Preventive Health Care Central Florida | 2 Your Health: Protecting against allergies during the winter months

Source : ktuu
By : Samantha Angaiak
Category : Preventive Health Care Central Florida , Health Care in Casselberry, Physicians Near Casselberry

 As Alaskans brace for the coldest months of the year, health officials are warning that the chillier conditions can spark a number of winter-related health issues.

At the Allergy, Asthma & Immunology Center of Alaska, Dr. Jeffrey Demain, M.D. said he treats dozens of patients each winter for cold-induced urticaria, more commonly known as “hives.”

“You get hives either during the cold or upon re-warming and that’s time-limited,” Demain said. “It goes away in a minute, a few minutes or a few hours.”

The condition can vary in severity.

“It can be as mild as just some itchy hives on the skin or as severe as can’t breath and losing consciousness or even death,” Demain said.

To test for urticaria, Demain said the center runs a cold stimulation test by placing a cold instrument or ice cube on the skin for four minutes. If the patient has cold urticaria, a raised red bump or hive will appear on the patient’s skin a few minutes after the cold object is removed.

While the typical allergy season happens earlier in the year, some indoor allergens persist long after the pollen is gone.

“We close up our windows, we close up our doors and our loving pets, our dogs and our cats, the allergens are staying in,” Demain said. “They’re building up, dust mites which are in our bedding are building up and we’re not getting as much fresh air in.”

If you do experience environmental allergies, Demain said sometimes it’s necessary to get shots during all seasons. One Patient, Susan Buller said she’s been coming to the center for the past four years.

“I do have some environment inside household [allergies], dust mites,” Buller said. “They wanted me to get shots all throughout the year.”

Some allergens in your household come from uninvited guests like mice. While they may not be running through your kitchen, Demain said the problem could be underneath your floor.

“We assume 97 percent of homes have measurable rodent protein,” Demain said. “They’re looking for a warm dry place to live and when they urinate or defecate. Peptides, as they dry, become part of the air.”

That problem Demain said should be left up to professionals, but if you experience reactions to allergies or urticaria it’s best to leave those up to medical experts.

To prevent cold-induced urticaria, Demain suggests taking an antihistamine everyday and seeing a physician if the treatment doesn’t work. He also suggests that those prone to hives carry an epinephrine autoinjector pen or “EPI” pen.

The biggest word of advice Dr. Demain suggests is to dress for your surroundings.

(Read More : ktuu.com/news/news/2-your-health-protecting-against-allergies-during-the-winter-months/36624964)

Certified Family Physicians | Health-care law fuels expansion at SIU family medicine clinic

Source : sj-r
By : Dean Olsen
Category : Certified Family Physicians, Health Care In Florida

A $16 million expansion and renovation project underway at a federally subsidized medical clinic in Springfield will help accommodate the surging number of patients gaining insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act, project supporters said Tuesday.
“There will be so much more access,” Dr. Janet Albers, chairwoman of Southern Illinois University School of Medicine’s department of family and community medicine, said of the expansion at the SIU Center for Family Medicine.
In addition to more examination rooms, the project, to be completed in 2016, will pave the way for the hiring of about 25 more doctors and associated staff and a total of 40 more employees. The center, at 520 N. Fourth St., now employs almost 90 people.
SIU is looking into whether the university’s dental school in Alton can offer supervised training for its dental students at the Springfield family medicine center so that low- and moderate-income residents can have more access to affordable dental care locally, Albers said.
Memorial Health System, the parent organization of nearby Memorial Medical Center, is funding the entire project, which will double the size of the SIU clinic and move its entrance from the west to the south side of the two-story building.
The new addition, to be completed in May, will increase the number of exam rooms from 36 to 72. The number of counseling rooms will increase from four to 10.
After the addition is completed, the older part of the building will be renovated and redesigned, later in 2016, to house exam rooms for visiting SIU specialty doctors and a potential dental-care area.
O’Shea Builders ​is general contractor for the expansion and renovation project, and BSA LifeStructures​ is handling designs.​
Help meet needs
The project, which will add 32,000 square feet to the 30,300-square-foot building, makes sense for the not-for-profit system to support, said Ed Curtis, system president and chief executive officer.
“It’s caring for people in the right setting and at the right price,” Curtis said.
Primary care that is delivered in a coordinated fashion and in an outpatient setting is more effective and cheaper than when patients use hospital emergency rooms for basic care or put off care until an illness or disease is in an advanced stage, he said.
The expansion will create an even more impressive setting for the training of family physicians through SIU’s residency program, making it more likely that those doctors will settle in the Springfield area upon completion of their training, Curtis added.

