Recent Advences in Hepatitis C Treatment

A new drug Boceprevir is going to be added to the already existing pegylated interferon injections and ribavirin pills in the treatment of dangerous Hepatitis C viral hepatitis.

This infection often lead to cirrhosis of liver and cancer of liver.

The new drug directly attacks the virus in contrast to the already existing drugs which help to boost immunity.

Amplify’d from www.medpagetoday.com

FDA Panel Endorses Boceprevir for Hepatitis C

SILVER SPRING, Md. -- An FDA advisory committee has voted unanimously to recommend approval of the investigational drug boceprevir (Victrelis), in combination with peginterferon and ribavirin, to treat hepatitis C genotype 1.

The panel was expected to endorse the drug -- and the FDA is expected to approve it -- since clinical trials showed that in the difficult-to-treat genotype 1 patients boceprevir yielded sustained virological response rates as high as 67%.

In contrast, the rate for patients getting the standard regimen of pegylated interferon injections and ribavirin pills was about 40%.

The drug is one of two hepatitis C virus (HCV) protease inhibitors that will be reviewed during the panel's two-day meeting this week. The other is telaprevir -- slated for review on Thursday -- which exhibited even higher sustained response rates than boceprevir.

Both boceprevir and telaprevir have attracted major buzz among physicians and patients on the basis of excellent-looking clinical trial results, most recently from two of boceprevir's pivotal studies published in the New England Journal of Medicine last month.

The core treatment regimen with boceprevir tested in the trials included a four-week lead-in period with peginterferon and ribavirin with boceprevir then added for 44 weeks. But some of the trials also included a regimen in which the duration of boceprevir treatment could be extended based on how well a patient was responding to treatment after eight and 24 weeks.

Until now, treatment has relied on boosting the immune system, rather than attacking the virus directly. Read more at www.medpagetoday.com

 

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Fainting Attack and Awareness

Be aware of fainting attacks in any age. It can be a warning sign of very serious disease including coronary artery disease and epilepsy.

Amplify’d from www.nlm.nih.gov

Health Tip: Don't Take Fainting Lightly

(HealthDay News) -- Fainting can occur for a number of reasons, from feeling terror to being dehydrated, a state in which the body does not have as much fluid or water as it should. In some instances, fainting requires emergency medical attention.

The ADAM Encyclopedia lists these warning signs of dangerous fainting:

Fainting and falling from a height, particularly if there is bleeding or other injury. Not regaining alertness within a few minutes. Fainting when someone is pregnant or has diabetes, or is older than age 50. Fainting accompanied by pain or pressure in the chest. Fainting accompanied by changes in heartbeat or signs of stroke, including changes in speech, vision and the ability to move both sides of the body. Fainting that causes convulsions, an injury to the tongue or the inability to control the bowels or bladder. Read more at www.nlm.nih.gov

 

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Hypertension Treatment in Very Elderly

Hypertension in very elderly patients >80 years of age need not be controlled as young i.e. <120/80 mm of Hg.

They should be stabilized around 140/90 mm of Hg.

Indapamide and/or perindopril are good for them as seen in the trail mentioned below.

Amplify’d from www.medscape.com

Elderly Hypertensive Patients Benefit From Treatment: ACC/AHA

While most clinical trials exclude the very old, many modern hypertension clinical trials have substantial cohorts of older patients, said Pepine. In these trials, the responses to antihypertensive treatment and the effects on clinical outcomes were the same among the elderly cohorts as in the overall trial results. In addition, the recently published Hypertension in the Very Elderly Trial (HYVET) cemented the benefit of treatment in older patients when investigators showed that antihypertensive treatment with a sustained-release formulation of the diuretic indapamide, with or without the addition of perindopril, significantly reduced fatal stroke, all-cause mortality, and heart failure in patients 80 years of age and older.

The ACC/AHA writing committee recommends treatment with a single drug for patients >80 years of age, followed by a second drug if needed, in order to achieve a systolic blood pressure of 140 to 145 mm Hg. The writing committee states that low-dose thiazides, calcium antagonists, and renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (RAAS) blockers are preferred, but the use of concomitant medications will likely dictate drug therapy. For individuals aged 65 to 79 years old, the committee recommends a treatment target of less than 140/90 mm Hg.

