WASHINGTON, March 17 (UPI) — an unusually mild winter in much of the eastern United States has brought early misery to people with pollen allergies, doctors say.

Dr. Derek Johnson, medical director of the Fairfax Allergy, Asthma and Sinus Clinic in Virginia, said tree pollen counts on Feb. 23 in the Washington area were more than 100 times their level a year earlier, the Washington Post reported Monday. There were 365 grains of pollen per cubic meter in 2012, up from just 2.88 in 2011.

“It really is unusually early for patients to be this miserable,” Johnson told the Post. “The mild winter has resulted in very high pollen levels in February and early March, when they’re typically very low or negligible.”

Dr. Jackie Eghrari-Sabet, an allergist in Gaithersburg, Md., predicted “a slow, grand parade” of misery for the susceptible because some species of tree are pollinating early and others are on their usual schedule.

To complicate things further, doctors warn the flu season is not over, so people who develop respiratory symptoms or body aches and pains should not just assume it is early hay fever, WLS-TV in Chicago said.

Dr. Andrew Bonwit of Loyola University Medical Center suggested anyone with symptoms that could be influenza should consider visiting the doctor.

Dressed in red, staff in the Department of Cardiology at Nassau University Medical Center took part in the go Red for Women campaign on Feb. 3. go Red for Women was initiated by the American Heart Association in 2004 after statistics revealed that more than 500,000 women die from heart disease each year, claiming more lives than any other disease, including cancer.

To raise awareness and promote a heart healthy lifestyle, cardiology staff members gathered in the lobby at NUMC and offered free blood pressure screenings.

Staff members and a heart disease survivor also spoke about their experiences. Guest speaker Sylvia Martin said she was diagnose with congestive heart failure at NUMC after a car accident last October. “I was going to the doctor all along,” she said,” but nobody every detected it.”

Martin’s road to recovery was slow and she was at NUMC for nearly two months due to injuries sustained during the car accident, but eventually agreed to undergo surgery and a defibrillator was inserted on Jan. 27. The electronic device will constantly monitor her heart rhythm and will help her heart beat normally. “I can see by the spring I’ll be blossoming again,” Martin said.

Some staff members also attended a videoconference with the Long Island Jewish Medical Center, who offered a special presentation for go Red for Women.

During the conference, numerous specialists discussed the importance of making proactive heart-healthy choices, including Dr. Jennifer Mieres, senior vice president of North Shore LIJ’s Office of Community and Public Health. “Remember to make a promise to yourself beginning today,” she said. “Most importantly, listen to your body. if something is different, if you’re not feeling right, if you’re a little bit out of sorts, do not just write it off.”

Mieres told the audience to start with small steps like making a more colorful plate by adding vegetables, laughing for at least ten minutes each day, walking more and getting at least seven hours of sleep each night. “Making that commitment out loud will ensure sustainability on the road to heart health,” she said.

Administrative Director of Cardiac Services at NUMC Lorinda Bauer said that most women don’t pay attention to their bodies and emphasized that men and women do not present with the same symptoms. She said the most common heart attack symptoms in women are indigestion, exhaustion, anxiety, back pain and jaw pain. She added that women should know their baseline cholesterol and blood pressure and have a routine electrocardiogram, EKG, performed each year.

Public release date: 8-Mar-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ] Contact: Deb Songdeb_song@rush.edu312-942-0588Rush University Medical Center

(CHICAGO) ? Physicians at Rush University Medical Center are testing a unique gene therapy product called CERE-120 to evaluate if its use can improve the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. Rush is one of 11 sites in the U.S. and the only site in Illinois enrolling patients into the new, double-blinded trial.

CERE-120 is an experimental gene transfer drug being developed by Ceregene, inc. It contains the human gene for neuturin, a naturally occurring protein also known as a neurotrophic factor. Neurosurgery is used to deliver the neuturin directly to degenerating or dying dopamine neurons in the brain. In earlier studies, neuturin has shown to improve function and repair brain cells that degenerate in Parkinson’s disease.

