxidative stress, telomere alterations, etc.) Professor Marta Cascante, head of the Consolidated Research Group on Integrative Systems Biology, Metabolomics and Cancer of the UB honoured with the ICREA Academia Award 2010, explains that "as a response to an oncogene mutation, cell can activate its protection mechanisms and get into a phase so-called ‘oncogene-induced senescence’ which acts as a key tumour suppressive mechanism. …
The decade-old law that transformed the battle against HIV and AIDS in developing countries is at a crossroads. The dream of future generations freed from epidemic is running up against an era of economic recovery and harsh budget cuts. The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief grew out of an unlikely partnership between President George W. Bush and lawmakers led by the Congressional Black Caucus. It has come to represent what Washington can do when it puts politics aside - and what America can do to make the world a better place. President Barack Obama, speaking at the recent dedication of Bush's presidential library, praised the compassion Bush showed in “helping to save millions of lives and reminding people in some of the poorest corners of the globe that America cares.” House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said of Bush in a statement that “while many events may distinguish his presidency, his devotion to combatting the scourge of HIV/AIDS will certainly define his legacy.” The AIDS program's future, however, is uncertain. Obama has upped the stakes, speaking in his State of the Union address this year of “realizing the promise of an AIDS-free generation.” But funding for the relief plan's bilateral efforts has dipped in recent years and it's doubtful that Congress, in its current budget-cutting mood, will reverse that trend when the current five-year program expires later this year. The AIDS program is also trying to find a balance between its goals of reaching more people with its prevention and treatment programs and turning over more responsibility to the host nations where it operates. “This has been an incredible achievement,” said Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., a senior Congressional Black Caucus member who played major roles both in passing the original 2003 act and its 2008 renewal that significantly increased funding for AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis treatment in Africa and other areas of the developing world. She spoke of the more than 5 million people now receiving life-saving antiretroviral treatment and 11 million pregnant women who received HIV testing and counseling last year. “But I'm worried that with any type of level-funding or cuts we'll go backward,” she said. The 2008 act more than tripled funding from the 2003 measure, approving $48 billion over five years for bilateral and global AIDS programs, malaria and tuberculosis. It also ended U.S. policy making it almost impossible for HIV-positive people to get visas to enter the country. The AIDS program was the largest commitment ever by a nation to combat a single disease internationally. According to the U.N.'s UNAIDS and the Kaiser Family Foundation, in 2011 the United States provided nearly 60 percent of all international AIDS assistance. A decade ago, almost no one in sub-Saharan Africa was receiving antiretroviral treatment. By 2008, the AIDS program had boosted that number to 1.7 million. As of last year it was 5.1 million. The State Department says the program last year also helped provide treatment to some 750,000 HIV-positive pregnant women, allowing about 230,000 infants to be born HIV-free, supported 2 million male circumcisions and directly supported HIV testing and counseling for 46.5 million. “This is a remarkable story that the American people should know about,” Kimberly Scott of the Institute of Medicine, which recently completed an evaluation of the AIDS program, said at a forum sponsored by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the CSIS Global Health Policy Center. According to UNAIDS, the number of people living with HIV has leveled off, standing at about 34 million at the end of 2011. New infections that year reached 2.5 million, down 20 percent from 2001. AIDS-related deaths were 1.7 million, down from 2.3 million in 2005. Jennifer Kates, director of global health and HIV policy at Kaiser, said most countries where the program operates have yet to reach the “tipping point,” where new infections occurring in a year are less than the increase in people receiving treatment. Among the success stories were Ethiopia, where the 40,000 going on treatment in 2011 was almost four times the new infections. Still with a long way to go was Nigeria, which that year had 270,000 new HIV infections and a 57,000 increase in those getting treatment. Chris Collins, director of public policy at amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research, also warned of potential repercussions as the AIDS program shifts from being an emergency response to the AIDS epidemic to a more supportive role for country-based health programs. “The countries themselves largely are avoiding the important role that key populations play in epidemics,” he said, referring to gay men, those injecting drugs and sex workers. These groups face discrimination and criminal charges in many cases, and 90 percent of the money to help them now comes from external sources. Collins also spoke of the “huge mismatch” between the positive science and rhetoric on fighting AIDS and the money available. Since 2009 the funding for bilateral and global HIV and AIDS programs has largely stalled. Kaiser's Kates said that while there's still bipartisan support for the AIDS program in Congress, “the big question is will the financing be there to reach the goals” of treating more people and advancing toward that AIDS-free generation. “The challenge right now is that the global economic climate is different, the U.S. climate is different, but the need is still great.”source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/21/after-decade-global-aids-program-looks-ahead/