(Read More : sj-r.com/article/20151208/NEWS/151209604 )

Federal Seizure Program that Benefits Cops Called ‘Legal Robbery’

Source    :  Cincinnati
By            :  James Pilcher

Federal seizure program that benefits cops called ‘legal robbery’

Antoinette Lattimore was traveling from Cincinnati to Tucson two years ago to scout out African art, carrying nearly $20,000 in cash for possible purchases. By the time she got to Arizona nearly a week later, she didn’t have that cash. That’s because a Dayton, Ohio, police officer, deputized as a federal drug enforcement agent, seized the money despite the fact that he had no warrant to search her, she was not arrested and was not charged with any crime. “I had no idea something like this could happen in America,” says Lattimore, 44, who lives in North College Hill. “I’ve never been arrested before in my life. I even could prove that it was my money but that didn’t matter.”

But it does happen and it is all completely legal. It’s called civil forfeiture and the 13 local law enforcement agencies that are part of the region’s federal drug task force earned more than $7.5 million in such seizure money in the last five years. Nationally, a total of $4.1 billion in such funds have been seized by local police and federal agents since 2006 using civil forfeiture laws. Very little of that money gets returned to its rightful owners, again despite the fact that many of those who have their assets seized are not arrested for trafficking, dealing or even being in possession of illegal drugs. Instead, most of the money goes back to the departments that seized it. And recourse for those targeted is extremely limited. Why is it legal? Because Congress says so, although some are starting to question the practice. “This is legal robbery … and is completely unconstitutional,” says U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Garrison. “I don’t care what good they can do with that money if it was acquired unconstitutionally.”Yet even as concern and criticism of the system rises due to stories like Lattimore’s – and calls for reform or elimination increase from those such as Massie – the number of these so-called “civil forfeiture” seizures are growing here and across the country, raising significant dollars for local law enforcement agencies.

The annual totals have grown as more members have joined the task force (and share in the proceeds), and those members have become increasingly active. In fact, the amount of seizure monies received so far this year (through July) are already equal to all of last year’s haul. Nearly $2 million of those seized funds went to the police department at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, one of the longest-standing members of the task force and where the Drug Enforcement Agency created a base of operations in 2012. Departments involved in federal task forces and seizures can’t use the recovered funds for their general budgets to pay normal expenses including salaries. But the money can be used to buy equipment and pay for training those agencies might not otherwise be able to afford, for weapons and added protective gear.

The CVG police department, for example, is in the process of buying a $208,000 SWAT van with some of the seized money. Previous CVG purchases have included new bikes. And even though the Justice Department tracks down to the penny which department receives how much and even what they spend it on, federal and local agencies say they do not track how many seizures actually result in arrests of any kind. Local and federal officials defend the practice, saying it is an effective deterrent against drug traffickers and that they are following the law. “The reason there isn’t a one-to-one correlation between seizures and arrests is because a holistic approach is used,” says CVG chief executive officer Candace McGraw. “We follow all the procedures and I think this is an effective tool in deterring money from going into the hands of drug dealers.” In a statement, DEA spokesman Joseph Moses says that “asset forfeiture has the power to disrupt or dismantle criminal organizations” that could only continue with convictions of “specific individuals.”

Read more: cincinnati.com/story/news/your-watchdog/2015/09/10/federal-seizure-program-benefits-cops-called-legal-robbery/71995798/

Working more than 55 hours a week is bad for you–in many ways

Source    :  Washington Post
By            :  Jena McGregor
Category :  Health Care In Florida, Gynecologic Care In Casselberry

Working more than 55 hours a week is bad for you–in many ways

Last week, a study published in the British medical journal the Lancet had an alarming warning for people who work more than 55 hours a week: They appear to have a 33 percent higher risk of stroke than those toiling a more sane 35 to 40 hours each week, and a 13 percent increased risk of coronary heart disease, too. If that sounded familiar, there’s a reason. A growing number of studies are examining the link between long hours, health problems and productivity. And what they’re finding isn’t pretty.