“This gene therapy has the potential to improve the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease while also delaying further disease progression,” said Dr. Christopher Goetz, director of the Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders program at Rush University Medical Center and site principal investigator of the study. “Patients with Parkinson’s disease urgently need therapeutic approaches that not only improve symptoms and function, but also to have the ability to favorably modify the underlying disease itself.”

Three previous trials demonstrated that CERE-120 was safe in 50 Parkinson’s disease patients who were followed for five years. Rush neurological researchers have been involved in all three trials.

“The preliminary data in the Phase I study are encouraging, and the first Phase II trial showed improvement in patients who were assessed under blinded conditions at 15-18 months post treatment,” said Goetz.

The new Phase IIb trial will test the efficacy of CERE-120 by delivering an increased dose of the gene therapy to two key areas of the brain called the substantia nigra and the putamen that are damaged by Parkinson’s disease. the goal of this new approach is to assure wider distribution of neurturin and increase the likelihood of repairing and protecting brain cells from further degeneration due to Parkinson’s disease.

Half of study participants will undergo surgery to receive a dosing of CERE-120. the other half will undergo a placebo surgery. a comparison between these two groups will help distinguish the effects of CERE-120 compared to those that receive placebo

If the study results demonstrate that CERE-120 administration is safe and beneficial, subjects who receive placebo surgery will have the option to have a second surgery to receive a dosing of CERE-120.

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The other centers participating in the study are Stanford School of Medicine, University of California San Francisco, Emory University, Mount Sinai Medical Center, Columbia University Medical Center, Beth Israel Medical Center, Duke University, University of Pennsylvania, Baylor College of Medicine, and University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Parkinson’s disease is a progressive disorder that leads to muscle stiffness, tremors and slowed movements and gait. It affects approximately one million people in the United States.

This study is partially funded by the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.

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Abraham Verghese, the Stanford physician and writer, has a beautiful piece in the New York Times that’s worth unpacking a bit.

He starts off by marveling about the performance of IBM’s Watson supercomputer on Jeopardy, and thinking about how such a machine could change medicine:

THE other day as I walked through a wing of my hospital, it occurred to me that Watson, I.B.M.’s supercomputer, would be more at home here than he was on “Jeopardy!” Perhaps it’s good, I thought, that his next challenge, with the aid of the Columbia University Medical Center and the University of Maryland School of Medicine, will be to learn to diagnose illnesses and treat patients.

via Treat the Patient, not the CT Scan – NYTimes.com.

Verghese doesn’t shortchange the potential power of the computer one iota, envisioning a world where Watson-like machine might pick up side effects in ways that human doctors would not.

For example, Watson might recognize that the kidney failure in our patient is linked to kidney failure in a patient in Buffalo and another in San Antonio; all three patients, he might inform me, were taking a “natural” weight loss supplement that contained a Chinese herb, aristolochia, that has been associated with more than 100 cases of kidney failure.

via Treat the Patient, not the CT Scan – NYTimes.com.

But he also describes doctors being glued to their computers “like piglets at a sow’s teats,” and worries that this is both causing misdiagnosis and damaging the doctor-patient relationship. the “iPatient,” he writes, is replacing the real one.

Verghese first complaint is that being overly dependent on machines leads patients to get too much radiation from CT scans and also leads physicians to miss things they should have notice. One example is a woman who had been to doctors several times. the physicians missed tumors that were large enough to feel in a physical exam.

But his second worry is that, by not going through the ritual of a physical examination, doctors are depriving patients and their families of something that makes them feel better.

After introducing myself to the patient and to her daughter, I did a thorough but quick neurologic exam. I put the patient through her paces: mental status, cranial nerves, motor and sensory function, used my reflex hammer and pointed out interesting things along the way to my interns and students. I then said to the daughter that her mother seemed back to normal. to our surprise, the daughter seemed comforted, and now had no objection to her mother’s return to the nursing home.

via Treat the Patient, not the CT Scan – NYTimes.com.

