Are You Taking Too Much Asthma Medicine?
Study is underway to find better ways to control both the disease and its costs (COLUMBUS, Ohio) January 2014 -- A national study is underway to better under...

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Breaking the Shackles of Apartheid in Medicine: Frank Lipman at TEDxLowerEastSide
Dr. Frank Lipman is the acclaimed Integrative Physician who has worked with Donna Karan, Kevin Bacon and Gwyneth Paltrow, to name just a few. From a very you...

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Newswise PHILADELPHIA A new MRI method to map creatine at higher resolutions in the heart may help clinicians and scientists find abnormalities and disorders earlier than traditional diagnostic methods, researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania suggest in a new study published online today in Nature Medicine. The preclinical findings show an advantage over less sensitive tests and point to a safer and more cost-effective approach than those with radioactive or contrasting agents.

Creatine is a naturally occurring metabolite that helps supply energy to all cells through creatine kinase reaction, including those involved in contraction of the heart. When heart tissue becomes damaged from a loss of blood supply, even in the very early stages, creatine levels drop. Researchers exploited this process in a large animal model with a method known as CEST, or chemical exchange saturation transfer, which measures specific molecules in the body, to track the creatine on a regional basis.

The team, led by Ravinder Reddy, PhD, professor of Radiology and director of the Center for Magnetic Resonance and Optical Imaging at Penn Medicine, found that imaging creatine through CEST MRI provides higher resolution compared to standard magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS), a commonly used technique for measuring creatine. However, its poor resolution makes it difficult to determine exactly which areas of the heart have been compromised.

Measuring creatine with CEST is a promising technique that has the potential to improve clinical decision making while treating patients with heart disorders and even other diseases, as well as spotting problems sooner, said Reddy. Beyond the sensitivity benefits and its advantage over MRS, CEST doesnt require radioactive or contrast agents used in MRI, which can have adverse effects on patients, particularly those with kidney disease, and add to costs.

Today, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-based stress tests are also used to identify dead heart tissuewhich is the warning sign of future problems (coronary artery disease, for instance)but its reach is limited. MRI is often coupled with contrast agents to help light up problem areas, but it is often not sensitive enough to find ischemic (but not yet infarcted) regions with deranged metabolism, said Reddy.

After a heart attack, different regions of the heart are damaged at different rates. This new technique will allow us to very precisely study regional changes that occur in the heart after heart attacks, enabling us to identify and treat patients at risk for developing heart failure before symptoms develop, said study co-author Robert C. Gorman, MD, professor of Surgery, and director of Cardiac Surgical Research at Penn Medicine.

To demonstrate CESTs ability to detect heart disease, the researchers applied the creatine CEST method in an MRI scanner, in healthy and infarcted myocardium (muscle tissue in heart) in large animals. In the process, the nuclear magnetization of amine (NH2) creatine protons is saturated by a radiofrequency pulse from the MRI. After the exchange with water, the degree of saturation is observed as the water signal drops, and thus the concentration of creatine becomes apparent. (In the body, creatine is converted to creatinine, which can be measured through blood and urine tests and is an important tool for assessing renal function.)

The team showed that the creatine CEST method can map changes in creatine levels, and pinpoint infarcted areas in heart muscle tissue, just as MRS methods can. However, they found, CEST has two orders of magnitude higher sensitivity than MRS. That advantage could help spot smaller damaged areas in the heart missed by traditional methods, the authors say.

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Tweaking MRI to Track Creatine May Spot Heart Problems Earlier, Penn Medicine Study Suggests

Emily Ko, MD, Gynecologic Oncologist at Penn Medicine
Emily Ko, MD, discusses the numerous options available to patients in the evaluation and management of gynecologic cancers at Penn. Her areas of interest inc...

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What options do couples have to conceive before they choose IVF treatment ?
We will have the next round of Hangout with Dr. Durga Rao MRCOG (UK), Fellowship in #Fertility (McGill, Canada) about #39;What options do couples have to concei...

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The $105 million genomic medicine and supercomputing project announced Wednesday by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo for Buffalo and Manhattan could create up to 600 jobs here as the initiative draws two out-of-state companies to the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus.

State, academic and business officials pieced together a collaborative effort that leverages the University at Buffalos supercomputer, life-sciences research conducted at UB and Roswell Park Cancer Institute and valuable stores of patient data to spur economic development.

