Physicians Care Team – “Scientists Are Getting Closer to a Blood Test for Alzheimer’s”

Source    : Time News
By           : Alexandra Sifferlin
Category : Physicians Group Care Team, Physicians Care Team

Scientists Are Getting Closer to a Blood Test for Alzheimer’s

The new prediction method had 87% accuracy in a recent study – A team of scientists have identified 10 proteins in the blood that can predict the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. The study, which was published in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia, looked at more than 1,000 people and is considered a significant step toward the development of a blood test for Alzheimer’s. The trouble with the disease is that developing drug treatments is difficult since they are often given in clinical trials when the disease has already progressed too far. The hope is that identifying the disease earlier could pave the way for drugs to halt its progression.

In the study, researchers examined blood samples from 1,148 people. There were 476 with Alzheimer’s, 220 with ‘Mild Cognitive Impairment’ (MCI) and 452 elderly control subjects who did not have dementia. All the blood samples were tested for 26 proteins that were previously linked to Alzheimer’s, and some the participants also had an MRI scan on their brain. First, the researchers found that 16 of the 26 proteins were strongly linked to brain shrinkage that happens with Alzheimer’s and MCI. In a second round of testing, researchers looked at which of the 16 could predict if MCI became Alzheimer’s. It was then that they found the combination of 10 proteins that were able to predict which people with MCI would eventually get Alzheimer’s within a year. The prediction method had 87% accuracy.

“Memory problems are very common, but the challenge is identifying who is likely to develop dementia,” slead study author Dr. Abdul Hye from the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London said in a statement. “There are thousands of proteins in the blood, and this study is the culmination of many years’ work identifying which ones are clinically relevant. We now have a set of 10 proteins that can predict whether someone with early symptoms of memory loss, or mild cognitive impairment, will develop Alzheimer’s disease within a year, with a high level of accuracy.” Detecting the disease early-on could be a major breakthrough for clinical trials and would be less expensive than current methods that use brain imaging or cerebrospinal spinal fluid to identify the disease.

SOURCE : time.com/2963692/alzheimers-disease-blood-test/

Physicians Care Team – “Sleep Loss Could Damage Your Brain”

Source    : Guardian LV
By            : Dan Reyes
Category  : Physicians Group Care Team, Physicians Care Team

Sleep Loss Could Damage Your Brain

If your work schedule or lifestyle keeps you from getting enough sleep on a regular basis, you might want to read the recent sleep study report from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine – if you have the brain cells to read it, that is. The study came to conclusion that regular sleep deprivation can damage your brain, permanently. According doctor Sigrid Veasey who, along with colleagues from Peking University conducted the study, said that in general it was assumed that the brain fully recovered after bouts of short- or long-term sleep loss. But there were some studies that suggested that people didn’t always fully recover even after a few days of full sleep.

So, Veasey’s team wanted to figure out if sleep loss injures neurons, exactly which neurons it injures and if the brain could repaired itself with extra sleep. To begin to answer those questions, they put groups of mice on different sleep schedules, which mimicked the average work schedules of shift workers. Some mice had normal rest, another group had little sleep for a short period of time and the final group were deprived of sleep for an extended amount of time. What they found was that, in response to short amounts of time without sleep, the brain of the mice produced a certain protein which protected the neurons in the locus coeruleus (LC) – the part of the brain responsible for alertness. But over a long periods of time without sleep, the brain stopped producing the protein and the neurons in LC began to die. They determined that the mice lost up to 25 percent of the neurons in the LC.

According to Dr. Veasey, this is the first study to show that sleep loss can lead to permanent brain damage in mice. At this point, there are several questions that Dr. Veasey says his team plans to do more research on. First, the team will look at the brains of shift workers, post-mortem, to see if the results that they saw in mice are the same in humans. They also need to determine what counts as short-term or long-term sleep loss in humans, as well as the amount of neuron loss. Dr. Veasey said that the amount of loss could very quite a bit between individuals when you take into consideration things like age, weight, sedentary lifestyle, diet, and overall health. They will also be doing more tests with the protein that protected the cells during short-term sleep loss. If it turns out the the protein can help with long-term sleep deprivation, Dr. Veasey that this could be the first step in developing a treatment for people like shift workers, who regularly forego sleep. Dr. Veasey said that up until this point, no one believed that damage could be done to the brain just from lack of sleep. But that the findings of his study support a growing body of research which deals with how important it is to get regular amounts of rest.

SOURCE : guardianlv.com/2014/03/sleep-loss-could-damage-your-brain/

Physicians Group Care Team – “Concerns About Cancer Centers Under Health Law”

Source    : Siouxcity Journal
By           : RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR Associated Press
Category : Physicians Group Care Team, Physicians Care Team

Physicians Group Care Team

Some of America’s best cancer hospitals are off-limits to many of the people now signing up for coverage under the nation’s new health care program. Doctors and administrators say they’re concerned. So are some state insurance regulators. An Associated Press survey found examples coast to coast. Seattle Cancer Care Alliance is excluded by five out of eight insurers in Washington’s insurance exchange. MD Anderson Cancer Center says it’s in less than half of the plans in the Houston area. Memorial Sloan-Kettering is included by two of nine insurers in New York City and has out-of-network agreements with two more. In all, only four of 19 nationally recognized comprehensive cancer centers that responded to AP’s survey said patients have access through all the insurance companies in their states’ exchanges.

Not too long ago insurance companies would have been vying to offer access to renowned cancer centers, said Dan Mendelson, CEO of the market research firm Avalere Health. Now the focus is on costs. “This is a marked deterioration of access to the premier cancer centers for people who are signing up for these plans,” Mendelson said. Those patients may not be able get the most advanced treatment, including clinical trials of new medications. And there’s another problem: it’s not easy for consumers shopping online in the new insurance markets to tell if top-level institutions are included in a plan. That takes additional digging by the people applying.
“The challenges of this are going to become evident … as cancer cases start to arrive,” said Norman Hubbard, executive vice president of Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. Before President Barack Obama’s health care law, a cancer diagnosis could make you uninsurable. Now, insurers can’t turn away people with health problems or charge them more. Lifetime dollar limits on policies, once a financial trap-door for cancer patients, are also banned.

The new obstacles are more subtle. To keep premiums low, insurers have designed narrow networks of hospitals and doctors. The government-subsidized private plans on the exchanges typically offer less choice than Medicare or employer plans. By not including a top cancer center an insurer can cut costs. It may also shield itself from risk, delivering an implicit message to cancer survivors or people with a strong family history of the disease that they should look elsewhere. For now, the issue seems to be limited to the new insurance exchanges. But it could become a concern for Americans with job-based coverage, too, if employers turn to narrow networks.
The AP surveyed 23 institutions around the country that are part of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. Two additional institutions that joined this week were not included in the survey. Cancer network members are leading hospitals that combine the latest clinical research and knowledge with a multidisciplinary approach to patient care. They say that patients in their care have better-than-average survival rates. The unique role of cancer centers is recognized under Medicare. Several are exempt from its hospital payment system, instituted to control costs.

SOURCE : siouxcityjournal.com/ap/washington/concerns-about-cancer-centers-under-health-law/article_49addd70-9625-584a-a281-c48a31299388.html