A study last year found that that working more than 55 hours a week at low-income jobs is associated with a higher risk of developing Type 2 diabetes. Another study tied prolonged sitting with early death, and reported the worst results for older women who were inactive for 11 or more hours a day; another found the odds for developing depression were more than double for those who work very long hours. These are just a few examples. Prior studies have associated working more than 11 hours a day with higher risks of heart attack. Researchers have found a link between working more than 55 hours a week and greater issues with sleep disturbances. Others have recently done a “meta-analysis” of other published research and found that workaholics are more likely to drink “risky” levels of alcohol, too. Meanwhile, it’s not just problems with workers’ health that are linked with overwork–productivity and cognitive function appears to suffer, too. For instance, last year, a Stanford researcher published a study showing that productivity begins to fall off at about 50 hours per week. After 55 hours, it plummeted, with no discernible difference in output for those who worked 70 versus 56 hours a week. As the Economist put it: “That extra 14 hours was a waste of time.”

Those reading closely might be wondering: What is it about 55 hours a week, or 11 hours a day over a five-day work week? Is it some kind of magic overtime threshold that’s the equivalent of falling off a health or productivity cliff? We reached out to a couple of researchers who worked on a few of these studies with that question. One, Marianna Virtanen, of the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, said 55 hours is a common cut-off used in earlier research, but that there’s no particular reason for it, noting she uses other categories of hours, and that another common one is 48 hours. That’s derived from the EU’s Working Time Directive, she said, which is meant to limit the work week to 48 hours on average. Indeed, the stroke study found that those who work 49 to 54 hours a week see a 27 percent higher risk; the one that looked at alcohol indulgence found the most “risky” use in that same range of hours. Mika Kivimaki, one of the co-authors on the stroke study, called 55 hours a “convention,” noting that he first saw the 55 hour a week threshold used back in 1998. After that, he said in an e-mail, “most studies have used the same cut off probably to make comparisons between studies easier.” Whatever the reason, toiling 55 or even 49 hours a week looks pretty bad for workers’ health and how effective they are at getting things done. And while that may be dispiriting news for any workaholics, the average employee is still under that threshold–at least for now. According to Gallup, the number of hours put in by the average U.S. worker is on the rise, but it’s still at just under 47 hours a week.

Read More : washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2015/08/24/working-more-than-55-hours-a-week-is-bad-for-you-in-many-ways/

Certified Family Physicians – Health Care Law Is Not One-Size-Fits-All, and Here’s Why

SOURCE  : New York Times
BY             : Austin Frakt
Category   : Certified Family Physicians

Health Care Law Is Not One-Size-Fits-All, and Here’s Why

One criticism of the Affordable Care Act is that it imposes a costly, one-size-fits-all standard, drastically increasing premiums by requiring everyone to buy health insurance that covers the same mandated benefits. This is not so. It’s true that the health reform law imposes some requirements — “essential health benefits” — on what individual market and small business plans offer. But the statute left a lot of discretion to federal regulators, who, in turn, passed much of it on to states, each of which interpreted the requirements differently. And, because most plans already covered these so-called essential health benefits, the additional cost of the regulation is small. The mistaken notion that the Affordable Care Act imposes a nationally uniform set of required benefits comes, perhaps, from language in the statute itself. It lists 10 broad areas of essential health benefits plans must cover, including hospital, outpatient and emergency services, along with related laboratory services; maternity, newborn and pediatric care; prescription drugs; rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices; mental health and substance abuse treatment; and wellness and chronic disease management. Though that’s a fairly comprehensive list, including areas of care one would typically expect of a health insurance plan, it’s not specific. What does it mean, for instance, to cover “prescription drugs”? Must all drugs be covered? If not, which ones?

The law delegates authority to the secretary of Health and Human Services to flesh out which benefits plans must cover. As my colleague Nicholas Bagley wrote with his co-author, Helen Levy, this presented the secretary with a dilemma. Defining essential health benefits narrowly would lead to lower-cost plans but would also leave more care uncovered, rendering that care unaffordable for some patients. A broader definition would increase premiums, potentially making health insurance too costly for some people the health law was designed to help. The secretary resolved this by leaning on the benefits standards already established in each state as of 2011. To fill in coverage requirements details, the secretary permitted each state to select an existing plan within its borders, from a number of options, to serve as a benefits “benchmark.” Whatever was covered in the benchmark plan would set a benefits floor. Health plans could cover additional benefits, but not fewer.

