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May 19
Local Breast Surgeon And Radiation Oncologists Offer New Device That Tracks Radiation
A new sensor device allowing doctors to receive data on the precise amount of radiation being delivered to tumors and surrounding tissue is now being offered at Maury regional Medical Cancer Center. Maury Regional Medical Center is the first in Tennessee to use the technology called DVSŪ (Dose Verification System) for breast cancer patients undergoing radiation treatment.

John P. W. Brown, M.D., surgeon, inserts a device that is as small as the length of a dime and can be inserted inside the patient's tumor bed in less than 15 minutes. After each radiation treatment, the DVSŪ provides the radiation oncologists (Dr. Michael Sattasiri and Dr. Joel Kochanski) with a measurement of the actual amount of radiation hitting the target where the malignant tumor was removed. This allows Dr. Sattasiri and Dr. Kochanski to make any necessary adjustments to the prescribed dose during the radiation therapy treatment course, making it more precise. The DVSŪ sensor wirelessly transmits data to the physician immediately following each radiation treatment.

Increasing cancer cure rates and decreasing complications associated with radiation therapy are the goals physicians strive for when treating their patients. DVSŪ is the first wireless, implantable radiation sensor available in the United States to assist physicians in obtaining these goals. The sensor provides data on the precise amount of radiation being delivered to the tumor and surrounding normal tissue.

"Patients with breast cancer are well educated and often spend considerable amounts of time researching new treatment options to help them in their battle with cancer. They also place tremendous value on being treated with the most up to date technologies. We are excited to be the first facility in Tennessee to offer this technology to patients with breast cancer," says John Brown, M.D., breast surgeon at Maury Regional Medical Center. "Traditional radiation therapies rely on knowing the exact location of the tumor, but provide no guidance on quantifying the actual dose being delivered to the tumor. DVSŪ provides an unprecedented level of precision to physicians and added reassurance to breast and prostate cancer patients," he adds.

Developed by Sicel Technologies, Inc., the DVSŪ sensors are implanted during a minimally invasive procedure and gather data on the amount of radiation being delivered to the tumor and normal tissue. Wireless technology transmits the radiation dose information to a hand-held monitor during each of the daily treatments, enabling doctors to verify that the patient is receiving the prescribed dose. If a dose deviation is detected, the treatment plan can be modified and corrected for each individual patient. Accurate delivery of the appropriate dose of radiation is critical for tumor control and cure.

"Maury Regional Medical Center is committed to bringing patients innovative new technologies that can have a positive effect on their end results. We provide many options to our patients and are now screening breast cancer patients to receive this breakthrough technology," says Dr. Brown, who inserted the first DVSŪ sensor at Maury Regional Medical Center.

May 16
India gets its first swine flu patient: A 23-year-old Hyderabadi
New Delhi: A 23-year-old man, who arrived at Hyderabad airport from the US, has been found to be infected with influenza A (H1N1). This is the first case of swine flu in India, the health ministry said Saturday.

The passenger travelled by Emirates Airline from New York to Hyderabad via Dubai. He reached India Wednesday morning and was quarantined after he was found to be suffering from fever.

"He was shifted to the identified isolation facility under strict infection control. His samples have tested positive for influenza A (H1N1)," a health ministry statement issued here said.

The person, who has not been identified, was being treated with anti-influenza drugs Oseltamivir and Afebrile.

All the passengers who came in contact with the infected person are also being monitored.

"The office of the concerned airlines has been contacted to provide the list of passengers who travelled with him in close proximity. Information of such passengers would be provided to the WHO (World Health Organisation) and respective countries through the external affairs ministry," it said.

The passengers are being advised to remain under home quarantine for a period of seven days and monitor themselves for symptoms like fever, cough and difficulty in breathing.

They are also being asked to provide their contact details to Indian authorities

May 16
New Tool Could Help Predict Dementia In Older People
Scientists have developed a new 'risk index' that helps predict which individuals over the age of 65 may go on to develop dementia.

The index is made up of a number of tests of different characteristics, which are put together to predict an older person's risk of developing dementia.

'This new risk index is a very useful tool that could help boost dementia research into treatments and prevention. However, it is very unlikely to be routinely available to older people in the UK because some of the tests are very expensive to carry out.