While details about key aspects of the project werent available Thursday, officials involved in the initiative expressed confidence in its potential to generate medical advances and high-tech jobs.

I believe what transpired was the governor connected the dots, the governors staff connected the dots, and said, all this stuff links together. Were going to invest money in the State of New York to enhance genomics, said Dr. Donald L. Trump, president and CEO of Roswell Park.

The Buffalo region will get $50 million of the state money, largely to add capacity to UBs Center for Computational Research. But project leaders arent releasing a precise breakdown of how the money will be spent or where the jobs will be created.

The two out-of-town companies, which expect to move their first employees to the medical campus by March, complement the two local companies taking part in the project because all four focus on the data-intensive field of genomic, or personalized, medicine.

I think this is very visionary to leverage a core resource, which is its expertise, Michael Paul, CEO and president of Salt Lake City-based Lineagen, said of the public-private partnership jump-started by the state funding.

The genome research project ties together the planning work performed by the Western New York Regional Economic Development Council, which identified the life sciences as a promising area of economic focus; the governors Buffalo Billion economic-development pledge, which has funded this and other initiatives; and the assets of UB and Roswell Park, including high-tech research centers and talented scientists.

It all fits together with an extraordinary, concentrated focus on turning around the Western New York economy, said Howard Zemsky, a Cuomo adviser and co-chairman of the regional council.

UB has sought to add capacity to its Center for Computational Research, now largely used for federally funded academic research, to give it a greater ability to perform computing tasks for companies, said Marnie LaVigne, UBs associate vice president for economic development.

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Up to 600 jobs in Buffalo promised by genomics project

Silent Hill Shattered Memories: Medicine Man - PART 15 - Game Grumps
Take a couple a yellows, a green, and a blue, and call me in the morning. Or whatever. I ain #39;t a doctor. Game Grumps are: Egoraptor: http://www.YouTube.com/E...

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Yale School of Medicine YouTube Trailer
Produced by Noah Golden Michael Fitzsousa Yale School of Medicine Institutional Planning Communications medicine.yale.edu/ipc Copyright 2013 Yale University.

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XHIT Medicine Ball Exercises
On today #39;s episode of XHIT, fitness trainer Kelsey Lee takes you through a simple, full body workout routine using just a medicine ball and your own bodyweig...

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Newswise PHILADELPHIAA new study from Penn Medicine epidemiologists that looked at four years of bed bug reports to the city of Philadelphia found that infestations have been increasing and were at their highest in August and lowest in February. The findings, published ahead of print on January 8 in the Journal of Medical Entomology, point to two possible peak times to strike and eliminate the bugs.

There is surprisingly very little known about seasonal trends among bed bug populations, said Michael Z. Levy, PhD, assistant professor in the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics (CCEB), who mapped the bed bug hotspots in Philadelphia in an effort to find more effective and cost-prohibitive ways to control them. We found a steep and significant seasonal cycle in bed bug reporting, and suspect that bed bugs have different levels of mobility depending on the season, and that their population size may fluctuate throughout the year.

Warm weather could be a driver for migration to other homes and breeding, he said. We may be able to exploit this cycle: These seasonal trends could guide control programs to help reduce a citys growing bug population, he added.

To track the spatial and temporal patterns of the bugs, Levy and colleagues, including first author Tarub S. Mabud, analyzed calls to the Philadelphia Department of Public Healths Vector Control Services between 2008 and 2012. They then mapped the phone calls to get a clearer picture of the problemwhen and where it was happening.

Reports came from all across the city, though south Philadelphia was the most affected by the bugs.

Overall, bed bug reports in the city steadily increased by 4.5 percent per month from 2008 to 2011, an almost 70 percent increase year to year. Nearly half of all pest infestations reported to the city over that time period were for bed bugs, a total of 382. From September 2011 to June 2012, Philadelphia residents made 236 reports of bed bug infestations, according to the study.

Infestations peaked in August and reached a low in February, the team found.

They most likely move more frequently during warmer months, with increased development and reproduction happening as well, the team surmises.

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Penn Medicine Epidemiologists Find Bed Bug Hotspots in Philadelphia, Identify Seasonal Trends

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Newswise Discoveries about how diseases arise or are transmitted in animals can be useful in understanding the same sorts of afflictions in humans. Similarly, new therapies or techniques used in people may be effective in caring for animals as well.

