Social Sciences

A University of Minnesota cancer surgeon and researcher has found a dramatic increase in the number of women diagnosed with the earliest stage of breast cancer choosing to have both breasts surgically removed. The rate of contralateral prophylactic mastectomy (CPM) surgery among U.S. women with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) increased by 188 percent between 1998 and 2005, according to Todd Tuttle, M.D., lead researcher on this study. Tuttle is associate professor of oncologic surgery with the University of Minnesota Medical School and a researcher with the University's Masonic Cancer Center…

Artificial heart pacemakers have saved and extended the lives of thousands of people, but they have their shortcomings – such as a fixed pulse rate and a limited life. Could a permanent biological solution be possible? Richard Robinson and colleagues at New York's Columbia and Stony Brook Universities certainly think so, and their work published in the latest issue of The Journal of Physiology brings the dream a step closer to reality. The body's own natural pacemaker, called the sinoatrial (SA) node, is extremely vulnerable to damage during a heart attack, often leaving the patient with a…

HOUSTON (April 10, 2009) – The so-called purple pill, known popularly as Nexium and and esomeprazole to physicians, did not reduce asthma symptoms in patients who did not have symptoms of heartburn, said researchers, including one from Baylor College of Medicine (www.bcm.edu), in a report that appears today in The New England Journal of Medicine (www.nejm.org). "I was surprised," said Dr. Nicola Hanania (http://www.bcm.edu/medicine/pulmonary/?pmid=4506), associate professor of medicine – pulmonary, at BCM. "It was disappointing for us, but that is why we do research." Hanania is principal…

Lung experts from Johns Hopkins and elsewhere are calling on physicians to suspend the routine use of potent heartburn medications in asthmatics solely to temper recurrent attacks of wheezing, coughing and breathlessness. Calling the longstanding practice "ineffective" and "unnecessarily expensive," the experts say there is no benefit from using so-called proton pump inhibitors in the absence of the stomach upset. The condition plagues 5 million asthma sufferers in the United States, of whom half (or 2.5 million) have what is known as "silent" reflux, and lack the characteristic symptom of…

CHICAGO—For nearly 20 years, doctors believed severe asthma symptoms such as coughing, sneezing and breathlessness were triggered, in part, by acid reflux. Asthma sufferers were often prescribed heartburn medication in an effort to help their asthma symptoms. A new national study, led in Illinois by a researcher from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, has found that the longstanding practice of prescribing heartburn medication is ineffective and unnecessarily expensive for asthma patients who don't exhibit symptoms associated with acid reflux such as heartburn or…

A commonly used treatment for acid reflux does not improve asthma symptoms or control in patients who do not have symptoms of gastroesophageal reflux (GER), according to a new study supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health and by the American Lung Association (ALA). This suggests that silent GER (acid reflux that causes only minimal or no reflux symptoms) does not play a role in asthma, as has previously been thought. The multi-center, randomized clinical trial is the first to evaluate whether adding esomeprazole (Nexium), to…

COLUMBUS, Ohio – New research suggests that a widely used treatment for persistent acid reflux among asthmatics doesn't actually improve their quality of life. The finding that as many as one-third of those studied showed no improvement makes a strong case arguing that physicians should change how they currently treat these patients. John Mastronarde, a clinical associate professor of medicine, along with scientists nationally, sought to determine if acid reflux disease, commonly known as gastroesophageal reflux disease, or GERD, worsens asthma symptoms. Mastronarde is also a pulmonologist…

Measuring kidney function by assessing two different factors—glomerular filtration rate (GFR) and urinary albumin levels—helps determine which patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) will develop end-stage renal disease (ESRD), according to a study appearing in the May 2009 issue of the Journal of the American Society Nephrology (JASN). This combination test could help physicians identify patients at high risk of serious kidney trouble and allow them to intervene at an early stage. While there is a high prevalence of CKD worldwide, relatively few individuals with the disease develop ESRD,…

For men with Fabry disease, enzyme replacement therapy (ERT) with agalsidase alfa slows deterioration of kidney function, reports a study in the online edition of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN). "The results provide further evidence that ERT with agalsidase alfa may slow the progression of kidney disease, provided that ERT is initiated early in the disease process," comments Michael L. West, MD (Dalhousie University, Canada). The researchers pooled the results of three previous clinical trials of ERT with agalsidase alfa in 108 men with Fabry disease—a rare genetic…

St. Louis, MO -- The predominance of heartburn among asthma sufferers led many specialists to suspect that acid reflux could be a trigger for the coughing, wheezing and breathlessness of asthma. In fact, it has become standard practice to prescribe heartburn medication to people with poorly controlled asthma, even if they don't have overt acid reflux symptoms. But a new study of adults with inadequate asthma control without significant heartburn shows that heartburn medication does not help control their asthma symptoms. The study, conducted by the American Lung Association's Asthma…