A new hope... for kids!
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Posted: 18 December 2011
WASHINGTON: The US Food and Drug Administration has approved a first mechanical cardiac assist device for children that can help keep patients alive as they await a transplant.
The EXCOR Pediatric System, made by German company Berlin Heart, can be sized to fit young people from newborns to teenagers.
"This is a step forward, it is the first FDA-approved pulsatile mechanical circulatory support device specifically designed for children," said Susan Cummins, chief pediatric medical officer in the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health.
"Previous adult heart assist devices were too large to be used in critically ill children to keep them alive while they wait to get a new heart," she added in a statement Friday.
The device was tested on a group of 48 US patients, and was found to improve survival rates for transplant patients compared with the use of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, the current standard of care, though not FDA approved.
As a whole, a reported 12-17 percent of children and 23 percent of infants die while they await heart transplants, according to the FDA.
- AFP/cc
Taken from ChannelNewsAsia.com; source article is below:
US approves first heart pump for children
With news like this coming from the US, now this is something!
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Posted: 15 December 2011
WASHINGTON: Cigarette and alcohol use by US teenagers are at their lowest point since the mid-1970s, but marijuana use remains steady, according to the findings of a national survey released Wednesday.
Some 18.7 percent of grade 12 high school students, typically aged 17 or 18, reported smoking cigarettes in the latest Monitoring the Future, well down from a peak of 36.5 percent in 1997.
Among eighth-grade pupils, the proportion of smokers was 6.1 percent, down from 21 percent in 1996, the classroom survey of 46,773 students from 400 schools indicated.
"That cigarette use has declined to historically low rates is welcome news, given our concerns that declines have slowed or stalled in recent years," said Nora Volkow of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which funded the survey.
Some 63.5 percent of 12th graders and 26.9 percent of eighth graders consumed alcohol in the past year, down from peaks of 74.8 percent in 1997 and 46.8 percent in 1994 respectively.
Binge drinking, defined as five or more drinks in a row in the fortnight prior to taking the survey, saw a five-year decrease, reported by 6.4 percent of eighth graders, 14.7 percent of 10th graders and 21.6 percent of 12th graders.
On the other hand, use of marijuana "remains steady" after some increases in recent years, with 36.4 percent of 12th graders having used it once in the past year, and 6.6 percent on a daily basis.
Some 11.4 percent of 12th graders said they had used synthetic marijuana, known as K2 or spice.
Launched in 1975, Monitoring the Future is among three major surveys sponsored by federal health officials to take stock of substance abuse among American teenagers.
- AFP/wk
Taken from ChannelNewsAsia.com; source article is below:
Fewer US teens smoke, drink
Now this is good to hear, but even better 'to eat'!
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Posted: 06 December 2011
WASHINGTON: Women of childbearing age can reduce their risk of heart problems by regularly eating fish rich in omega 3 fatty acids, said a Danish study out Monday.
The study is the first to examine younger women, age 15-49, and determine whether fish in their diet has a real impact on their current likelihood of heart problems, instead of their longevity.
For instance, "those who rarely or never ate fish had 50 percent more cardiovascular problems over eight years than those who ate fish regularly," the research said.
Women who rarely or never ate fish faced a 90 percent higher risk of heart problems than those who ate fish weekly.
When researchers looked at hospital admissions for cardiovascular disease in three different assessments over a 30 week period, they found it was three times higher among women who did not eat fish.
The findings, published in Hypertension: Journal of the American Heart Association, are based on a Danish study of 49,000 women with a median age of 30 that spanned eight years.
Women were interviewed by phone about their family history, lifestyle and fish consumption, and were tracked over the next eight years.
"We saw a strong association with cardiovascular disease in the women who were still in their late 30s," said Marin Strom, lead researcher and post doctoral fellow at the Centre for Fetal Programming at Statens Serum Institut in Copenhagen, Denmark.
"The biggest challenge in getting health messages like this across to younger populations is that usually the benefits may not be evident for 30 or 40 years, but our study shows this is not the case."
Women most commonly reported eating cod, salmon, herring, and mackerel, all of which are high in omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, believed to protect against heart and vascular disease.
The study focused exclusively on dietary intake of fish, not supplements with fish oil.
