Life for 41-year-old Judi Smith is anything but laid back.
The West Chester mother has three active children who keep her on the move.
But last spring, Judi had to slow down because of some troubling symptoms: lower abdominal pain and extreme fatigue. Her doctor suspected a virus.
But then, there was a sharp pain in Judi’s chest during a workout.
“I stopped. The pain went away, so I started again. And the pain came back. It didn’t go away this time,” said Judi.
» Read more after the jump →
ANDRÉ PICARD
From Friday’s Globe and Mail
A class of drugs commonly used to treat diabetes doubles the risk of heart failure, according to a new study.
The findings, published in today’s edition of the journal Diabetes Care, are sure to increase the scrutiny given to thiazolinediones, or TZDs, which are among the world’s bestselling drugs.
Earlier this year, research showed that TZD sold under the brand name Avandia sharply increased the risk of heart attack and death from cardiovascular causes. The drug’s manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline, has rejected that research by presenting data showing Avandia is no more dangerous than other oral diabetes drugs.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has warned that Avandia should not be taken in » Read more after the jump →
People who take steps to maintain the health of their heart and blood vessels may be protecting their brains too, a new study from UK researchers suggests.
Elderly people with cardiovascular disease showed sharper declines in cognitive function over a four-year period than their peers with healthy hearts, Dr. Snorri Bjorn Rafnsson of the University of Edinburgh and colleagues found.
While there is currently no way to prevent Alzheimer’s disease, it may be possible to ward off so-called vascular dementia, another leading cause of mental impairment in aging people. As Rafnsson told Reuters Health, the findings offer “some kind of hope that this type of problem can be controlled and contained in an ever-growing population.” » Read more after the jump →
Health experts in Britain are warning that two common drugs used to treat diabetes have been linked to serious heart failure.
The drugs, Actos and Avandia, are both available in New Zealand.
New research suggests taking them could double the risk of heart failure.
Dr Yoon Loke from the University of East Anglia says research has found that even patients on low doses have experienced the side effect and patients who didn’t have heart failure subsequently developed the problem when they were started on the tablets. » Read more after the jump →
Statins, the cholesterol-lowering drugs, are contributing to a big fall in the numbers of people dying from heart disease in the UK, according to data released on Friday.
About 3m Britons take the drugs for heart disease, which is the single most common cause of death in the UK.
According to the British Heart Foundation, statins reduce the risk of dying from coronary heart disease by 25 per cent. “Statins are saving between 9,000 and 10,000 lives in the UK every year,†said Professor Roger Boyle, national director for heart disease and stroke at the Department of Health.
Death rates from cardiovascular disease (CVD) fell 36 per cent between 1996 and 2004. Prof Boyle said about 60 per cent of the reduction was due to improvements in lifestyle such as stopping smoking and taking more exercise. But the remaining 40 per cent was directly attributed to medical treatment with cholesterol-lowering drugs, such as statins. » Read more after the jump →
U.S. health officials say a patient died while participating in a gene therapy experiment to treat arthritis.
The precise cause of death is unknown, The Washington Post said Friday.
The Food and Drug Administration said it was informed by Targeted Genetics Corp. of Seattle the patient died while receiving an investigational gene therapy product in a clinical trial for the treatment of active inflammatory arthritis, the agency said in a release.
The FDA said it has placed the trial on clinical hold, which means no further product can be administered and no new patients can be enrolled.
The product being studied used a recombinant adeno-associated virus (AAV) derived vector. It was administered into the arthritic joint to reduce inflammation. » Read more after the jump →
Inhalation, or respiratory, therapy is a fairly old discipline of medicine that dates back to ancient times (and not always for purely therapeutic effects; witness the hookah). In the late 18th century, earthenware inhalers became popular for the inhalation of air drawn through infusions of plants and other ingredients and about 50 years ago the first pressurized metered dose inhaler was put on the market. Especially people suffering from asthma are very familiar with inhalers - devices that help deliver a specific amount of medication to the lungs. The delivery of drugs via the pulmonary route is a potentially effective form of therapy not only for asthma but also for for patients with other chronic diseases, including the debilitating hereditary disease, cystic fibrosis, type I diabetes (insulin is absorbed well through the lungs), and recently lung cancer. During inhalation therapy the drugs are delivered in aerosol form, meaning that very small particles of the drug are suspended in air (liquid particles make mist, solid particles make fume or dust). Unfortunately, state the-of-the-art aerosol delivery technologies do not allow to target aerosols to specific regions of the lung. Researchers in Germany now have show that » Read more after the jump →