A simple points system may soon help guide treatment of elderly heart failure patients. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis found that by counting how many of seven easy-to-obtain health factors a patient has, physicians can estimate the patient’s risk of dying.
A new RNA map, created by a team of researchers at Rockefeller University and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, shows for the first time how the specific location of short snippets of RNA affects the way that alternative splicing is controlled in the brain.
For over 30 years, scientists believed that monoamines are low in the brain during major depressive episodes. However, no one ever found a convincing explanation for monoamine loss. Dr. Jeffrey Meyer and colleagues discovered that higher levels of MAO-A is the primary process that lowers monoamine levels. Having more MAO-A leads to greater breakdown of chemicals like serotonin. Based on these results, and work from previous publications, Dr. Meyer developed an advanced monoamine model of depression.
Scientists in Australia have discovered that in acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) there are “good” and “evil” clones of the same type of ALL cell. The “evil” cells are clones that have a pre-existing resistance to drugs used for treating ALL, and their presence in a patient means that person will inevitably relapse after chemotherapy, according to research presented at the 18th EORTC-NCI-AACR Symposium on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics.
Preliminary results from a phase II clinical trial have provided the first evidence that treating people with kidney cancer with bevacizumab and erlotinib before surgery is safe, effective and may prolong patients’ survival, the 18th EORTC-NCI-AACR Symposium on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics heard on Thursday.
An international professional society has issued a patient?s bill of rights for the treatment of eating disorders, conditions that affect an estimated 30 million Americans, most of them young women. For 2 million, symptoms will progress to full-blown anorexia nervosa and approximately 10 percent will die from the disease. Treatment is often complex and typically involves not only the patient, but friends and family as well.
IDM Pharma (NASDAQ:IDMI) announced today that the company has submitted a Marketing Authorization Application (MAA) in eCTD format (electronic common technical document) to the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) for Mepact (mifamurtide for injection), requesting approval for its use in the treatment of patients with newly diagnosed resectable high-grade osteosarcoma following surgical resection in combination with post-operative multi-agent chemotherapy. This announcement follows the October 25, 2006 submission of a New Drug Application (NDA) for Junovan (mifamurtide for injection) to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States.
The family of a 17-year-old boy who died at the Royal Free of leukaemia has set up a trust fund in his memory. Edward Griffith, better known as Edd, died at the end of the summer following a two year battle against the disease.
University of Illinois at Chicago researchers are comparing two drugs commonly used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder to determine if genetic factors predict which children will respond to either or both drugs.
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.