The writing committee also notes that elderly patients can benefit from lifestyle modifications, including weight reduction, adopting the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet, reducing salt intake, increasing physical activity, and moderating alcohol consumption. Lifestyle changes can lower blood pressure by 7 mm Hg or 8 mm Hg, Pepine noted, and these recommendations are pertinent even among elderly patients not yet hypertensive. Read more at www.medscape.com

 

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Varenicline or Chantix Helps to Quit Smoking and Other Tobacco Product

Nicotine in tobacco products give pleasure feeling but harm too much. It makes the person addicted to tobacco and simultaneous intake of other harmful ingredients cause many diseases.

Many methods and drugs are being tried to help addicts to quit smoking and using tobacco products. Available are nicotine patch, bupropion and varenzcline etc..

The fact is that there are receptors for nicotine in the brain. When one smokes, the inhaled nicotine attaches to these receptors. This sends a message to part of brain to release a chemical called dopamine. Dopamine gives a feeling of pleasure. But it does not last long. That's why body craves more nicotine and a vicious cycle starts.

It has been seen that varenicline, Pfizer's brand Chantix helps a lot in quitting tobacco. this molecule is a partial nicotine agonist, which gives pleasure feeling to some extent; but at the same time makes smoking a lot less enjoyable than before. At last it helps to quit smoking.

The researchers tested 101 middle-aged smokers from a stop-smoking clinic in London. They randomly assigned half of them to start Chantix 4 weeks before quitting, while the rest got a sugar pill for the first 3 weeks and then switched to Chantix as well.

After the first 3 weeks, the participants on Chantix smoked less and said they didn't enjoy it as much as before. More than one in three of them had cut the number of cigarettes they smoked by half, compared to only one in ten of the people who started out on sugar pills.

It was approved by US FDA in 2006, but some serious adverse effects made the Agency to add warning to this product. The detail can be seen here.

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Painful Defaecation With or Without Bleeding

There can be several causes of painful defaection; the most common condition is what is called fissure-in-ano. Essentially, there develops a fissure in the anal canal.

It is commonly seen in women having constipation and passage of hard faecal mass. In men is is the hind part of anus that is affected and in women it is the front side. But, there is no rule in this regard. It can be of any depth and length. A skin tag is seen guarding the fissure near the anal opening; called sentinel pile.

It causes too much pain during defaecation and for a long period after the act. Pain may be so much so that that the suffer fears to go to the latrine. If such a thing develops and the patients defers defaecation for several days; stool constantly accumulate in the rectum and colon to give rise to a large colon; the megacolon; which is acquired one. In many patients bleeding is seen from the sore. Megacolon may end up in gut obstruction; called intestinal obstruction.

The essential cause is diet rich in high animal protein and less fibre. The intrinsic abnormality present in some patient is high resting pressure of the anal muscle; the anal sphincter. Some other diseases like Crohn's disease or anal cancer may present sometimes with fissure-in-ano; and some other are of academic interest

This can easily be diagnosed by viewing the region. The fissure is very much apparent and no further examination may be required. A digital rectal examination is deferred till the pain subsides to diagnose any serious conditions those might be associated with. Routine blood tests are to be conducted and diabetic status must be checked

Treatment is usually conservative;

• Restricting animal protein and adding fibre to diet.
• Plenty of water to drink.
• Some medications;
  1. Analgesics to relieve pain,
  2. Antibiotics,
  3. Anaesthetic creams to be applied before going to toilet,
  4. Sitting in warm water with some antiseptic, called sitz bath, thereafter,
  5. Antibiotic ointment to be applied after the sitz bath,
  and
  6. Diltiazepam ointment that causes muscle relaxation and increase blood supply; thus helps in healing of the sore.

