In the largest, most comprehensive study of its kind to date, researchers supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) showed clinical improvements out to one year when stroke survivors who had lost function in one arm were given a unique, two-week rehabilitation regimen.
Music therapy many help to ease the depression, anxiety and emotional withdrawal symptoms of schizophrenia, British scientists said. Music therapy may provide a means of improving mental health among people with schizophrenia, but its effects in acute psychoses have not been explored. To examine the feasibility of a randomised trial of music therapy for inpatients with schizophrenia, and explore its effects on mental health, study was conducted by Dr Mike Crawford, Department of Psychological Medicine, Claybrook Centre.
If drug therapy can’t open blocked sinuses, sufferers now have a novel option. Mayo Clinic ear, nose and throat (ENT) surgeons have taken a page from the book of cardiology in performing a new, outpatient procedure to alleviate acute or chronic symptoms of sinusitis, an inflammation of the sinus cavities usually due to an infection.
Mayo Clinic Cancer Center has opened a new clinical study using a vaccine strain of the measles virus to attack recurrent glioblastoma multiforme, a largely untreatable brain tumor. This is the second of several pending molecular medicine studies in patients using measles to kill cancer.
A meta-analysis published in the October issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings indicts oral contraceptives as putting premenopausal women at significantly increased risk for breast cancer, especially women who use them prior to having a child.
New data presented today from a meta-analysis* of nearly 1,300 Parkinson?s disease (PD) patients, indicate that pramipexole (Mirapexin?/Sifrol?) has a beneficial effect on depressive and motivational symptoms in PD.1 This confirms findings from previously published clinical trials,2,3,4 and is in addition to its established efficacy in controlling motor symptoms. These findings are of particular interest as mood symptoms in PD can affect up to 50 percent of the patient population.1,5 The data were presented at the 10th International Congress of Parkinson?s Disease and Movement Disorders (MDS) in Kyoto, Japan.
A research center newly created by the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) aims to put light-sensitive switches in the body’s cells that can be flipped on and off as easily as a remote control operates a TV. Optical switches like these could trigger a chemical reaction, initiate a muscle contraction, activate a drug or stimulate a nerve cell – all at the flash of a light.
GlaxoSmithKline plc [NYSE:GSK, LSE:GSK] announced results from a global Phase II study of eltrombopag, an investigational non-peptide oral platelet growth factor. In this study of 74 hepatitis C patients with thrombocytopenia, (a condition where the blood has low platelet levels) more than 95% (p< 0.001) of patients treated with the highest dose of eltrombopag (75mg) had increased platelet counts. In addition, 71% - 91% of patients in all treatment groups were able to initiate antiviral therapy with pegylated interferon-α (IFN) and ribavirin, and 65% were able to be maintained on therapy.1 Full results from this Phase II study are being presented today at the 57th Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) in Boston, Massachusetts.
Pfizer Inc provided an update on the preliminary results of its torcetrapib/atorvastatin clinical trials in connection with the release of an American Heart Association abstract of a Phase 3 study in patients with heterozygous familial hypercholesterolemia (HeFH) that shows the drug significantly raising ‘good’ (HDL) cholesterol (56 percent) and additionally lowering ‘bad’ (LDL) cholesterol (27 percent) versus patients taking atorvastatin alone.
New autopsy data provide the strongest evidence yet that sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is not a “mystery” disease but has a concrete biological basis. In the November 1 issue of JAMA, researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston document abnormalities in the brainstem — a part of the brain that regulates breathing, blood pressure, body heat, and arousal — in babies who died from SIDS. The term cot death is often used in the United Kingdom, and crib death in North America.