This is one of the great quandaries, it seems to me, in medicine. a lot of doctoring could probably be improved by better use of computers, or of algorithms and checklists. Applying better techn0logy and evidence is important.

These kinds of improvements also have the benefit of improving the worst care. a lot of the best doctors are probably already combining the kinds of things computers do well with a very human capacity for creative thinking.

But there’s another part of medical care that seems detached from this kind of evidence collection and deduction. It has to do with how the doctor uses his senses, and how he interacts with a patient on an emotional level. For some ailments, such as pain, stomach problems, or depression, every word choice, intonation, and body movement might be a potential treatment. they are not treatments whose effectiveness anyone knows how to measure.

The closest I’ve seen anyone come has been the research into the placebo effect done by Ted Kaptchuk at Harvard University. He studied traditional Chinese medicine and has worked at figuring out how the way doctors interact with patients helps them feel better. my favorite of his experiments compared waiting, fake acupuncture, and fake acupuncture with warm, caring talk from the physician as treatments for irritable bowel syndrome.

In a trial of 262 patients with severe IBS, 62% of those who received the fake treatment got better, according to results published in the British Medical Journal. by comparison, only 28% of a control group of patients put on a waiting list saw their symptoms improve markedly. a third group who got the fake acupuncture, but without any warm talk, showed in-between results: 44% improved.

The result, says Kaptchuk, shows just how much the expectation of a cure–and the rituals associated with medical treatment–can improve real-world symptoms. “our own will, imagination and belief can modulate the course of illness,”

via The Nothing Cure – Forbes.com.

Orac, a physician-blogger I usually admire, dismissed Kaptchuk’s most recent study, which showed patients benefiting from a sugar pill when they knew it was fake, as not showing high quality evidence and deceiving patients. (See: More dubious statements about placebo effects.) I think he missed Kaptchuk’s cleverest idea — that the placebo effect might be a way to capture the effect of ritual in medicine.

Kaptchuk’s studies still suffer from many failings, most importantly that they are all being done by one researcher. It’s always hard to know how to trust a result when it hasn’t really been independently verified.

Still, I wonder if there are rigorous ways to establish the power of medical rituals, and to figure out how to teach doctors how to best perform them. One of my favorite medical stories is of the effort to improve how quickly patients who have had heart attacks have their arteries cleared with the angioplasty devices made by Johnson & Johnson, Boston Scientific, and Medtronic. the key was not just establishing that there was a problem, but figuring out what the best doctors did differently, and teaching that  difference to doctors. I wonder if there’s some way to do something similar with the ritual of the medical exam.

rush screening visitors for flu

SUN-TIMES MEDIA WIRE Feb 7, 2011 03:08PM

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A recent surge in flu patients at rush University Medical Center is forcing hospital staff to screen visitors for flu-like symptoms.

The number of patients coming to rush with flu-like symptoms has increased significantly in the last few weeks, prompting the hospital to screen all visitors to protect patients, staff and visitors, the hospital said.

All people with flu-like symptoms are asked to refrain from visiting patients at rush. and beginning Monday, trained staff will be screening visitors at all entrances to the hospital for symptoms. Symptoms include fever, cough, sore throat, runny or stuffy nose, headaches or body aches, chills and fatigue.

Once screened, visitors will get a yellow “flu-check” sticker to wear throughout their time at rush. those who do exhibit flu symptoms may be asked to go home rather than potentially spread illness.

Patients coming to the hospital for appointments who have flu-like symptoms will be asked to wear a mask, and screenings of outpatients and their families will continue at the clinic or office, the hospital said.

The Illinois Department of Public Health says there is widespread flu activity in Illinois at this time and Chicago is reporting an increase in the number of flu-associated ICU admissions over the past two weeks.

Most of us would know if something felt a little strange, “off,” “heavy” in our breasts … We’d feel a lump or spy a strange nipple symptom. We don’t need Facebook statuses about the colors of our friends’ bras to remind us of that. But what about when it comes to our ovaries?