And perhaps as a last resort surgery is undertaken, to partially cut the sphincter making that less powerful; called lateral sphincterectomy. There is slight risk of the surgery in making the sphincter permanently incompetent, if more is cut; problem of sphincter control.

As per experience, conservative treatment and diet modification gives very good result; nicely avoiding the surgery. There should not be any haste for surgery.

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Botox may dampen the Ability to Sympathize.

In the recent past, I had noticed that a barber while shaving the beard in the critical areas of face, instructing his customer to keep lips in a particular position, and once he did that, the lips of the barber assumed the same position with concentration, so that he might not injure the lips of his customer. That amused as well as taught me.
While recently, I was screwing a bolt; became conscious of my facial movements to support my hand movements. People have been seen crying in theatres while watching very pathetic scenes.
What I want to emphasize that while watching others having some sort of expression in their face in a particular situation, we as onlookers, share or so to say get involved into that situation. We sympathize with similar sort of expression in our face.
On the other side of the story, while we laugh or become angry, facial muscles react with contraction/ relaxation and we receive similar feeling within us in our mind.
There is some connection in that way. Recently, it has been seen that those who got Botox injected to face to abolish wrinkles, do not feel the emotions of other people to the fullest extent.
Botox is a toxin derived from a bacterium called Clostridium botulinum that paralyses the muscles by blocking the nerve signals. It is used to smooth the face and other beauty spots of body like neck, where the muscles are in a state of contraction; visible as wrinkles; as person ages. There is also loss of elastic tissue components of skin, loss of fat and moisture to add to the problem.
A recent research concludes , I quote, “Botox has been at times described as giving users a poker face. But a reputation of turning users into Stepford Wives (or husbands, boyfriends, bosses, grandmas etc.) would have the potential to spread rapidly, and be hard to combat.”

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• Botox May Deaden Ability to Empathize, New Study Says (blogs.forbes.com)
• Botox Can Make It Harder to Empathize (newser.com)

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New Hope for Patients of Diabetic Nephropathy

There is new Hope for patients of Diabetic Nephropathy, it seems. Many suffer from end stage kidney disease, most commonly as a late complication of diabetes mellitus.
They either have to have kidney transplant, which is difficult because of limited donors availability; or live on life long dialysis, commonly peritoneal.
In a new research , at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Mayo Clinic have published promising results of a clinical study using an experimental anti-fibrotic and anti-inflammatory drug called pirfenidone to treat patients with diabetic nephropathy.
The lead author Kumar Sharma, MD, FAHA, professor of medicine in the UCSD division of nephrology and director of the Center for Renal Translational Medicine; says the drug not only halted the progression of the end stage diabetic nephropathy, but also improved the function of the kidneys.
Pirfenidone is an experimental drug first introduced for Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis, but the FDA declined to give approval to it in 2010. But the European Commission has given its approval in March, 2011.
This is basically an antifibolytic and anti-inflammatory drug that has the power to block the action of Transforming Growth Factor beta that is responsible for fibrosis in kidney following constant onslaught of excess glucose available in the circulation.
A new randomized, double-blind study of 77 patients with diabetic nephropathy that was conducted at Thomas Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia, the Mayo Clinic in Rochester and the NIH; revealed that the function of kidneys improved as evidenced by the estimated glomerular filtration rate, or eGFR, with a dose as low as 1200 mg/day.
It is still to be approved for the treatment of nephropathy but shows definite promise in a field where very little medications are available. Sharma states the next step is to perform a larger clinical study and to identify personalized biomarkers, to determine which patients are most apt to show improvement on the drug

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• Drug effective in treating kidney disease in diabetic patients (eurekalert.org)

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Artificial Nose to Detect Head and Neck Cancer

Israeli engineers build artificial device capable of detecting cancer in breath


(PhysOrg.com) -- Professor Hossam Haick of the Israel Institute of Technology, at Technion, and his team have built an artificial nose which is capable of detecting molecules in human breath that signal the presence of head and neck cancers in people. In a paper published in the British Journal of Cancer, Haick describes how he and his colleagues set to work on coming up with a device that could mimic the ability that dogs have demonstrated in detecting certain types of cancers.