The newly established Center for Veterinary Sciences and Comparative Medicine (CVSCM) at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine embodies this ideal a highly integrated and innovative consortium of universities, institutions, scientists, physicians and veterinarians seeking to improve the condition of all animals, human and otherwise.

By understanding the biology of disease, either in people or in animals, all benefit, said Peter Ernst, DVM, PhD, professor of pathology at UC San Diego School of Medicine and founding CVSCM director. We want to use the lessons learned and advances made in human healthcare to improve the lives of animals and vice versa.

The CVSCM features a faculty of 25 academic veterinarians from UC San Diego School of Medicine, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, The Scripps Research Institute, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, Sea World and the San Diego Zoo.

It builds upon UC San Diegos long-standing post-doctoral training program in laboratory animal and comparative medicine and has close links to the UC Veterinary Medical Center-San Diego, a collaboration between UC San Diego Health Sciences and the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine.

Many CVSCM scientists are on the leading edge of their research disciplines, investigating mucosal infections and immune responses, gastrointestinal ailments such as inflammatory bowel disease or celiac disease, parasite transmission, cancer and neurodegenerative diseases involving prions and misfolded proteins the last affecting humans, cows, deer and other animals.

For example:

*Joseph Vinetz, MD, professor in the Department of Medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine, studies leptospirosis, a disease transmitted from infected wild and domestic mammals to humans. He is investigating the ecology of the disease, and why some patients develop mild cases, while others suffer severe infections. *Sheila Crowe, MD, professor in the Department of Medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine, studies epithelial cell biology related to celiac disease as well as Helicobacter pylori, the cause of gastroduodenal ulcers and gastric cancer. She is also investigating other infections that can be transmitted from animals to humans. *Nikos Gurfield, DVM, County Veterinarian for San Diego County, focuses upon West Nile virus, which affects birds, horses and humans. *Christina J. Sigurdson, DVM, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Pathology at UC San Diego School of Medicine, and colleagues are studying the cause of a highly prevalent protein aggregation disease known as serum amyloid A amyloidosis in endangered Channel Island foxes. Amyloidosis also occurs in humans.

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Treating the Inner Animal in All of Us

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8-Jan-2014

Contact: Senior Research Consultant Sren Paaske Johnsen spj@dce.au.dk 45-30-22-84-69 Aarhus University

Heart palpitations. Shortness of breath. Tiredness. More and more people can recognise the symptoms of atrial fibrillation, which is one of the most common types of heart disease. More than 65,000 Danes live with the disease, leading to a greatly increased risk of strokes, which are also known as apoplexy.

New research shows that patients who take anticoagulant medicine against atrial fibrillation not only reduce the risk of a thrombosis in the brain:

"Our study shows that the anticoagulant medicine also appears to protect the patients who still suffer the misfortune of a stroke. The risk of suffering serious brain damage or death due to a thrombosis in the brain is significantly smaller for the patients with atrial fibrillation who received anticoagulant medicine, compared to those who did not receive the medicine," says senior research consultant in clinical epidemiology Sren Paaske Johnsen, Aarhus University.

He has carried out the study in collaboration with colleagues from Aarhus University, Aarhus University Hospital, Gentofte Hospital, and Odense University Hospital.

Largest study in the area

Via the Danish National Patient Registers the researchers have followed a total of 11,356 Danes with atrial fibrillation, who were admitted to hospital during the period 2003-2009 after suffering a stroke. The study is the largest of its kind.

"Only 22 percent of the patients were undergoing relevant treatment with anticoagulant medicine when they were admitted with a stroke. With the knowledge we have now about the protective effect of the medicine it is of course important to be particularly aware of the patients who could benefit from treatment with anticoagulant medicine," says Sren Paaske Johnsen.

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Medicine protects against strokes

Dr. Robert Babineau

Sentinel and Enterprise staff photos can be ordered by visiting our Smugmug site.

FITCHBURG -- Friends and colleagues remember Fitchburg's Dr. Robert Babineau Sr. as a pioneer in family medicine, as well as the creator and visionary of the Fitchburg residency program for medical students.

