Nutrition - Millions Of People Worldwide Suffer From Alzheimer’s - Number Of Cases Feared To Double In Coming Years
Millions Of People Worldwide Suffer From Alzheimer’s - Number Of Cases Feared To Double In Coming Years
A hundred years ago, the psychiatrist and brain researcher described the first patient with a severe dementia accompanied by the massive loss of nerve cells (neurons). At that time, the disease later named after him was still rare. Alzheimer saw only two cases in his research career, as Dr. [click link for full article]
Doctor And Advocacy Groups Work To Deliver Cervical Cancer Vaccinations
Today, leading organizations from across the healthcare spectrum joined together to ensure that the United States is prepared to deliver on a major women’s health breakthrough - the elimination of most forms of cervical cancer through access to new vaccines and screening. The Partnership to End Cervical Cancer’s goal is to ensure the immediate inclusion of cervical cancer vaccines as part of routine preventive healthcare for American women. [click link for full article]
Can Information Help Beat Cancer?
Cancerbackup, the cancer information and support charity, has launched what it hopes will be the biggest ever survey of people affected by cancer. The aim is to increase understanding of how the provision of the right information, to the right people, at the right time helps them make the right choices about their treatment and care.”Information for people affected by cancer has long been recognised as vital”, says Derryn Borley, Head of Cancer Services, Cancerbackup. [click link for full article]
Vegetable And Fruit Juice Consumption Lower Alzheimer’s Risk
If you drink fruit and/or vegetable juice at least three times a week you could be reducing your chances of developing Alzheimer’s disease (AD) by 76%, say scientists in a new study. Even if you have a fruit and/or vegetable juice just twice a week your risk goes down 16%.You can read about this study in the September issue of the American Journal of Medicine. [click link for full article]
Memory Clinics Are Diverting NHS Resources From High Quality Care
Specialist memory clinics for patients with dementia are taking NHS resources away from long term integrated care, warn senior doctors in this week’s BMJ. Since 2001, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has recommended that cholinesterase inhibitors should be available to people with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease, writes consultant psychiatrist, Anthony Pelosi and colleagues. [click link for full article]
Your waist and your heart: Connected for life!
Filed under: Prevention, Obesity, Exercise
Losing weight will do good things for your heart, but losing weight and inches from your waist specifically will do great things for your heart. French scientists recently did a study where they looked at individuals over a period of nine years, and those whose waists increased in size (by as little as 3 inches) over that time were at much greater risk for heart disease and diabetes than those whose waists stayed the same. And the people that lost waist size (as little as an inch) over the nine years had the lowest risk of everybody.There's a lot more to this study, and I recommend reading the full article for the details. But it just goes to show once again that every little bit helps!
[RESEARCH] Prediction of citation counts for clinical articles at two years using data available within three weeks of publication: retrospective cohort study
Objective To determine if citation counts at two years could be predicted for clinical articles that pass basic criteria for critical appraisal using data within three weeks of publication from external sources and an online article rating service.
Design Retrospective cohort study.
Setting Online rating service, Canada.
Participants 1274 articles from 105 journals published from January to June 2005, randomly divided into a 60:40 split to provide derivation and validation datasets.
Main outcome measures 20 article and journal features, including ratings of clinical relevance and newsworthiness, routinely collected by the McMaster online rating of evidence system, compared with citation counts at two years.
Results The derivation analysis showed that the regression equation accounted for 60% of the variation (R2=0.60, 95% confidence interval 0.538 to 0.629). This model applied to the validation dataset gave a similar prediction (R2=0.56, 0.476 to 0.596, shrinkage 0.04; shrinkage measures how well the derived equation matches data from the validation dataset). Cited articles in the top half and top third were predicted with 83% and 61% sensitivity and 72% and 82% specificity. Higher citations were predicted by indexing in numerous databases; number of authors; abstraction in synoptic journals; clinical relevance scores; number of cited references; and original, multicentred, and therapy articles from journals with a greater proportion of articles abstracted.
Conclusion Citation counts can be reliably predicted at two years using data within three weeks of publication.
20 very good reasons to get active
Filed under: Prevention, Exercise
If you're not already getting regular activity, I just have one question: What's stopping you? There are so many reasons to exercise, and the truth is, you don't need to sweat your life away in a crowded gym -- take up an activity that you enjoy, like swimming, walking, rowing, etc. The only catch is you have get your heart rate up. Still not convinced? Read this article called 20 Proven Health Benefits of Exercise. To name a few? Exercise prevents things as minor as a cold and things as major as heart attacks. Also? It can improve your sex life. Read the full article for more inspiration.
If you're already active, what got you moving?
