Hodgkin?s lymphoma survivors who have lipid screening every five years to detect high cholesterol will live a half year longer than patients who don?t have the screening and the intervention is cost-effective, according to a study presented November 8, 2006, at the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology?s 48th Annual Meeting in Philadelphia.
Doctors in the UK are to treat heart attack patients with stem cells taken from their own bone marrow in a pioneering attempt to prevent death and suffering.
Difficulties in the heart’s ability to fill with blood are common causes of heart failure — and appear to be as significant in placing a heart patient at risk of death as are deficiencies in the heart’s ability to pump blood, new research from Mayo Clinic shows.
Natural compounds derived from a sea anemone extract and a shrub plant have been found to block the autoimmune disease response in type-1 diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis, according to University of California, Irvine researchers.
Significant errors in insulin dose can result when blood glucose meters are miscoded according to new clinical study. When persons with diabetes use miscoded blood glucose meters to determine how much insulin to take, significant errors in insulin dose can result that may potentially lead to short- and long-term health complications, according to findings of a new study presented at the Sixth Annual Diabetes Technology Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia.
An electrical imbalance caused by a malfunctioning gene triggers long QT syndrome, a potentially fatal heart rhythm disorder. A mutation in the gene Caveolin-3 can disrupt the heart’s electrical-muscular impulses and increase the risk of sudden cardiac death.
Going into another flu season, a new study reports that hospitalizing children for influenza may cost up to three or four times the previously accepted estimates. Pediatric researchers from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia say their finding strengthens the economic justification for broadly vaccinating children against flu. The cost of influenza-related hospitalizations in children was about $13,000 each — compared to prior estimates of $3,000 to $4,000.
Abdominal obesity increased more than 65 percent among boys and almost 70 percent among girls between 1988 and 2004. The finding of growing girth is significant because abdominal obesity has emerged as a better predictor of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes risk than the more commonly used Body Mass Index, a weight-to-height ratio that can sometimes be misleading.
In the wake of evidence that indicates sterol esters and plant stanol esters may reduce a person?s risk of coronary heart disease by lowering blood cholesterol levels, researchers at the University of California ? Davis say consuming ?phytosterol-enriched? cocoa-flavored snack bars as part of a balanced diet can help manage cholesterol.
Doctors should probably stop using pulmonary artery catheters because they do not benefit patients, say doctors from Australia in this week’s BMJ.