Tag Archives: professor

Sugary drinks tied to kidney stone risk

Adults who drink at least one sugar-sweetened drink a day are slightly more likely to develop kidney stones than people who rarely imbibe them, according to a new study. While the recommendation for kidney stone prevention has been to drink a lot of fluids, the study suggests that it's not just the amount of fluid but the type of drink that also matters. Dr. Gary Curhan, the senior author of the study, said patients often ask for dietary advice to help prevent kidney stones. While the recommendation has been to drink plenty of fluids, Curhan said, patients often ask, “what should I drink? There's a lot of lore out there.” To see whether the type of beverage might matter, Curhan, of the Channing Division of Network Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and his colleagues collected data from three massive surveys of nearly 200,000 people. The questionnaires surveyed participants every two to four years and asked about diet, lifestyle and health, including how much they drank certain beverages and whether they developed kidney stones. None of the people in the study had kidney stones at the start. They found that 159 out of every 100,000 people who drank a sugar-sweetened non-cola beverage, such as clear soda, less than once a week developed kidney stones, compared to 306 out of every 100,000 who drank soda daily. After accounting for other factors, that translated to a 33 percent greater chance of developing kidney stones. Frequent punch drinkers also had an 18 percent higher chance of developing kidney stones. For every 100,000 people who drank punch at least every day, 226 developed kidney stones, compared to 158 out of every 100,000 participants who had punch less than once a week. Curhan said that while the numbers of people developing kidney stones in each group are not enormously different, the increased risk spread across an entire population is quite big. “Sodas are so commonly used that even though the absolute rate doesn't look that different, if there's a huge number of people consuming it, then the magnitude on the public health can be quite substantial,” Curhan told Reuters Health. Other drinks, such as coffee, tea, wine, beer and orange juice were tied to a lower risk of developing kidney stones. For instance, 205 out of every 100,000 people who rarely drank coffee developed kidney stones, compared to 137 out of every 100,000 people who drank it daily. Just 96 out of every 100,000 people who drank red wine daily developed kidney stones, while 174 out of every 100,000 people who drank red wine less than once a week developed kidney stones. Curhan's study, published in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, follows others showing a link between stones and fructose, non-dairy calcium, vitamin C supplements and other factors. The new study doesn't prove cause-and-effect between certain drinks and kidney stones, but it's possible that sugar could be involved, Curhan said, because it might play a role in how the body handles calcium. Another possibility is that sugary drinks might be contributing to obesity, and obesity is also tied to a higher kidney stone risk, said Dr. Elaine Worcester, a professor at the University of Chicago, who was not part of the study. Despite the lack of proof of a cause-effect relationship, Worcester said “these kinds of studies are the best we have to give advice to our patients.”source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/23/sugary-drinks-tied-to-kidney-stone-risk/

Antidepressants may help with heart disease

For some patients with heart disease, taking antidepressants may reduce the risk of heart problems brought on by mental stress, a new study suggests. Researchers looked at patients with myocardial ischemia a condition in which the heart doesn't get enough blood as they preformed mentally stressful activities. All of the patients also had coronary heart disease, or a narrowing of the arteries that supply blood to the heart. Patients in the study who took the antidepressant escitalopram (sold as Lexapro) were about 2.5 times less likely than those who took a placebo to experience myocardial ischemia triggered by mental stress. The findings suggest that an antidepressant, or other treatments that help patients cope with stress, could improve symptoms for some people with coronary heart disease, said study researcher Dr. Wei Jiang, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University School of Medicine. However, future studies are needed to confirm the results, and to identify the people most likely to benefit from such treatment, Jiang said. Stress and the heart About 30 years ago, doctors observed that mental stress could bring on myocardial ischemia.tudies also have found that people with mental-stress-induced myocardial ischemia are at increased risk of dying from heart disease. Coronary heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States and about 50 percent of patients with the condition experience mental-stress-induced myocardial ischemia yet few studies have attempted to find treatments. In the new study, 127 patients were randomly assigned to receive escitalopram or placebo for six weeks. Participants completed a number of tests at the beginning and end of the study, including a treadmill stress test, a math test and a test in which participants told a sad story in order to evoke emotion. During the tests, the researchers examined certain heart symptoms to diagnose myocardial ischemia, such as a reduction in blood pumped out of one of the heart's cambers. After six weeks, about 34 percent of participants taking the antidepressant did not experience myocardial ischemia during the mental-stress tests, compared with 17 percent in the placebo group. The antidepressant did not affect whether patients experienced myocardial ischemia during exercise. Dr. Andrew Freeman, a cardiologist at the National Jewish Health hospital in Denver, said it was not very surprising that drugs that blunt the brain's response to stress would also blunt the heart's response to stress. But what the findings mean for patients in the long term is not known, said Freeman, who was not involved in the study. Future studies are needed to see whether antidepressants might reduce the risk of cardiovascular events like heart attacks, Freeman said. How does it work?