"He was a great guy," said Dr. Daniel Lasser, chairman of the family medicine and community health for UMass Medical School in Worcester. "If you were a patient, you would feel like he gave you all time in world, but he had a reputation for going home on time. People felt like they got their full visit with him, but somehow he stuck to a schedule. I wish I knew how he did it."

Babineau, 91, died Thursday. Helen, his wife of 66 years, had died five days earlier. The couple had lived in Fitchburg, but moved to Brewster on Cape Cod two decades ago.

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Raised in Fitchburg, Babineau took advantage of a program in the 1940s in which the Army paid for him to attend Boston University Medical School in exchange for four years of service as a military doctor. He spent a portion of those four years in Korea, where he established an orphanage in Seoul and left with the rank of major.

He was an intern at Maine General Hospital, where he met his wife, who was the head maternity nurse at the time. They later moved to Fitchburg, and he opened his own practice in 1952 as a general practitioner.

"He was a doctor back when doctors made house calls," said Dave Svens, a former patient and now the executive director of Fitchburg Access Television.

Around 1957, when Svens was 9, he was running along a sand embankment, and the next thing he knew, he was waking up in his own bed. He could hear Dr. Babineau say, "He's coming to."

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Robert Babineau, pioneer in family medicine mourned in Fitchburg and beyond

Debuting Tuesday as part of the PBS series "American Experience," "The Poisoner's Handbook" offers a fascinating look back at how the chemical age changed police work.

Based on Deborah Blum's 2010 book "The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York," it is divided into toxin-specific "chapters," (cyanide, arsenic, carbon monoxide, lead, radium, denatured alcohol and so on), but there is nothing particularly instructional about it. A certain sort of viewer might get ideas, of course, but should he watch to the end he will learn that poisoning is a hard crime to get away with anymore.

Some credit for this goes to pioneering main characters Charles Norris, a crusading, visionary New York City medical examiner, and Alexander Gettler, who ran his toxicology labs. They were an unlikely pair, Norris from Philadelphia money but with a healthy sense of noblesse oblige (he paid for equipment and subsidized salaries in his department when money was short); Gettler, a Lower East Side Jew who liked bowling and playing the ponies. But both were dedicated to "a medical-legal justice system" and the rule of science.

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The film, which seems to be about one thing and then another, is also a story of New York itself during Prohibition and the Depression, a melting pot on a high flame. It's as well about the birth of American forensic science and the transformation of the untrustworthy office of the coroner formerly a political appointment, with no qualifications needed and plenty of opportunity for graft into the much-respected forensic science of current practice and pop culture. And it's a chronicle of the chemicals and compounds that transformed modern life even as they made it deadly in brand-new ways.

And finally, it's a story of human fecklessness and haplessness of the injuries we do, not just through spite or greed but from our love of convenience: Call it suicide by technology. Norris and Gettler set themselves not only against murderers and policemen their evidence often being exculpatory but against the makers of radioactive watch dials and of lead-laced gasoline. (The lesson being that as hard as it might have been to fight City Hall, going up against Standard Oil and General Motors is simply impossible.)

For not all of the deaths investigated in the course of "The Poisoner's Handbook" are murders even some that first seem to be. Carbon monoxide, present in the gas used for lighting, cooking and refrigeration, killed more New Yorkers in a year than measles, tuberculosis and typhoid combined. And both Norris and Gettler were opposed to Prohibition, seeing correctly that it would not end the consumption of alcohol but only promote the consumption of bad, sometimes deadly, alcohol. ("Our national experiment ... in extermination," Norris called it.)

BEST TV OF 2013Lloyd|McNamara

There are many re-created events in courtrooms, at crime scenes and in the lab, with its many attractive antique instruments, that go on a little longer than is usual in such films. They have a goofy charm that fits the film's bemused tone.

Norris to cop: "You can't hold that man for murder. He didn't kill her. ... I'm taking possession of the body."

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Review: 'The Poisoner's Handbook' on PBS: forensic medicine's birth

The Alberta Wilderness Association (AWA) is speaking out in support of a federal emergency order to restrict oil production in the endangered sage grouse's habitatdespite vows from the City of Medicine Hat to fight it.

In a press release Monday, the group says the emergency order is an essential first step in the bird's recovery andthe federal government is in danger of failing to properly implement the order.

"This is the slowest emergency I have ever seen," said AWAvice-presidentCliff Wallis in the press release.