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In the Name of MSRA

It always the business tactics to exploit some sensitive issues, and claim some unproven claims.

Hand sanitizers are no doubt helpful for the purpose of reducing microbial load, but may not be effective in killing bacteria like methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).

Let us not exploit the situation to make money.

Amplify’d from www.medpagetoday.com

Makers of Hand Sanitizers Slapped for MRSA Claims

The four companies and the affected products are:

Tec Laboratories, of Albany, Ore., and its Staphaseptic First Aid Antiseptic/Pain Relieving Gel JD Nelson and Associates, of Westerville, OH, for its Safe4Hours Hand Sanitizing Lotion and Safe4Hours First Aid Antiseptic Skin Protectant The Dr. G.H. Tichenor Antiseptic Co., of New Orleans, for Dr. Tichenor's Antiseptic Gel Oh So Clean, of San Francisco, for its CleanWell All-Natural Foaming Hand Sanitizer, CleanWell All-Natural Hand Sanitizer, CleanWell All-Natural Hand Sanitizing Wipes, and CleanWell All-Natural Antibacterial Foaming Handsoap

"The FDA cannot allow companies to mislead consumers by making unproven prevention claims," said Deborah Autor, director of the Office of Compliance in the agency's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. Read more at www.medpagetoday.com

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• Hand Sanitizers That Prevent MRSA? Not So Fast (healthland.time.com)
• Hand Sanitizers Carry Unproven Claims to Prevent MRSA Infections (nlm.nih.gov)

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Cocoa in Chocoles Helps Heart Attack

Chocolate eaters should cheer. Yet another finding supports the beneficial effects of cocoa found in dark chocolates.
Image via Wikipedia

But, calorie present in the chocolate is a concern for heavy chocolate eaters.

Amplify’d from www.hhs.gov

Cocoa and heart risk

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Nicholas Garlow with HHS HealthBeat.

“Higher cocoa flavonoid consumption reduced systolic blood pressure, reduced LDL cholesterol, the bad cholesterol, increased HDL cholesterol, the good cholesterol.” (10 seconds)

The study, however, used flavonoid rich cocoa with balanced calorie levels.

“In general, darker chocolate is better because they have more flavonoids.” (5 seconds) Read more at www.hhs.gov

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Cancer Vaccine on Trial

Vaccine containing traces of a protein called telomerase is on trial in case of pancreatic cancer.

Telomerase is the enzyme responsible to keep up the ends of chromosomes, called telomere intact. Telomere is something like the ends of shoe lace. As telomere shortens by repeated cell division, telomerase tries to keep the length intact; a key to remain always young and cheat death.

So, if no telomerase for cancer cells, those will die shortly.

Amplify’d from www.bbc.co.uk

TeloVac pancreatic cancer vaccine trial launched in UK

A trial has begun on a vaccine treating pancreatic cancer, which has the lowest survival rate of all common cancers.

The vaccine contains small sections of a protein, telomerase, which is over-produced by cancer cells. The aim is to stimulate the immune system to recognise the telomerase which sits on the surface of the cancer cells and to target the tumour.

Cancer Research UK's chief clinician Professor Peter Johnson said: "One of big problems with cancer treatment is you are almost always left with a few malignant cells and it is from those few cells that the cancer can regrow.

"If you can programme the immune system to recognise those cells and get rid of them altogether or keep them in check then you can effectively stop the cancer from growing back lifelong."

The Phase III or final stage TeloVac trial should produce results in just over a year which will show whether the vaccine has a positive effect. Read more at www.bbc.co.uk

 

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Early Exercise in a Stable Patient after Heart Attack is Better

It is typically advised to a patient of heart attack after the recovery to rest for at least for one month. That is also true after interventional therapy in form of stenting.
Now researchers advise the sooner the exercise the better is the outcome in a stable patient recovering from heart attack. The new study by researchers at the University of Alberta shows that for best results in stable patients after a heart attack, early exercise as well as prolonged exercise is the key to the best outcomes.
They had undertaken review of nearly 20 years of trial and concluded that in a stable patient exercise in a rehabilitation center should commence as early as after one week.
They say that the idea that heart needs more rest should be dispensed with. The study shows that, in fact, the heart will become better with exercise sooner and with continued exercise over a longer period of time.
Exercise in this study is defined as aerobic exercise in a group setting to build up exercise capacity. The researchers did not come across any detrimental effect of starting early exercise.
But, still perhaps many patients will not follow the advice out of fear. Here the role of physician will be important.

