Clinical Research

For most of our lives; physicians, hospitals, and insurance companies have used paper medical records. They controlled the flow of data, but allowed patients and others access to their records. Over the past few years our medical records have gradually moved to the cloud. This is a consequence of the Obama Administration addressing the massive budget deficit and reviving an antiquated healthcare system. Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform identified defense, interest on the national debt, and healthcare costs as its major targets to address the huge budget deficit…

European Commission (EC) has issued Marketing Authorisation Approval for the use of Fycompa® (perampanel) as an adjunctive treatment of partial-onset seizures, with or without secondarily generalised seizures, in people with epilepsy aged 12 years and older.[1] With the EC's approval, the European Union is the first region in the world to approve Eisai's perampanel. Epilepsy is one of the most common neurological conditions in the world, affecting approximately eight in 1,000 people in Europe, and an estimated 50 million people with the condition worldwide.[8, 13] Epilepsy is a chronic…

Researchers have developed a new method of repairing bone using a synthetic bone graft substitute material. Combined with gene therapy, they say it can mimic real bone tissue and has potential to regenerate bone in patients who have lost large areas of bone from disease or trauma. The researchers have developed a scaffold material made from collagen and nano-sized particles of hydroxyapatite which acts as a frame for the body’s own cells and repairs bone in the damaged area using gene therapy. The cells are tricked into overproducing bone producing BMPs (proteins), encouraging regrowth of…

A new study shows that supplementation with an encapsulated fruit and vegetable juice concentrate (Juice Plus+® Orchard Blend and Garden Blend) was associated with an increase in serum beta-carotene concentrations, reduced abdominal adipose tissue and improved insulin resistance in overweight boys compared to the placebo group. These study results add to the existing body of research about the role of nutrition in promoting children's health. This double-blind placebo-controlled study was conducted at the Nemours Children's Clinic Division of Pediatric Endocrinology and Metabolism in…

Sometimes medicine just makes you want to cheer. While still in the womb, doctors of Leyna Gonzalez discovered a benign tumor the size of a tennis ball growing on the unborn baby’s mouth. University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Hospital Fetal Therapy Center fetal surgeon Ruben Quintero and his team came to the rescue.  Using an endoscope guided by ultrasound they performed a first of its kind surgery and removed the tumor from the baby's mouth - in the 17th week of pregnancy!  Quintero said these types of oral tumors develop in 1 out of 100,000 pregnancies and usually it meant fetal…

A new study has found that individuals taking cholesterol-lowering statin drugs are more likely than non-users to experience decreased energy, fatigue upon exertion, or both. The researchers suggest that these findings should be taken into account by doctors when weighing risk versus benefit in prescribing statins.  Statins are among the most widely used prescription drugs on the market and therefore increased attention has focused on statins' side effects, particularly their effect on exercise. While some patients have reported fatigue or exercise intolerance when placed on statins,…

Results from the first feasibility study of an advanced first-generation artificial pancreas system were presented at the American Diabetes Association Meeting in Philadelphia and findings from the study indicated that the Hypoglycemia-Hyperglycemia Minimizer (HHM) System was able to automatically predict a rise and fall in blood glucose and correspondingly increase and/or decrease insulin delivery safely. Currently the most effective method of measuring blood glucose levels is with a blood glucose meter from Dexcom or other suppliers. The HHM System included a continuous, subcutaneous…

A team of Australian scientists has identified new genes that show identifiable changes in the blood of people with bowel cancer. The discovery has the potential to underpin a new cost-effective blood test that would signal the early stages of bowel cancer. This test could potentially save thousands of lives by supplementing existing screening programs and encouraging those at risk to have a colonoscopy. The research presented today is the result of over five years of scientific collaboration between Australian biotechnology company Clinical Genomics, CSIRO and the Flinders Centre for…

Clinical studies, the central means by which preventive, diagnostic, and therapeutic strategies are evaluated,  that were registered between 2007-2010 were dominated by small, single-center trials and contained significant heterogeneity (different in nature, difficult to compare) in methodological approaches, including the use of randomization, blinding, and data monitoring committees, according to an analysis in JAMA.  In 1997, Congress mandated the creation of the ClinicalTrials.gov registry to assist people with serious illnesses in gaining access to trials; and in September…

A Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute clinical trial showed that treating heart attack patients with an infusion of their own heart-derived cells helps damaged hearts re-grow healthy muscle.  Patients who underwent the stem cell procedure demonstrated a significant reduction in the size of the scar left on the heart muscle by a heart attack. Patients also experienced a sizable increase in healthy heart muscle following the experimental stem cell treatments.  One year after receiving the stem cell treatment, scar size was reduced from 24 percent to 12 percent of the heart in patients…