Drinking diet soda can still kill you
Filed under: Diet
When someone's trying to lose weight, one of the first steps they usually take is switching from full-sugar soda to the diet kind. But that might not be enough, one study shows -- cutting out all soda is the healthiest choice.According to findings from extensive research done in the US, drinking even one diet soda a day can greatly increase your chances of developing metabolic syndrome, which can lead to a heart attack and diabetes. What's more, compared to those who drank less than one soda a day, those who drank one or more were at a 30% greater risk becoming obese and had a 25% greater chance of developing high cholesterol. Yikes!
The healthiest soda is no soda -- drink water instead!
Avandia latest: Glaxo fights back
Filed under: Drugs, Daily News
GlaxoSmithKline has its hands full right now big-time, defending its conduct over the ever-deepening Avandia scandal. But the big-name pharma company isn't giving up the fight. (No surprise there...) Today Glaxo ran full-page advertisements in a number of prominent US newspapers. The move is described by Britain's Guardian as the launching of a major PR war. The ads are featured in fifteen major newspapers, says the Guardian, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and the LA Times. The ad is a direct appeal to patients, taking the form of an open letter from Glaxo's chief medical officer, Dr. Ronald Krall. (Guess he's working some late nights at the moment, huh?) The ads were timed to appear one day before the congressional hearing on the US Food and Drug Administration's work on Avandia and consumer safety, which is scheduled for tomorrow. Another Glaxo-penned letter defending Avandia was also published in the medical journal the Lancet. Said a company spokesman of today's ads: "We are determined to make sure the science we feel backs us up is heard."
This article also notes that weekly prescriptions for Avandia have fallen by sixteen percent since the recent publication of a damaging article by Dr. Steven Nissen in the New England Journal of Medicine. Nissen asserted that Avandia could increase the risk of heart attack by forty-three percent and the risk of cardiac-related death by sixty-four percent.
By the way, it is worth checking out the Wikipedia entry on Glaxo for a brief rundown of the company's history, including previous wrangles with the media and the law over its products. Note, though, the entry has not yet been updated in the wake of the Avandia scandal.
A death in Wales
Filed under: Type 1, Type 2, Daily News
Trawling through the news, I came upon this awful story from Wales: a fourteen-year-old girl who died suddenly on November 30, 2006, turns out to have been diabetic ... only no one knew it when she was alive. An inquest by the Cardiff Coroner's Court concluded yesterday that the girl, Natasha Leigh Roberts, was suffering from pneumonia caused by undiagnosed diabetes. Her parents, Jenipher Perry and Stephen White, have said they encourage other parents to be vigilant for the disease now they have discovered the awful cause of Natasha's death. Natasha was not diagnosed as diabetic even though she was clearly unwell in the months prior to her death. According to this article, Natasha's parents noticed the decline in their daughter's health. She had lost weight and was complaining of exhaustion in the weeks leading up to her death. Said her grandmother, Lily Ayres, "Natasha was always a healthy-looking plump girl until about a year ago. I reckon she would have only weighed about five or six stone [by the time of her death]." That would convert to about seventy to eighty pounds. Ayres went on to say that Natasha looked "awful" the day before she died. It is also reported that the girl had taken time off school due to feeling unwell and staff at her school were worried about her. Then, one morning, her mom went into her room to check on her and found her in bed, not breathing. Too late.
How disturbing and sad this story is. Was a doctor consulted? Did the teachers at school contact the parents? Why didn't the parents do something, for heaven's sake? Uh oh. There it goes: the so-human urge to play The Blame Game. Or ... maybe this impulse is a good one. If people can learn a lesson from the story by understanding why this child fell through the cracks and did not receive treatment, perhaps other lives can be saved.
Fat Loss for Advanced - Success Series Part 3
If you’ve already got all the basics from parts one and two covered and you want to incinerate every last vestige of unwanted body fat, then this article is for you.
Doctor claims Glaxo attempted to silence him
Filed under: Type 2, Adult Onset, Drugs, Research
Congressional investigators have been looking into very serious claims that Avandia's maker silenced medical professionals who attempted to speak out about the potential for cardiovascular problems by using the drug.
Dr. Buse, who is about to become the president of the American Diabetes Association, was an early and frequent critic of Avandia after it reached the market in 1999. In a March 2000 letter to the F.D.A., he said Avandia might raise patients' risk of heart attacks, and he criticized the company's marketing, saying it employed "blatant selective manipulation of data" to overstate the drug's benefits and understate its risks.
More recent questions about Avandia's potential risks, as outlined in a New England Journal of Medicine article last week, have prompted the Congressional hearing. The author of that article, Dr. Steven E. Nissen, a heart specialist at the Cleveland Clinic, has also been called to testify. See the full story on the upcoming congressional hearing.
Fat Loss for Beginners - Success Series Part 1
Everyone who wants to get leaner should read this article. Yes, I know it says "Fat loss for beginners," but sometimes we veterans forget what we once knew or we don’t practice what we now know.