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• Heart needs work after heart attack: U of A Study challenges the notion that the heart must rest (eurekalert.org)

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Dengue Assay Kit gets approved by FDA

Dengue is usually transmitted by the mosquito Aedes aegypti, and rarely by Aedes albopictus. Dengue is currently endemic in more than 110 countries.

It causes high grade fever, headache, severe body pain, rashes and sometimes bleeding from various places in its severest form.

It is therefore, called as Break-bone fever or Dengue haemorrhagic fever. There is no approved vaccine or definite treatment. Treatment is symptomatic and supportive only.

Antibody to it appears after 4-5days of infection and so a diagnostic blood test using the antibody within that period may be negative.

Definitive diagnosis now rests on cell culture and viral isolation

Amplify’d from www.medscape.com

Dengue Fever Assay Gets FDA Marketing Nod

April 11, 2011 — An antibody test for dengue fever/dengue hemorrhagic fever has received marketing approval, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced on Friday.

The DENV Detect IgM capture enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay is the first test approved to aid in the diagnosis of dengue fever, a mosquito-borne viral infection that is most commonly seen in the United States among travelers returning from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia. The disease is endemic in Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and US territorial islands in the Pacific.

Dengue is also known as "break-bone" fever for its tendency to cause severe myalgia and bone pain. The disease has an acute onset that generally follows milder symptoms, including headache, fever, exhaustion, lymphadenopathy, and rash. A triad of fever, rash, and headache accompanied by other pains is suggestive of dengue infection.

The FDA cautions that the assay is not a direct test for the arbovirus strains that cause dengue. Instead, it detects an IgM antibody response that is not detectable until 3 to 5 days after the onset of fever. In addition, the test may cross-react with similar viruses, such as West Nile viruses. Read more at www.medscape.com

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Cold Sores in Mouth and Lips

Image of Herpes Simplex of Lower LipMost of the populations anywhere in the world are exposed to the viruses at some point of time that cause cold sores in the mouth. Those can be herpes simplex virus type 1, or herpes simplex virus type 2.
Cold sores might appear just once in a person's life, or recur off and on. They mostly affect the superficial nerves.
The triggering factors can be;

• Stress and strain,
• A cold, fever, or the flu.
• Hormonal changes, such as during menstruation or pregnancy.
• Trauma such as shaving.

Antiviral medications, such as acyclovir can be helpful by slowing down the replication of the virus.

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Fish Oil may Boost Action of Tamoxifen in Cancer Breast

Image via Wikipedia

Breast cancer is the second most common cancer among women, with more than 200,000 women diagnosed each year.
Sustained effect of female hormone estrogen plays a role in the development and growth of cancer breast in case of estrogen positive cancers. Tamoxifen is the drug that blocks the effect of estrogen, widely prescribed after surgery and chemotherapy; and seen to be helpful; and may be continued for 5 years.
Now, researchers at Fox Chase Cancer Center have found that omega-3 fatty acids; abundant in fish; can boost the action of tamoxifen therapy. They have seen that combination of fish oil and tamoxifen reduced the expression of genes linked to tumor growth and spreading in animal experiment.
More research in the field is needed to conclusively prove the beneficial effect in human.

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• Dog can Smell Cancer (drppanda.wordpress.com)

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Advice on Human Papilloma Virus Vaccine

Please go through the recommendations of Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) on use of Human Papilloma Virus Vaccine (HPV)

Amplify’d from www.cdc.gov

These recommendations represent the first statement by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) on the use of a quadrivalent human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine licensed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on June 8, 2006. This report summarizes the epidemiology of HPV and associated diseases, describes the licensed HPV vaccine, and provides recommendations for its use for vaccination among females aged 9--26 years in the United States.