An extract from the kava plant can treat people with chronic anxiety, an study from Australia finds. Patients with generalized anxiety disorder who took kava extract tablets for six weeks showed a significant reduction in their symptoms, compared with a control group that took placebo pills, the results showed. The study confirms previous findings showing the anti-anxiety effects of kava, a psychoactive plant native to the Pacific region. Kava is culturally important among many Pacific Islanders, and is used in rituals and ceremonies. Consuming kava may induce a mild sedation and euphoria, a numbing effect and enhanced social interaction. It is prepared in various forms, such as grinding the plant or brewing its roots. It's believed the roots contain chemicals that may treat anxiety. The active ingredients of the plant are compounds called kavalactones. These chemicals have similar effects to medications such as Xanax, which are used to treat anxiety and panic disorders. In the new study, 75 patients with anxiety disorders were given either kava or placebo pills, and their anxiety levels were regularly assessed over the next six weeks. Patients who consumed kava tablets showed significant improvements in their symptoms, as measured by a commonly used psychological test. By the end of the experiment, 26 percent of kava-consuming patients were in remission from their symptoms compared with 6 percent of the placebo group, according to the study, which was published this month in the Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology. Kava is less addictive and has a lower risk of side effects compared with conventional anxiety medications, according to the study. In the study, some people taking kava reported headaches, but no other side effects were seen. Previous studies have suggested the plant may have negative effects on the liver, but liver tests in the study participants showed no problems. Researchers also found that peoples genetics may affect their response to kava. Genes that code for proteins that transport a brain chemical called GABA may play a role in this, . If this finding is replicated, it may pave the way for simple genetic tests to determine which people may be likely to have a beneficial anxiety-reducing effect from taking kava, said Jerome Sarris, study author from the University of Melbourne. The new study adds to the evidence of kava's medicinal potential. A 2010 reviewof 12 controlled trials concluded that kava is likely to be an effective treatment for anxiety, and its short-term use is likely to be safe. The reviewers, however, called for larger studies to bolster these results. Kava is a major export of the Pacific. It was once banned in some Western countries, primarily out of concern for its alleged effects on the liver. It is now legal in most places and available in various forms, such as in relaxation supplements and anti-energy drinks. Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/20/kava-plant-may-treat-anxiety/
Do your kids love chocolate milk? It may have more calories on average than you thought. Same goes for soda. Until now, the only way to find out what people in the United States eat and how many calories they consume has been government data, which can lag behind the rapidly expanding and changing food marketplace. Researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are trying to change that by creating a gargantuan map of what foods Americans are buying and eating. Part of the uniqueness of the database is its ability to sort one product into what it really is - thousands of brands and variations. Take the chocolate milk. The government long has long classified chocolate milk with 2 percent fat as one item. But the UNC researchers, using scanner data from grocery stores and other commercial data, found thousands of different brands and variations of 2 percent chocolate milk and averaged them out. The results show that chocolate milk has about 11 calories per cup more than the government thought. The researchers led by professor Barry Popkin at the UNC School of Public Health, are figuring out that chocolate milk equation over and over, with every single item in the grocery store. It's a massive project that could be the first evidence of how rapidly the marketplace is changing, and the best data yet on what exact ingredients and nutrients people are consuming. That kind of information could be used to better target nutritional guidelines, push companies to cut down on certain ingredients and even help with disease research. Just call it “mapping the food genome.” “The country needs something like this, given all of the questions about our food supply,” says Popkin, the head of the UNC Food Research Program. “We're interested in improving the public's health and it really takes this kind of knowledge.” The project first came together in 2010 after a group of 16 major food companies pledged, as part of first lady Michelle Obama's campaign to combat obesity, to reduce the calories they sell to the public by 1.5 trillion. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation agreed to fund a study to hold the companies accountable, eventually turning to UNC with grants totaling $6.7 million. Aided by supercomputers on campus, Popkin and his team have taken existing commercial databases of food items in stores and people's homes, including the store-based scanner data of 600,000 different foods, and matched that information with the nutrition facts panels on the back of packages and government data on individuals' dietary intake. The result is an enormous database that has taken almost three years so far to construct and includes more detail than researchers have ever had on grocery store items - their individual nutritional content, who is buying them and their part in consumers' diets. The study will fill gaps in current data about the choices available to consumers and whether they are healthy, says Susan Krebs-Smith, who researches diet and other risk factors related to cancer at the National Cancer Institute. Government data, long the only source of information about American eating habits, can have a lag of several years and neglect entire categories of new types of products - Greek yogurt or energy drinks, for example. With those significant gaps, the government information fails to account for the rapid change now seen in the marketplace. Now more than ever, companies are reformulating products on the fly as they try to make them healthier or better tasting. While consumers may not notice changes in the ingredient panel on the back of the package, the UNC study will pick up small variations in individual items and also begin to be able to tell how much the marketplace as a whole is evolving. “When we are done we will probably see 20 percent change in the food supply in a year,” Popkin says. “The food supply is changing and no one really knows how.” For example, the researchers have found that there has been an increase in using fruit concentrate as a sweetener in foods and beverages because of a propensity toward natural foods, even though it isn't necessarily healthier than other sugars. While the soda and chocolate milk have more calories on average than the government thought, the federal numbers were more accurate on the calories in milk and cereals. Popkin and his researchers are hoping their project will only be the beginning of a map that consumers, companies, researchers and even the government can use, breaking the data down to find out who is eating what and where they shop. Is there a racial divide in the brand of potato chips purchased, for example, and what could that mean for health? Does diet depend on where you buy your food - the grocery store or the convenience store…