One million people will develop dementia in the next ten years. Scientists investigating ways to prevent this devastating condition could use this tool to select people who are at a high risk. This would produce stronger results, reduce the number of participants needed in clinical trials and reduce the cost of research.

May 16
SANE Australia Announces Book Of The Year Award
SANE Australia is pleased to announce the 2009 SANE Book of the Year is Back From The Brink Too: Supporting Your Loved One In Overcoming Depression by Graeme Cowan.

The SANE Book of the Year Award recognises outstanding Australian non-fiction titles which promote understanding of mental illness and its effect in the community. Previous winners include Anne Deveson AO for Tell Me I'm Here and Craig Hamilton for Broken Open.

Drawing on Australian and overseas research, as well as the author's own experience, Back from the Brink Too offers a step-by-step approach to the support family and friends of people with depression need, and provides guidance on how carers can look after their own mental and physical health too.

SANE Australia Executive Director Barbara Hocking says family members of people with mental illness play an enormous role in providing care and support for people living with depression, as well as other forms of mental illness.

'Not only does Back >From The Brink Too provide much-needed practical guidance for family carers and raise awareness of the key role they play in helping to manage mental illness, but it also works to reduce the isolation many families experience,' Ms Hocking said.

'We are delighted to present the SANE Book of the Year Award to Mr Cowan for his contribution to helping the community better understand the experience of mental illness and its impact on families and friends'

Graeme Cowan says of the Award, 'I am honoured and humbled that SANE Australia has recognised my book. Only after recovering from my own depression did I come to understand the tremendous toll that my illness caused my family. I would like to dedicate this award to my loved ones and the two million other Australians that support those living with depression and anxiety.'

May 16
Unraveling The Roots Of Dyslexia
By peering into the brains of people with dyslexia compared to normal readers, a study published online on March 12th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, has shed new light on the roots of the learning disability, which affects four to ten percent of the population. The findings support the notion that the reading and spelling deficit - characterized by an inability to break words down into the separate sounds that comprise them - stems in part from a failure to properly integrate letters with their speech sounds.

"The adults with dyslexia in the study had enough reading experience to match letters and their speech sounds correctly," said Vera Blau of the University of Maastricht, The Netherlands "Still, the results show that the way their brain integrates letters and speech sounds is very different from normal readers. It's quite astonishing."

The researchers examined activity in the brains of dyslexic and normal adult readers by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) as they were presented with letters, speech sounds, or a matching or non-matching combination of the two. While undergoing that task, dyslexic adults showed lower activation of a brain region known as the superior temporal cortex than the more typical readers did.

The findings point to a neural deficit in letter-speech sound integration as a fundamental mechanism that might distinguish poor from good readers, Blau said. Such a difficulty in integrating the most basic units of written and spoken language could offer a promising link between well-documented difficulties in processing the sounds of language (phonology) and the actual reading problem itself, she added.

Her team, led by Leo Blomert at the University of Maastricht, is currently conducting further studies in children as they are learning to read to help identify whether the difficulty to integrate letters with speech sounds begins in early school years and whether it comes before or after deficits in processing the sounds of language.

In addition to enhancing scientists' fundamental understanding of the disability, the new results might also have some ultimate implications for therapy. "Our findings may offer a way to validate intervention strategies and narrow down the best training approaches," Blau said. Indeed, in a new series of studies, the group is investigating whether training strategies focused on phonological skills as well as letter-sound associations improve reading skills by changing activity levels in the brain of dyslexic readers.

May 16
More Support Needed For Families Adopting From Foster Care
A new University of Illinois study of families adopting from foster care revealed significant declines in professional services and social support over the first three years of adoptive family life, even though parents indicated that they need continued assistance.

"Children who have been in foster care can have a host of medical issues and a history of multiple placements so parenting them can be a challenging task for adoptive parents," said Laurie Kramer, a U of I associate dean and professor of applied family studies.

If these children are to thrive, their families need continued access to an array of professionals, including therapists, school staff, adoption specialists, and trained child-care providers who have experience working with children who have social, emotional, and developmental challenges. These experts can teach parents how to help a child who's been in a neglectful or abusive home environment, she said.