According to the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania, which analyzed information from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, 45 states and the District of Columbia ended up with a small-group plan as their benchmark, two chose a state employee plan, and three chose the largest H.M.O. For the most part, the selected benchmark plans provided coverage in the 10 areas of essential health benefits required by the federal law, but to different degrees. And where they did not, each state was permitted to fill in with its own, additional standards. Independent reports from The Commonwealth Fund and the Leonard Davis Institute give examples of the considerable state-to-state variation in required benefits offered to individuals and by small employers, those with 100 or fewer workers.

For example, the Leonard Davis Institute found that five states do not require coverage of chiropractic services, and half of those that do permit a range of limits on number of visits per year; only five states require acupuncture coverage; only 19 states require infertility treatment coverage; plans in 26 states must cover autism spectrum disorder; 31 must do so for temporomandibular joint (T.M.J.) disorders, which can cause jaw joint pain and dysfunction; 23 states require bariatric surgery coverage; and 12 require coverage for nutrition counseling and three for weight loss programs.

SOURCE : nytimes.com/2014/12/09/upshot/health-care-law-is-not-one-size-fits-all-and-heres-why.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1

Gynecologic Care In Casselberry – “Five Portions of Fruit and Veg a Day Are Enough”

SOURCE : Medical News Today
By            : James McIntosh
Category  :  Health Care In Florida, Gynecologic Care In Casselberry

The American Cancer Society recommend including fruits and vegetables in every meal and for snacks

A new study published on thebmj dot com states that five portions of fruits and vegetables a day is optimum for lowering the risk of death from any cause, including cardiovascular disease. Contrary to another recent study, any portions beyond the initial five appear to have no further impact on mortality. It has been established that the consumption of fruits and vegetables is important in reducing the risk of mortality from illnesses such as cardiovascular disease, but results between different studies have lacked consistency when it comes to the ideal amount to be consumed. Different countries recommend different amounts to be consumed by the public. For example, while the US government have advocated consuming five portions of fruits and vegetables every day, the Australian government recommend eating five portions of vegetables and two portions of fruits. A study that was published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health earlier in the year suggested that people should be eating seven portions of fruits and vegetables every day. These findings conflict with new research, however, conducted by a team of researchers based in China and the US.

Five portions or seven?

The team performed a meta-analysis of 16 cohort studies, examining the data of 833,234 participants – which included 56,423 deaths – and adjusted the findings to take into account differences in study design and data quality. After bias was minimized in this manner, the researchers found that a higher consumption of fruits and vegetables was associated with a significantly lower risk of death from all causes, and in particular cardiovascular disease. There was a 5% average reduction in the risk of death from all causes and a 4% reduction in the risk of death from cardiovascular disease for each additional daily portion of fruit and vegetables that was consumed. In contrast with the study published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, however, the researchers noted that after five servings of fruits and vegetables, additional portions did not affect the risk of death in any significant way. The authors also did not see higher consumption of fruits and vegetables having much of an effect on reducing the risk of cancer. The authors say that, in light of this, “the adverse effects of obesity, physical inactivity, smoking, and high alcohol intakes on cancer mortality should be further emphasized.”

Results ‘support current recommendations’

The authors say that further studies will need to look more closely at specific types of cancer and the role of different groups of fruits and vegetables in affecting mortality for different causes. They also write that further studies are needed to confirm their finding of a five-a-day threshold in reducing mortality. This is in part due to limitations in their analysis. Their findings may have been influenced by imprecise measuring of consumption due to reliance on food frequency questionnaires in most of the studies utilized. As well as this, the cohort studies did not take into account other dietary factors such as the consumption of saturated fat or processed meat, which may have also had an impact on mortality rates. At present, the American Cancer Society (ACS) recommend that adults eat at least 2.5 cups (5 portions) of fruits and vegetables every day, placing an emphasis on variety and the importance of whole fruits and vegetables, such as drinking pure fruit juice rather than drinks from concentrate. The ideal amount of fruits and vegetables to be consumed daily may still be very much up for debate, but, according to the authors, “the results support current recommendations to increase consumption of fruits and vegetables to promote health and longevity.”