The group was one of the first togo court to force the federal government to put the protection in place.

"Postponing the emergency order for the protection of the greater sagegrouse, as requested by the City of Medicine Hat andLGXOil and Gas Inc., would delay recovery and be counterproductive."

The City of Medicine Hat is going to court to in an effort to delay implementation of the emergency order, which was announced in early December.It is set to take effect Feb. 18.

Under the order, about 1,700 square kilometres of Crown land in southern Alberta and Saskatchewan will comeunder a set of rules to protect the sage grouse, thought to be down to as few as 90 birds in those provinces.

AWA says only 14 male birds were counted inAlbertain 2013.

The emergency protection order grew out of a 2012 court case brought by several environmental groups to force the federal government to live up to its Species At Risk legislation.

The order forbids the construction of new roads, tall fences or high objects and restricts loud noises during certain times of year which would restrict oil and gas production.

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Stanford Report, January 6, 2014

Irving Weissman, director of the Ludwig Center for Cancer Stem Cell Research and Medicine at Stanford.

The Stanford University School of Medicine has received $90 million from Ludwig Cancer Research on behalf of its founder, Daniel K. Ludwig, to support the school's innovative work in cancer stem cells, which are believed to drive the growth of many cancers.

Stanford is one of six institutions to share in Ludwig's $540 million contribution to the field of cancer research. Announced today, the gift is one of the largest ever made to the field from an individual donor.

The funding will augment the existing endowment for the Ludwig Center for Cancer Stem Cell Research and Medicine at Stanford, established in 2006, where scientists already have discovered some promising therapies that are moving into clinical trials.

"The gift from Ludwig Cancer Research is truly historic," said Stanford President John Hennessy. "Over the years, Ludwig has been a generous supporter of cancer research, and through its support changed the course of cancer treatment. But this extraordinary gift will spur innovation well into the future.Stanford is distinguished for its cancer research and has assembled a 'dream team' of dedicated scientists at the Ludwig Center for Cancer Stem Cell Research and Medicine at Stanford. This gift is a tremendous vote of confidence in the work they and their colleagues at other Ludwig Centers are doing and will provide essential support as they pioneer new treatments and therapies."

The Ludwig gift will complement Stanford's Cancer Initiative, a $250 million effort to advance research and improve patient care, said Lloyd Minor, dean of the Stanford School of Medicine.

"We are very grateful to Ludwig Cancer Research for this exceptional gift, which will provide momentum for further discoveries in cancer stem cells and spur the development of new therapies," Minor said. "Together with our Cancer Initiative, it represents an opportunity to truly transform cancer research and treatment."

With his latest gift, Ludwig has now committed $150 million to Stanford. The university's Ludwig Center, the only cancer stem cell center of its kind, is directed by Irving Weissman, the Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Professor for Clinical Investigation in Cancer Research at Stanford.

The first evidence of cancer stem cells was found in acute myeloid leukemia in 1994 by Canadian scientist John Dick. Weissman and his colleagues purified human blood-forming stem cells in 1992 and human leukemia stem cells in 2000 and later identified potential therapeutic targets on them. Since then, Michael Clarke, professor of medicine at Stanford and a Ludwig Center deputy director, isolated cancer stem cells in breast cancer, pancreatic cancers and colorectal cancer, and with Weissman head and neck cancers, bladder cancer, myelomas and other cancers.

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Patient Electronic Diary in Personalized in Medicine and Multiple Sclerosis - Ariel Miller
Benefits of Integrating a Patient Electronic Diary in Personalized Medicine and Multiple Sclerosis Healthcare - by Prof. Ariel Miller, Technion Multiple Scle...

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Social-Mobile-Cloud Meets Medicine @ Technion - Deborah Estrin
Social-Mobile-Cloud Meets Medicine @ Technion conference - Closing remarks by Computer Science Prof. Deborah Estrin of Cornell NYC Tech.

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Medicine Ball Roll Back Chest Pass
http://www.kaiwheeler.com Personal trainer Kai Wheeler out of San Diego, CA demonstrates a medicine ball roll back chest pass.

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Eritrea TV - 56 Medical Doctors graduate from Orotta School of Medicine
http://www.eritrea-tv.net - Eritrean Tigrinya News - 28 December 2013: A total of 56 Medical Doctors who have been pursuing their studies in Orotta School of...

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