"Families who adopt from foster care also need informal support networks, such as family, friends, and clergy. Peer support from other foster and adoptive parents who have experienced the challenges of parenting a previously traumatized child is also important," said Doris M. Houston, co-author of the study and an assistant professor in the School of Social Work/Center for Adoption Studies at Illinois State University.

The three-year longitudinal study assessed the social, emotional, and behavioral outcomes of 34 families who were adopting a child out of foster care over a three-year period.

"We started working with 49 families when they began parenting their child. And we wanted to know how these parents were doing three years down the road. Nine of the adoptions hadn't been finalized, and we thought that was telling," said Houston.

Parents in the 34 families who followed through with the planned adoption and retained custody of their adoptive child were asked to complete a questionnaire that assessed current child well-being, the quality of family life, and the family's use of supportive services. Parents who no longer had custody of the child they adopted or had planned to adopt were asked to participate in an interview to shed light on the factors that contributed to the disruption.

"Families were more likely to be able to follow through and maintain the adoption when they had more contact with adoption agency staff during the pre-adoption period," said Kramer.

Part of the reason was that caseworkers were able to relay information about the child's history that parents needed to parent the child effectively, she said.

But the survey also showed that contact with all types of support had significantly decreased over the first three years of adoptive family life, she said.

That loss of contact with adoption professionals hadn't occurred because the parents believed they no longer needed it. "Even though their needs may be different now, our data show that parents would still like more support from adoption caseworkers and other specialists as they raise the children they've adopted from foster care," she said.

Houston emphasized that continued contact can be beneficial even if the child doesn't have complicated issues. "Adoption professionals can help prepare parents for the developmental stages that adopted children may go through as they come to terms with separation and loss," she said.

"And, if families do need more help, professionals can link them with community resources. They can help families decide if there's a need for adoption-specific counseling services so they can address concerns before they reach a point of crisis," she added.

Why the decline in post-adoption services? "Adoption professionals are skilled at helping adoptive families face the initial challenges they encounter - helping families get the legal assistance they need, doing the case study, and shepherding them through the adoption process, but they may not have the resources to maintain an investment with these families down the road," said Houston.

She noted that infant adoptions have historically been shrouded in secrecy, and adoptive families often try to handle problems independently to avoid being singled out or appearing dysfunctional.

May 14
Placement Of Dental Implants Results In Minimal Bone Loss
Dental implants are frequently used as a replacement for missing teeth in order to restore the patient's tooth function and appearance. Previous research demonstrates that the placement of a dental implant disrupts the host tissue in the area of the implant, so practitioners often focus their treatment planning to carefully maintain the patient's bone and gum tissue surrounding the implant. A recent study published in the Journal of Periodontology found that the majority of bone remodeling occurred in the time between the implant placement and final prosthesis placement.

Subsequently, little mean bone change was observed in the five years following the implant placement, independent of type of restoration or implant length. The study, conducted at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, evaluated 596 dental implants placed in 192 patients over the age of 18. Patients were screened for adequate oral hygiene and bone volume. Exclusion criteria included heavy smoking, chewing tobacco use, drug abuse, and untreated periodontal disease, amongst others.

May 14
Women Who Follow Blood Pressure-Lowering Diet Have Reduced Risk For Heart Failure
A diet designed to prevent and treat high blood pressure also may be associated with a lower risk of heart failure among women, according to a report in the May 11 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Dietary patterns have been associated with risk factors for heart failure, but little is known about whether food choices can prevent or delay the condition, according to background information in the article. "The Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet may contribute to prevention of heart failure in some cases because it effectively reduced blood pressure and low-density lipoprotein [LDL, or "bad"] cholesterol levels in clinical trials," the authors write. "This diet features high intake of fruits, vegetables, low-fat dairy products and whole grains, resulting in high potassium, magnesium, calcium and fiber consumption, moderately high protein consumption and low total and saturated fat consumption."

Emily B. Levitan, Sc.D., of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, and colleagues analyzed data from 36,019 women ages 48 to 83 without heart failure who were participating in the Swedish Mammography Cohort. Participants completed a food frequency questionnaire at the beginning of the study, between 1997 and 1998, that was used to calculate a score indicating how closely their diets matched DASH guidelines. The women were followed up from 1998 through 2004 using Swedish databases of hospitalizations and deaths.