When it comes to ovarian cancer, a disease that affects one in 60 women in the U.S., it seems like the medical community is at almost as much a loss for identifying it as we are. not that breast cancer isn’t incredibly important to be aware of as well, but the apparent lack of effective screening for ovarian cancer makes me wonder where all the 5Ks, colored ribbons (turns out it’s actually teal—who knew?) and themed cosmetics are for the disease.

The best screening strategies available for ovarian cancer only reduce the number of fatalities by 11 percent, according to Dr. Laura Havrilesky, a researcher at Duke University Medical Center who recently led a team that designed a computer-based model illustrating the progression of ovarian cancer from the early to later stages. She concluded that strategies, such as prevention (like removing the ovaries of high-risk women) and better treatments (like new surgical techniques or chemo), will be needed in order to make a difference in lowering the number of women dying from ovarian cancer.

While development of new techniques sounds great and is obviously needed, it drives me crazy that the solutions immediately have to be surgeries, drugs, or taking out the ovaries of women who are deemed to be at a higher risk for developing the disease. I mean, wow, do we really have to take it to such extremes?

One thing that’s heartening is that experts at Cedars-Sinai Women’s Cancer Research Institute say the disease doesn’t have to be deadly. when it’s diagnosed early, the five-year survival rate is over 90 percent. and contrary to what you might read or hear, ovarian cancer is not a “Silent Killer”; it is marked by various quiet, but persistent symptoms, such as abdominal bloating, pelvic and/or low back pain, early satiety or the feeling that you’re getting full too quickly and a change in the frequency/urgency of urination.

Maybe, the first step isn’t to rush women off to go under the knife, have their ovaries removed and/or to take toxic prescriptions. Instead, we should be striving to tune into our symptoms and trust our intuition about our bodies. Then, both patient and doctor need to more effectively communicate about possible symptoms.

The bottom-line: Neither current screening methods for women who are symptomatic—a transvaginal ultrasound and a CA-125 blood test—are perfect. The medical community can and must do better. But I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed that researchers realize the best techniques would hopefully also be minimally invasive ones.

Do you think the medical community is too slow to find an effective method for detecting ovarian cancer?

Image via Debs/Flickr

An Hour of Light a Day may Brighten Mood, Improve Sleep in Elderly People with Depression

Jan. 3, 2011 — Exposure to bright light may ease symptoms of depression in elderly people.

A new study shows that three weeks of bright light therapy using specially designed light boxes improved symptoms of depression by as much as 54% in older adults with depression.

In addition to lifting their moods, bright light therapy improved sleep and optimized levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin. low levels of serotonin are associated with depression and often targeted by antidepressant drugs.

Researchers say it’s the first major study to show a beneficial effect of bright light therapy on treating depression in the elderly with non-seasonal major depressive disorder.

“Bright light treatment may provide a viable alternative for patients who refuse, resist, or do not tolerate antidepressant treatment,” researcher Ritsaert Leiverse, MD, of the department of psychiatry at VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and colleagues write in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

Bright Light Helps Elderly

Researchers say depression commonly causes sleep problems and other symptoms because of a disruption of the body’s natural circadian rhythms or body clock. Circadian rhythm disturbances are also frequently found among elderly people who expose themselves less frequently to bright environmental light.

Previous studies have suggested that bright light therapy can help restore circadian rhythms and target depression-related neurotransmitters in the brain.

In this study, researchers evaluated the effects of three weeks of bright light therapy in 89 adults over age 60 diagnosed with depression. The participants were randomly divided into two groups and exposed to either an hour of bright pale blue light therapy or dim red light treatment (placebo treatment) from a light box at home during the early morning hours.

After three weeks of treatment, the study showed bright light therapy improved depressive symptoms by 43%, compared with the 36% improvement found with the placebo treatment.

Three weeks after the treatment ended, researchers found symptoms of depression continued to improve among the bright light therapy group (54% improvement vs. 33% in the placebo group).