New factor to control oncogene-induced senescence discovered

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. …

Poliovirus vaccine trial shows early promise for recurrent glioblastoma

The treatment, developed at Duke and tested in an ongoing phase 1 study, capitalizes on the discovery that cancer cells have an abundance of receptors that work like magnets drawing the poliovirus, which then infects and kills the cells. The investigational therapy, known as PVSRIPO, uses an engineered form of the virus that is lethal to cancer cells, while harmless to normal cells. …

Babies who share bed with parents 5 times more likely to die of SIDS

Babies sharing beds with their parents face a five-fold risk of dying of cot death, even if their parents are not smokers, new research shows. The increased risk of death extends to babies previously thought to be at low risk because they are breastfed and the mother has not taken alcohol or drugs, according to a study published in the British Medical Journal Open. The findings come after 1472 Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) cases and 4679 control cases from Australasia, the U.K. and Europe were analyzed in the largest ever study of cot death. The SIDS rate would plummet if parents avoided bed sharing and public healthy messages were more forceful about the dangers for babies under three months, the authors, led by Professor Robert Carpenter, said. “Eighty-eight percent of the deaths that occurred while bed sharing would probably not have occurred had the baby been placed on its back in a cot by the parents' bed,’’ the authors concluded. The risk of SIDs while bed sharing decreased as the baby gets older. Bed sharing has increased “markedly’’ over the last decade, the study found. Parents who endorse the practice are active on the Internet and Facebook. Murdoch University associate professor Catherine Fetherson said research shows between 30 and 50 percent of parents share a bed with their babies at some time. She believes a blanket message against bed sharing is driving parents underground. “They are continuing to do it, even though people are being warned against it and so what is happening is they are shutting down all communication with health professionals,’’ she said. Click for more from news.com.au.source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/21/babies-who-share-bed-with-parents-5-times-more-likely-to-die-cot-death/

Compound in Mediterranean diet makes cancer cells ‘mortal’

By altering a very specific step in gene regulation, this compound essentially re-educates cancer cells into normal cells that die as scheduled. One way that cancer cells thrive is by inhibiting a process that would cause them to die on a regular cycle that is subject to strict programming. This study in cells, led by Ohio State University researchers, found that a compound in certain plant-based foods, called apigenin, could stop breast cancer cells from inhibiting their own death. Much of what is known about the health benefits of nutrients is based on epidemiological studies that show strong positive relationships between eating specific foods and better health outcomes, especially reduced heart disease…

Timing of cancer radiation therapy may minimize hair loss

The study, which appears in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), found that mice lost 85 percent of their hair if they received radiation therapy in the morning, compared to a 17 percent loss when treatment occurred in the evening. The researchers, from the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, the University of Southern California (USC) and the University of California, Irvine (UCI), worked out the precise timing of the hair circadian clock, and also uncovered the biology behind the clockwork — the molecules that tells hair when to grow and when to repair damage. They then tested the clock using radiotherapy. …

Commonly used catheters double risk of blood clots in ICU and cancer patients

But compared to other central venous catheters (CVCs), these commonly-used catheters (known as PICCs) more than double the risk of dangerous blood clots — especially among patients who are critically ill or who have cancer, according to a new University of Michigan Health System study published in The Lancet. …