During the seven-year follow-up, 443 women developed heart failure, including 415 who were hospitalized and 28 who died of the condition. Compared with the one-fourth of women with the lowest DASH diet scores, the one-fourth of women with the highest DASH diet scores had a 37 percent lower rate of heart failure after factors such as age, physical activity and smoking were considered. Women whose scores placed them in the top 10 percent had half the rate of heart failure compared with the one-fourth who had the lowest scores.

Previous studies have shown that the DASH diet lowers systolic (top number) blood pressure by about 5.5 millimeters of mercury, a decrease that might be expected to reduce the rate of heart failure by about 12 percent, the authors note. Other mechanisms by which this eating pattern may influence heart failure risk include the reduction of LDL cholesterol, estrogen-like effects of some of the nutrients in the diet and a decrease in oxygen-related cell damage.

May 14
Iron Levels Not Predictive Of Survival For Form Of Blood Cancer
Iron chelating drugs have been heavily promoted for use in patients with primary myelofibrosis (PMF), a form of blood cancer often treated with blood transfusion. These drugs, however, which withhold available iron in the body, are highly expensive and potentially toxic. A new study published in American Journal of Hematology finds that their increased use has been propagated by non-evidence based, and often industry-sponsored, statements and opinions, rather than original research, and that the conclusions are often based on poor data.

The study shows that the degree of anemia in patients suffering from PMF, age and need for red blood cell transfusion at diagnosis were stronger predictors for patient survival than serum ferritin level (a protein that stores iron), which is often used as a proxy for iron overload in the blood.

"Although iron chelation therapy in PMF would probably lower serum ferritin level in such patients, its value in terms of meaningful health outcomes remains dubious," says Dr. Ayalew Tefferi of the Mayo Clinic, principle author of the study.

In a related editorial in the journal, Dr. Thomas G. DeLoughery of Oregon Health & Science University states that "hematologists are under increasing pressure to prescribe iron chelation for seemingly any patient being transfused. However, there is no evidence that iron overload affects survival or morbidity."

The findings should impact clinical practice by discouraging the indiscriminate use of an expensive, potentially toxic and unproven therapy. The future challenge in treating myelofibrosis is to avoid transfusions by better therapies to reverse the stem cell defect. "Unfortunately, the recent focus on iron overload as a priority and not the stem cell defect is leading to a misallocation of resources on both the patient and practitioner's part," says DeLoughery.

May 14
New Biomarker For Aggressive Prostate Cancer, Study
Scientists have for the first time discovered that genetic information taken from molecules found inside bubbles of fat in a man's urine could be a useful new biomarker for showing whether his prostate cancer is aggressive or not.

The study is the work of lead author Dr Jonas Nilsson, who is based at the VU University Medical Centre in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and is to be published today, 13 May, in the British Journal of Cancer.

Exosomes are tiny capsules of fat that contain genetic material called RNA that comes directly from tumors. The idea is that by looking at the RNA molecules the researchers can tell which genes are turned on and off in that particular person's cancer.

While exomes are found in urine of people with and without cancer, some cancer cells appear to shed a lot more of them.

Until now, the biomarkers used to diagnose prostate cancer have been proteins, for example the PSA test that uses prostate specific antigen.

But Nilsson and colleagues have developed a new way that analyses the genetic instructions themselves, which is what goes wrong when cancer develops.

Different genes are switched on an off in different cancers, and the patterns are also different depending on whether the cancer is aggressive or dormant. By analysing the RNA molecules shed by the cancer cells, Nilsson and colleagues say it should be possible to see which pattern corresponds to aggressive prostate cancer.

This method could be used to develop a diagnostic test that helps doctors decide which prostate cancers are aggressive and need to be treated right away, and which can be left untreated and just monitored incase they need treatment later.

Invasive treatment for prostate cancer carries risk of long term incontinence and impotence, so it is important that this is not done unless absolutely necessary, hence reliability of diagnosis is a vital area of prostate cancer research.

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men in the UK, where about 34,000 men are newly diagnosed and 10,000 men die from the disease every year.

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