In addition, the results showed levels of the stress hormone cortisol decreased among people who received bright light therapy. Sleep quality also improved among the bright light therapy group.

Researchers say the improvements found with bright light therapy in treating depressed elderly people in this study is similar to the improvements found with antidepressant drug treatment.

HOUSTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Emerging Healthcare Solutions, Inc. (Pink Sheets:EHSI):

“each new stem cell breakthrough that emerges encourages us to push forward to help usher in the Stem Cell Era of medicine.”

at the annual meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology last week in Philadelphia, researchers from Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C., announced that it may be possible for people with type 1 diabetes to grow their own insulin-producing cells, a breakthrough that could lead to a cure for the disease.

the Georgetown team, led by developmental biologist Ian Gallicano, isolated sperm-producing stem cells from the testes of organ donors. the Georgetown researchers then treated the cells with chemicals to coax them into mimicking beta-islet cells from the pancreas, the same kind of cells that are compromised in diabetes, and injected them into mice with diabetes. according to the report, the rodents were cured of disease symptoms for a week.

“If stem cells can be modified to produce enough insulin to cure diabetes in people, we could see human trials begin soon on a cure,” said Cindy Morrissey, EHSI’s president and CEO. “Each new stem cell breakthrough that emerges encourages us to push forward to help usher in the Stem Cell Era of medicine.”

Emerging Healthcare Solutions is committed to developing new stem cell treatments for previously incurable diseases. Earlier this month, EHSI announced its acquisition of Panamanian biotech firm CelulasGenetica, a Central American leader in stem-cell technology acquisition and development. CelulasGenetica is working on an international patent application for the Rutherford Procedure, a revolutionary new stem-cell treatment for liver disease. the company licensed the procedure from a Chinese firm, BBFITCL, and plans to conduct the treatment’s clinical trials in China, as well.

the Rutherford Procedure is being developed to use proton therapy to destroy scar-tissue cells in the liver using high-energy proton beams, a non-invasive treatment proven to minimize damage to healthy tissues and to eliminate the side effects (including nausea) of traditional radiation therapy.

As the scar tissue is systematically destroyed by the proton therapy, plans call for a catheter to deliver the patient’s own cultured stem cells directly to the liver through the bloodstream. As more and more diseased tissue is destroyed, these cultured stem cells could help regenerate the patient’s damaged liver into a healthy organ once more.

EHSI invests in technology developed to compete in the stem-cell research industry alongside Teva Pharmaceutical Industries ltd. (NASDAQ:TEVA), Allergan, Inc. (NYSE:AGN), Smith & Nephew (NYSE:SNN) and Forest Laboratories, Inc. (NYSE:FRX).

About Emerging Healthcare Solutions, Inc.

Emerging Healthcare Solutions, Inc. invests in and participates in the profits of emerging breakthrough medical technologies. the Company believes the secret of leveraging future value for its shareholders is the proper timing of its investment in promising new medical technologies. EHSI aims to capture future profits of promising new medical technologies by investing in these technologies at the inflection point of product development. We believe this model will deliver long-term positive results for our investors.

for more information, please visit EmergingHealthcareSolutionsInc.com.

Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: This news release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, including statements that include the words “believes,” “expects,” “anticipate” or similar expressions. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the company to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. In addition, description of anyone’s past success, either financial or strategic, is no guarantee of future success. This news release speaks as of the date first set forth above and the company assumes no responsibility to update the information included herein for events occurring after the date hereof.

Public release date: 20-Dec-2010 [ | E-mail | Share ] Contact: Michelle Brandtmbrandt@stanford.edu650-723-0272Stanford University Medical Center

STANFORD, Calif. ? Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have used sophisticated brain imaging to predict with 90 percent accuracy which teenagers with dyslexia would improve their reading skills over time.

Their work, the first to identify specific brain mechanisms involved in a person’s ability to overcome reading difficulties, could lead to new interventions to help dyslexics better learn to read.