Genital HPV is the most common sexually transmitted infection in the United States; an estimated 6.2 million persons are newly infected every year. Although the majority of infections cause no clinical symptoms and are self-limited, persistent infection with oncogenic types can cause cervical cancer in women. HPV infection also is the cause of genital warts and is associated with other anogenital cancers. Cervical cancer rates have decreased in the United States because of widespread use of Papanicolaou testing, which can detect precancerous lesions of the cervix before they develop into cancer; nevertheless, during 2007, an estimated 11,100 new cases will be diagnosed and approximately 3,700 women will die from cervical cancer. In certain countries where cervical cancer screening is not routine, cervical cancer is a common cancer in women.

The licensed HPV vaccine is composed of the HPV L1 protein, the major capsid protein of HPV. Expression of the L1 protein in yeast using recombinant DNA technology produces noninfectious virus-like particles (VLP) that resemble HPV virions. The quadrivalent HPV vaccine is a mixture of four HPV type-specific VLPs prepared from the L1 proteins of HPV 6, 11, 16, and 18 combined with an aluminum adjuvant. Clinical trials indicate that the vaccine has high efficacy in preventing persistent HPV infection, cervical cancer precursor lesions, vaginal and vulvar cancer precursor lesions, and genital warts caused by HPV types 6, 11, 16, or 18 among females who have not already been infected with the respective HPV type. No evidence exists of protection against disease caused by HPV types with which females are infected at the time of vaccination. However, females infected with one or more vaccine HPV types before vaccination would be protected against disease caused by the other vaccine HPV types.

The vaccine is administered by intramuscular injection, and the recommended schedule is a 3-dose series with the second and third doses administered 2 and 6 months after the first dose. The recommended age for vaccination of females is 11--12 years. Vaccine can be administered as young as age 9 years. Catch-up vaccination is recommended for females aged 13--26 years who have not been previously vaccinated. Vaccination is not a substitute for routine cervical cancer screening, and vaccinated females should have cervical cancer screening as recommended. Read more at www.cdc.gov

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Keeping Heart Muscle Healthy

Exercise preserves the heart muscles through out old age in comparison to the sedentary lifestyle.

Amplify’d from www.nlm.nih.gov

Exercise preserves, builds heart muscle

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Consistent lifelong exercise preserves heart muscle in the elderly to levels that match or even exceed that of healthy young sedentary people, a surprising finding that underscores the value of regular exercise training, according to a new study.

By contrast, elderly people with a documented history of exercising six to seven times a week throughout adulthood not only kept their heart mass, but built upon it -- having heart masses greater than sedentary healthy adults aged 25 to 34.

"One thing that characterizes the aging process by itself is the loss of muscle mass, particularly skeletal muscle," said Dr. Paul Bhella, a researcher from John Peter Smith Hospital in Fort Worth, Texas who presented the study at the conference.

"The data suggest that if we can identify people in middle age, in the 45 to 60 year range, and get them to exercise four to five times a week, this may go a very long way in preventing some of the major heart conditions of old age, including heart failure," said Benjamin Levine of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, who headed the study. Read more at www.nlm.nih.gov

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Bioresorabable Coronary Stent's Success Story