More : medicalnewstoday.com/articles/280289.php

Health Solution In USA – “If you can run for 5 minutes a day, you may add years to your life”

SOURCE : LA Times
By            : Karen Kaplan
Category : Health Solution In USA

If you can run for 5 minutes a day, you may add years to your life

People who jogged or ran for as little as five minutes a day reduced their risk of premature death by nearly one-third and extended their lives by about three years, according to a new study. Researchers examined the exercise habits of more than 55,000 adults in the Dallas area who were monitored for six to 22 years. About 24% of the adults described themselves as runners. Compared to those who didn’t run, those who did were 30% less likely to die of any cause during the course of the study. They were also 45% less likely to die as a result of cardiovascular disease, researchers reported Monday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. -(These figures were adjusted to take into account people’s smoking and drinking habits, how old they were when they enrolled in the study, their family’s health history and their other exercise habits.) Put another way, non-runners were 24% more likely than runners to die during the study period. In fact, the mortality risk associated with not running was greater than the mortality risk associated with being overweight or obese (16%), having a family history of cardiovascular disease (20%), or having high cholesterol (6%).The researchers divided up the roughly 13,000 runners into five groups based on how many minutes they ran per week. Those in the lowest group ran up to 50 minutes over a seven-day period, and those in the highest group ran for more than 175 minutes over the course of a week.

But the benefits of running were pretty much the same for all runners, according to the study. “Running even at lower doses or slower speeds was associated with significant mortality benefits,” the researchers found. They also measured running in other ways – by total weekly distance, frequency, speed and the “total amount of running” (which was calculated by multiplying duration and speed). In all categories, even the runners in the lowest groups were less likely to die during the study than the non-runners. In order to reduce the risk of premature death, all it took was 30 to 59 minutes of running per week, the researchers calculated. “This finding has clinical and public health importance,” according to the team from Iowa State University, the University of South Carolina, Louisiana State University and the University of Queensland School of Medicine. “Because time is one of the strongest barriers to participate in physical activity, this study may motivate more people to start running and continue to run as an attainable health goal for mortality benefits,” they wrote. People who can’t devote 15 or 20 minutes to moderate physical activity each day may appreciate the efficiency of a five-minute run, they added.

If all of the non-runners had taken up running, 16% of the 3,413 deaths that occurred during the study could have been averted, the researchers wrote. That would have saved 546 lives. It’s not clear that the findings of this study would apply to the nation as a whole. Most of the adults who were tracked were college-educated, middle-class or upper-middle-class whites. However, the researchers noted that the “physiological characteristics” of the study participants were “similar” to those of samples that are more diverse. In an editorial that was published alongside the study, researchers from Taiwan urged doctors to use this information to motivate their patients to exercise, even if it’s only for a few minutes a day. “It is important to promote exercise by stressing the potential harm of inactivity,” they wrote. “Warn patients that inactivity can lead to a 25% increase in heart disease and a 45% increase in cardiovascular disease mortality, not to mention a 10% increase in the incidence of cancer, diabetes, and untold depression.” Three of the editorial’s four authors worked on a 2011 Lancet study that found that even 15 minutes of brisk walking per day could extend a person’s life expectancy. Both that study and the new study are “good news to the sedentary.”

Full Story : latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-five-minutes-running-per-day-extends-life-20140728-story.html

Complete Health Care – “FDA Approves First DNA Test For Colon Cancer”

SOURCE   : CBS News
By       : CBS/AP
Category : Complete Health Care in Casselberry, Complete Health Care

FDA approves first DNA test for colon cancer

The Food and Drug Administration on Monday approved the first screening test for colon cancer that uses patients’ DNA to help spot potentially deadly tumors and growths. The Cologuard test from Exact Sciences detects irregular mutations in stool samples that can be an early warning sign of cancer. Patients who test positive for the mutations should undergo a colonoscopy to confirm the results. The test involves using a collection kit to take a stool sample at home, then shipping it to a lab that looks for DNA and blood that may suggest something is amiss. Many people may find it easier than undergoing a colonoscopy.