“This gives us hope that we can identify which children might get better over time,” said Fumiko Hoeft, MD, PhD, an imaging expert and instructor at Stanford’s Center for Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences Research. “More study is needed before the technique is clinically useful, but this is a huge step forward.”

Hoeft is first author of a paper, which will be published online Dec. 20 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The senior author is John Gabrieli, PhD, a former Stanford professor now at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Dyslexia, a brain-based learning disability that impairs a person’s ability to read, affects 5 to 17 percent of U.S. children. Affected children’s ability to improve their reading skills varies greatly, with about one-fifth able to benefit from interventions and develop adequate reading skills by adulthood. but up to this point, what happens in this brain to allow for this improvement remained unknown.

Past imaging studies have shown greater activation of specific brain regions in children and adults with dyslexia during reading-related tasks; one area in particular, the inferior frontal gyrus (which is part of the frontal lobe), is used more in dyslexics than in typical readers. As the researchers noted in their paper, some experts have hypothesized that greater involvement of this part of the brain during reading is related to long-term gains in reading for dyslexic children.

For this study, Hoeft and colleagues aimed to determine whether neuroimaging could predict reading improvement and how brain-based measures compared with conventional educational measures.

The researchers gathered 25 children with dyslexia and 20 children with typical reading skills ? all around age 14 ? and assessed their reading with standardized tests. they then used two types of imaging, functional magnetic resonance imaging and diffusion tensor imaging (a specialized form of MRI), as the children performed reading tasks. Two-and-a-half years later, they reassessed reading performance and asked which brain image or standardized reading measures taken at baseline predicted how much the child’s reading skills would improve over time.

What the researchers found was that no behavioral measure, including widely used standardized reading and language tests, reliably predicted reading gains. but children with dyslexia who at baseline showed greater activation in the right inferior frontal gyrus during a specific task and whose white matter connected to this right frontal region was better organized showed greater reading improvement over the next two-and-a-half years. The researchers also found that looking at patterns of activation across the whole brain allowed them to very accurately predict future reading gains in the children with dyslexia.

“The reason this is exciting is that until now, there have been no known measures that predicted who will learn to compensate,” said Hoeft.

As the researchers noted in their paper, “fMRI is typically viewed as a research tool that has little practical implication for an individual with dyslexia.” Yet these findings suggest that, after additional study, brain imaging could be used as a prognostic tool to predict reading improvement in dyslexic children.

The other exciting implication, Hoeft said, involves therapy. The research shows that gains in reading for dyslexic children involve different neural mechanisms and pathways than those for typically developing children. By understanding this, researchers could develop interventions that focus on the appropriate regions of the brain and that are, in turn, more effective at improving a child’s reading skills.

Hoeft said this work might also encourage the use of imaging to enhance the understanding (and potentially the treatment) of other disorders. “In general terms, these findings suggest that brain imaging may play a valuable role in neuroprognosis, the use of brain measures to predict future reductions or exacerbations of symptoms in clinical disorders,” she explained.

The authors noted several caveats with their findings. The children were followed for two-and-a-half years; longer-term outcomes are unknown. The study also involved children in their teens; more study is needed to determine whether brain-based measures can predict reading progress in younger children. Hoeft is now working on a study of pre-readers, being funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Hoeft and Gabrieli collaborated on the study with researchers from Vanderbilt University, University of York in England and University of Jyv?skyl? in Finland. Stanford co-authors include Gary Glover, PhD, professor of radiology, and Allan Reiss, MD, the Howard C. Robbins Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and professor of radiology and director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences Research.

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The study was supported by grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Stanford University Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Child Health Research Program, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Richard King Mellon Foundation.

Information about Stanford’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, which also supported the study, is available at psychiatry.stanford.edu/.

The Stanford University School of Medicine consistently ranks among the nation’s top medical schools, integrating research, medical education, patient care and community service. for more news about the school, please visit mednews.stanford.edu. The medical school is part of Stanford Medicine, which includes Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. for information about all three, please visit stanfordmedicine.org/about/news.html.

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