"Women who eat fish should find the results encouraging, but it is important to emphasize that to obtain the greatest benefit from fish and fish oils, women should follow the dietary recommendations to eat fish as a main meal at least twice a week," said Strom.
-AFP/ac
Taken from ChannelNewsAsia.com; source article is below:
Eating fish boosts heart health in young women
Posted: 24 November 2011
PARIS: The word's first artificial windpipe transplant has been such a success that a second operation has been carried out and a third is being planned, The Lancet reported on Thursday.
Andemariam Teklesenbet Beyene, a 36-year-old Eritrean, is doing well after undergoing the ground-breaking operation in Stockholm in June, it said.
Beyene, a post-graduate geology student currently living in Reykjavik, Iceland, had his trachea removed because of cancer.
It was replaced in a 12-hour operation on June 9 with a synthetic "scaffold" covered with his own stem cells, or precursor cells of windpipe tissue.
"The patient has been doing great for the last four months and has been able to live a normal life," the British journal quoted Tomas Gudbjartsson, a professor at Landspitali University Hospital and University of Iceland in Reykjavik, as saying.
"For the last two months he has been able to focus on his studies and the plan is that he will defend his thesis at the end of this year."
The operation, led by Professor Paolo Macchiarini of Stockholm's Karolinska University Hospital, entailed using 3-D imaging to scan Beyene and then building a glass model of the afflicted section of his windpipe.
The glass was used to shape the artificial scaffold, which was then seeded with stem cells.
Macchiarini has just carried out his second transplant, on a 30-year-old man from Maryland, United States, who also had cancer of the trachea. The scaffold was made from nanofibres and thus "represents a further advance," the Journal quoted Macchiarini as saying.
His team is now hoping to treat a 13-month-old South Korean infant with the same technique.
"We will continue to improve the regenerative medicine approaches for transplanting the windpipe and extend it to the lungs, heart, and oesophagus," said Macchiarini.
It marks a step forward in regenerative medicine, as the organ is tailor-made to the patient, he said.
In addition, artificial organs do not require the long waiting time that usually happens in human donation.
As the stem cells come from the patient himself, this reduces risk of attack by the immune system, which is the case for donated organs whose rejection has to be combatted by taking powerful immunosuppressive drugs.
-AFP/pn
Taken from ChannelNewsAsia.com; source article is below:
First artificial windpipe graft a success
A long-term study, now this is something!
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Posted: 23 November 2011
PARIS: Statins safely reduce the risk of cardiovascular illness even years after treatment is stopped, according to a probe into the popular cholesterol-busters published on Wednesday.
Statins work by blocking a liver enzyme that makes fatty molecules which line arterial walls and boost the danger of heart disease and strokes.
With worldwide annual sales of more than 20 billion dollars, the drugs have been dubbed "the aspirin of the 21st century" because of their benefit and wide use.
But lingering questions persist about their long-term safety for the heart, liver and cancer risk.
Researchers at the Heart Protection Study Collaborative Group in Oxford looked at 20,536 patients at risk of cardiovascular disease who were randomly allocated 40mg daily of simvastatins or a dummy look-alike over more than five years.
During this period, those who took the statins saw a reduction in "bad" LDL cholesterol and a 23-per cent reduction in episodes of vascular ill-health compared to the placebo group.
The monitoring of the volunteers continued for a further six years after the trial ended.
The benefits persisted throughout this monitoring period among those volunteers who stopped taking the statins, the investigators found.
In addition, there was no emergence of any health hazard among those who had taken, or were continuing to take, the drugs.
A large number of cancers (nearly 3,500) developed during this follow-up period, but there was no difference in cancer incidence between the statin and placebo groups.
"The persistence of benefit we observed among participants originally allocated simvastatin during the subsequent six-year post-trial period is remarkable," said one of the investigators, Richard Bulbulia.
"In addition, the reliable evidence of safety, with no excess risk of cancer or other major illnesses during over 11 years follow-up, is very reassuring for doctors who prescribe statins and the increasingly large numbers of patients who take them long-term to reduce their risk of vascular disease."
A previous investigation in November 2010 found that long-term use of statins was less risky than thought for people with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), a common liver ailment.
- AFP/ck
Taken from ChannelNewsAsia.com; source article is below:
Long-term study proves benefit of statins in heart disease