Doctors have long used stool tests to look for hidden blood that can be a warning sign of tumors and precancerous polyps. But company studies of Cologuard showed that it was more accurate at detecting cancerous tumors and worrisome polyps than traditional stool blood tests. Cologuard detected 92 percent of colon cancers and 42 percent of advanced polyps in a study of 10,000 patients, while traditional blood screening only detected 74 percent of cancers and 24 percent of advanced polyps. “For a non-invasive test, that’s pretty good, ” Dr. Steven Itzkowitz, professor of medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York and one of the lead researchers studying the test, told CBS News last spring, when it was still pending approval. The new test was not superior on all counts though. Cologuard was less accurate than older blood tests at correctly ruling out cancer, reporting more growths when none were actually present.

“It’s a great new option I think,” CBS News chief medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook, a practicing gastroenterologist at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York, said in March. But “it’s not yet perfect,” he added. The approval has the potential to reshuffle current medical practice, though FDA officials stressed Monday that DNA-based stool screening has not been endorsed by federal medical advisers who set screening guidelines. A spokeswoman for Exact Sciences, which is based in Madison, Wisconsin, said the new test would cost $599 per patient. That compares to about $25 for a traditional stool blood test. Current federal guidelines recommend traditional stool tests every year and a colonoscopy every 10 years for patients between ages 50 and 75. Colonoscopy is the most accurate method for spotting colon cancer but many adults are reluctant to undergo the invasive procedure, which requires sedation as doctors probe the colon with a camera-fitted endoscope.

Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in the U.S., with over 50,000 deaths expected this year, according to the American Cancer Society. Deaths from the disease have been declining for more than two decades, a development attributed to increased screening. Still, only about 60 percent of people between ages 50 to 75 have had the recommended tests. Officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services – which runs the federal health programs for seniors and the poor – said they plan to cover the new test once every three years for people ages 50 to 85 who have a normal risk of developing colon cancer. The agency will take comments on its coverage proposal before making it final. Shares of Exact Sciences Corp. rose 51 cents, or 3 percent, to $17.60 in afterhours trading after closing up 2.5 percent to $17.09 in regular-session trading.

SOURCE : cbsnews.com/news/fda-approves-first-dna-test-for-colon-cancer/

Family Medical Doctors – “Scientists Create 3D Model That Mimics Brain Function”

SOURCE : Star Advertiser
By            : Pam Belluck
Category  : Family Medical Doctors, Adult Medical Care

Scientists create 3D model that mimics brain function

A doughnut created in a lab and made of silk on the outside and collagen gel where the jelly ought to be can mimic the basic function of brain tissue, scientists have found. Bio-engineers produced a kind of rudimentary gray matter and white matter in a dish, along with rat neurons that signaled one another across the doughnut’s center. When the scientists dropped weights on the material to simulate traumatic injury, the neurons in the three-dimensional brain model emitted chemical and electrical signals similar to those in the brains of injured animals. It is the first time scientists have been able to so closely imitate brain function in the laboratory, experts said. If researchers can replicate it with human neurons and enhance it to reflect other neurological functions, it could be used for studying how disease, trauma and medical treatments affect the brain — without the expense and ethical challenges of clinical trials on people.

“In terms of mechanical similarity to the brain, it’s a pretty good mimic,” said James J. Hickman, a professor of nanoscience technology at the University of Central Florida, who was not involved in the research. “They’ve been able to repeat the highest level of function of neurons. It’s the best model I’ve seen.” The research, led by David Kaplan, the chairman of the biomedical engineering department at Tufts University, and published Monday in the journal PNAS, is the latest example of biomedical engineering being used to make realistic models of organs such as the heart, lungs and liver. Most studies of human brain development rely on animals or on slices of brains taken after death; both are useful but have limitations.

Brain models have been mostly two-dimensional or made with neurons grown in a three-dimensional gel, said Rosemarie Hunziker, program director of tissue engineering and biomaterial at the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, which funded Kaplan’s research. None of those systems replicate the brain’s gray or white matter, or how neurons communicate, Hunziker said. “Even if you get cells to live in there, they don’t do much,” she said. “It is spectacularly difficult to do this with the brain.” Kaplan’s team found that a spongy silk material coated with a positively charged polymer could culture rat neurons, a stand-in for gray matter. By itself, though, the silk material did not encourage neurons to produce axons, branches that transmit electrical pulses to other neurons. The researchers formed the silk material into a doughnut and added collagen gel to the center. Axons grew from the ring through the gel — the white matter substitute — and sent signals to neurons across the circle. They got “these neurons talking to each other,” Hunziker said. “No one’s really shown that before.”