Till now metallic stents are used in coronary artery stenting in patients suffering from atherosclerotic arterial blockade in ischaemic heart disease (IHD) i.e. significantly decreased the blood flow to the heart musculature.
The main problem with metallic stents were arterial clogging of the part or thrombosis, life long presence and continued medicine use to prevent thrombosis.
 Image of A Drug-Eluting Stent
Recently, Abbot has developed absorable stents whose 30 days examination results in 101 patients are announced. The stents are called Bioresorabable vascular scaffold (BVS). There was no cases of blood clots (thrombosis), no need for repeat procedures (ischemia-driven target lesion revascularization) and a very low rate of major adverse cardiac events (MACE1 rate of 2.0 percent) at 30 days; as reported in a press release. According to the company 6.9 percent of patients suffered major cardiac events -- including heart attacks -- over a 12-month period, which the device maker described as a low rate.
 Image Heart with Coronary Arteries
The stent was approved in Europe in January, but will not be widely available there until late next year. It was cleared by European regulators even though large so-called pivotal trials have not yet been conducted on the product.
Abbott’s investigational BVS, they call “Absorb” is made of a corn-based bioplastic called polylactic acid (PLA). This same material is being used in a number of other ways, including food packaging, textile fibers and even gift cards. It is a proven bio-compatible material that is also commonly used in medical implants such as dissolving sutures.
The bioresorbable technology is designed to restore blood flow by opening a clogged vessel and providing support until it is healed. Once the vessel can remain open without the extra support, the bioresorbable scaffold is designed to be slowly metabolised by the body, and is completely dissolved over time. Since a permanent implant is not left behind, a vessel treated with BVS has the ability to ultimately move, flex and pulsate similar to an untreated vessel.
The bioresorbable technology delivers everolimus, a drug that inhibits tissue proliferation. Everolimus, developed by Novartis Pharma AG, is a proliferation signal inhibitor, or mTOR inhibitor. Everolimus has been shown to inhibit treated site neointimal growth in the coronary vessels following vascular device implantation, due to its anti-proliferative properties.
 Image of Stent
The ABSORB trial is a prospective, non-randomized (open label), two-phase study that enrolled 131 patients from Australia, Belgium, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland and Switzerland.
Key endpoints of the study include assessments of safety – major adverse cardiac events and treated site thrombosis rates – at 30 days; six, nine, 12, 18 and 24 months; with additional annual clinical follow-up for up to five years.
 Image of Coronary Angioplasty and Stent Placement
Other key endpoints of the study include imaging assessments by angiography, intravascular ultrasound (IVUS), optical coherence tomography (OCT), and other state-of-the-art invasive and non-invasive imaging modalities at six, 12, 18 and 24 months.
Abbott plans to begin a 500-patient pivotal trial in Europe later this year and to conduct a 2,000-patient trial in the United States by the end of 2011. It hopes to seek U.S. approval for the product in 2015, several years before any competitor.

 

 

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• Abbott's ABSORB Bioresorbable Vascular Scaffold Demonstrates Positive One-Year Safety and Efficacy Results (prnewswire.com)

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Autopost 04/04/2011

• Smoking in Early Preganncy Gives Rise to Child with Heart Defects ~ From A Clinician's Bioscope

  Maternal cigarette smoking in the first trimester was associated with a 20 to 70 percent greater likelihood that a baby would be born with certain types of congenital heart defects, according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

  tags: Smoking Congenital heart disease

• Clinician On Net: Tetanus in Still Present

  Tetanus is still a life-threatening disease world wide including the U.S., largely due to carelessness towards injuries and inadequate vaccination status.

  tags: Tetanus Vaccination Toxoid

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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Smoking in Early Preganncy Gives Rise to Child with Heart Defects

Image via Wikipedia

Maternal cigarette smoking in the first trimester was associated with a 20 to 70 percent greater likelihood that a baby would be born with certain types of congenital heart defects, according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Congenital heart defects are the most common type of birth defects, contributing to approximately 30 percent of infant deaths from birth defects annually.
The common defects are a communicating gap between both the upper chambers of heart (Atrial septal defect) called atrias; and outflow obstruction from the right side of heart to the lungs.
Quitting smoking is the single most important thing a woman can do to improve her health as well as the health of her baby. Successfully stopping smoking during pregnancy also lowers the chances of pregnancy complications such as preterm delivery and low birth weight baby.
Researchers in a study found that right ventricular outflow tract obstructions affect approximately 2,500 infants per year and atrial septal defects affect approximately 5,600 infants per year in the United States.
For more information on smoking and tobacco use, please visit:

Related articles

• Smoking Early in Pregnancy Raises Risk of Heart Defects in Infants (nlm.nih.gov)

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