By adding nutrients and growth factors, scientists kept the brainlike tissue alive in an incubator for two months, at which point they experimented on it. Adding a neurotoxin essentially killed the neurons, as it would in a real brain. To simulate traumatic brain injury, they dropped disklike weights from different heights. That was a key experiment, Hickman said, because “if you take a real brain and you start whacking it, you should get the same forces and the same stretching.” Kaplan said the brain-in-a-dish “didn’t go splat,” but reacted like “a kitchen sponge, and it would compress down and then partially spring back up.” He said measurements of glutamate, a neurotransmitter that surges in brain injury, showed that “the more severe the damage, the higher the spike” in glutamate.

Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic, a biomedical engineering professor at Columbia who has collaborated with Kaplan on other studies, described the model as a kind of “Lego approach,” a “modular structure” that can be expanded and made more complex. “This is not normal tissue, but it is the first proof of principle that something like this can be achieved outside of the body,” she said. Hickman said future experiments would need to study human brain tissue, including other cells and regions in the brain.”There are some limitations, but they seem to have gotten the mechanics right,” he said. “They’ve set up an architecture so some clever person in the future could then do it.” Kaplan said his team was working on sustaining the brainlike tissue for six months — and with human neurons created from stem cells by other scientists. He plans to add a model of the brain’s vascular system, so researchers can study what happens when drugs cross the blood-brain barrier. Ultimately, he hopes the bioengineered model can be used “to study everything from drugs to disease to surgical effects to electrode implants,” he said. “I mean, the list is endless.”

SOURCE : staradvertiser.com/news/breaking/20140811_scientists_create_3d_model_that_mimics_brain_function.html

Adult Medical Care – “Bone Drugs Don’t Lower Breast Cancer Risk After All”

SOURCE   : Philly
By            : Kathleen Doheny HealthDay Reporter
Category : Adult Medical Care, Family Medical Doctors

Bone Drugs Don’t Lower Breast Cancer Risk

Drugs known as bisphosphonates, commonly prescribed to treat the bone-weakening disease osteoporosis, don’t appear to reduce the risk of breast cancer as previously thought, new research finds. “We found that postmenopausal women who took a bisphosphonate for three or four years did not have a decreased risk in breast cancer,” said study author Trisha Hue, an epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco. When prior observational studies noted links between the drugs’ use and lower breast cancer risk in, experts assumed the drugs deserved the credit. However, based on the new findings, Hue suspects that low estrogen levels may have been the risk-reducer.

“Women who get bisphosphonates have a low bone mass density,” she said. “If you have low bone mass density, you probably have low estrogen.” This is because the hormone, which is depleted after menopause, helps regulate bone mass and strength. Many types of breast cancer need estrogen to grow, she said. The study is published Aug. 11 in JAMA Internal Medicine. Previous studies that found the fringe benefit of reduced breast cancer risk were observational, meaning people taking the drugs happened to have lower breast cancer risk. But the research didn’t establish a direct cause-and-effect relationship. Hue’s team decided to take a look at two randomized clinical trials that compared two popular osteoporosis drugs, Fosamax and Reclast, to see if the women taking the drugs were less likely to get breast cancer than women given a placebo, or sham drug.

In one study, nearly 6,500 women aged 55 to 81 were assigned to take either Fosamax (alendronate) or a placebo. After about four years, similar numbers of women got breast cancer — 1.8 percent of those on the drug and 1.5 percent of those on placebo. The second study compared more than 7,700 women, aged 65 to 89, given Reclast (zoledronic acid) intravenously or a placebo IV infusion once a year. After nearly three years of follow-up, less than 1 percent of women in each group developed breast cancer. One expert said the results underscore the importance of randomized clinical trials in demonstrating cause-and-effect. “In this case, two randomized studies have disproved the notion that bisphosphonates reduce the risk of beast cancer, a finding that was supported by observational studies,” said Dr. Stephanie Bernik, chief of surgical oncology at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. Both types of studies are important, explained Dr. Jill Maura Rabin, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Hofstra North Shore-LIJ School of Medicine in New York. While the new analysis suggests the drugs don’t protect against breast cancer, Rabin said follow-up for longer than three or four years might still have found a benefit since breast cancer can take years to develop. Even so, the new research simply suggests that women prescribed the drugs for bone health should continue taking them, Rabin said, but just not expect a bonus of lower breast cancer risk.