Monthly Archives: March 2012

Stem cell therapy could repair some heart damage: Study

Posted: Published on March 25th, 2012

Published on Mar 25, 2012 CHICAGO (AFP) - Patients with advanced heart disease who received an experimental stem cell therapy showed slight improvements in blood pumping but no change in most of their symptoms, United States researchers said on Saturday. Study authors described the trial as the largest to date to examine stem cell therapy as a route to repairing the heart in patients with chronic ischemic heart disease and left ventricular dysfunction. Previous studies have established that the approach is safe in human patients, but none had examined how well it worked on a variety of heart ailments. The clinical trial involved 92 patients, with an average age of 63, who were picked at random to get either a placebo or a series of injections of their own stem cells, taken from their bone marrow, into damaged areas of their hearts. Excerpt from: Stem cell therapy could repair some heart damage: Study … Continue reading →

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Stem cell therapy could repair some heart damage: Study

Posted: Published on March 25th, 2012

Published on Mar 25, 2012 CHICAGO (AFP) - Patients with advanced heart disease who received an experimental stem cell therapy showed slight improvements in blood pumping but no change in most of their symptoms, United States researchers said on Saturday. Study authors described the trial as the largest to date to examine stem cell therapy as a route to repairing the heart in patients with chronic ischemic heart disease and left ventricular dysfunction. Previous studies have established that the approach is safe in human patients, but none had examined how well it worked on a variety of heart ailments. The clinical trial involved 92 patients, with an average age of 63, who were picked at random to get either a placebo or a series of injections of their own stem cells, taken from their bone marrow, into damaged areas of their hearts. Read the rest here: Stem cell therapy could repair some heart damage: Study … Continue reading →

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Washington is right to appeal ruling allowing pharmacies not to fill Plan B prescriptions

Posted: Published on March 25th, 2012

THE rights and responsibilities of pharmacists in Washington state are headed to a higher court in a case that cries out for more clear-headed thinking. The state attorney general's office is appealing a federal ruling that says the state cannot force pharmacies to sell Plan B or other emergency contraceptives. U.S. District Judge Ronald Leighton ruled, in essence, pharmacists' personal views surpass patients' rights to timely medication. A few state pharmacy board rules are in play: One says that when the pharmacy has a medicine in stock, the pharmacy has to deliver it; a second says pharmacies must stock medicines in demand; a third says a pharmacist can decline to dispense a medication, but the pharmacy has to make other accommodations to fill the prescription. Some pharmacists argued that they did not have to offer emergency contraceptives because of religious reasons. Gov. Chris Gregoire supports the appeal. The case now goes to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where it belongs. There are several exceptions to the rules. A pharmacist can refuse to fill a potentially fraudulent prescription, or to dispense a drug on shelves past its pull date or one with worrisome contraindications. Plaintiffs argued that those exceptions … Continue reading →

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Guatemala raises legalising drugs

Posted: Published on March 25th, 2012

24 March 2012 Last updated at 20:01 ET Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina has said the war on drugs has failed, and it is time to end the "taboo" on discussing decriminalisation. He was addressing a Central American summit in the Guatemalan city of Antigua. Mr Perez Molina convoked the meeting to consider decriminalisation as a way of reducing drug-related violence. But the presidents of Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras all cancelled their attendance at short notice. Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, Mauricio Funes of El Salvador and Porfirio Lobo of Honduras decided not to attend. All three countries were represented by senior officials, and Mr Perez Molina was joined by President Laura Chinchilla of Costa Rica and Ricardo Martinelli of Panama. "We have seen that the strategy that has been pursued in the fight against drug trafficking over the last 40 years has failed," he said. "We have to look for new alternatives. We must end the myths, the taboos, and tell people you have to discuss it," he added. Central America is a major transit route for South American cocaine heading north to the US. Follow this link: Guatemala raises legalising drugs … Continue reading →

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Nobledrugstore Offers Free Methotrexate to Help Ease US Shortage Crisis

Posted: Published on March 25th, 2012

Online pharmacy gives back to the community via social responsibility program that provides patients with scarce medication. Port Louis, Mauritius (PRWEB) March 21, 2012 With Methotrexate (known by brand names Rheumatrex and Trexall) scarcity looming large for US leukemia patients, solutions are being sought to rectify the situation. The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Methotrexate as a medicine that can be procured from various sources outside the United States. One online drugstore, Nobledrugstore is providing this medicine for free to patients in need to help alleviate the crisis. Patients will only have to pay the standard shipping & handling fees applicable. After the manufacturer of Methotrexate, Ben Venue Laboratories in Ohio, Bedford, failed compliance checks carried out by the FDA, it had to stop production in November 2011. Methotrexate is the most important medicine for treating infant cancer, especially Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) for over four decades. It was a breakthrough for the time; the success rate of curing ALL increased to 85% from incurable status in the 1940s. It is also used for treating severe active Rheumatoid Arthritis, Severe Psoriasis, Crohns Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, and other over-active immune system related dysfunctions. Due to the versatility of this drug, … Continue reading →

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Rise in pharmacy robberies signals Maine’s addiction to prescription drugs

Posted: Published on March 25th, 2012

A young man armed with a hunting knife jumped a pharmacy counter in Guilford a couple of weeks ago and, after threatening the pharmacist, got away with a large amount of narcotics. Pharmacy robberies nonexistent several years ago are dramatically increasing in Maine. There were 24 last year and eight already in the first three months of 2012. The number of robberies has risen so fast that U.S. Attorney for Maine Thomas E. Delahanty II took notice and in mid-2010 spearheaded a multi-agency effort to review all such robberies to see if they qualify for federal prosecution. There was in 2010 a substantial increase, almost threefold, of armed robberies or nighttime break-ins at pharmacies, mostly for OxyContin or other painkillers, Delahanty said. There is a demand for the prescription drugs, especially painkillers. I think some people see them as an easy target. They know they have the product. Maine drug addicts want prescription painkillers OxyContin was the No. 1 choice for years and recently has been replaced by oxycodone and the ones who arm themselves and rob pharmacies often are desperate junkies feeding an opiate addiction, said Mike Wardrop, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration resident agent for Maine. Its bad business. … Continue reading →

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Stem cell therapy could repair some heart damage: Study

Posted: Published on March 25th, 2012

Published on Mar 25, 2012 CHICAGO (AFP) - Patients with advanced heart disease who received an experimental stem cell therapy showed slight improvements in blood pumping but no change in most of their symptoms, United States researchers said on Saturday. Study authors described the trial as the largest to date to examine stem cell therapy as a route to repairing the heart in patients with chronic ischemic heart disease and left ventricular dysfunction. Previous studies have established that the approach is safe in human patients, but none had examined how well it worked on a variety of heart ailments. The clinical trial involved 92 patients, with an average age of 63, who were picked at random to get either a placebo or a series of injections of their own stem cells, taken from their bone marrow, into damaged areas of their hearts. View post: Stem cell therapy could repair some heart damage: Study … Continue reading →

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PHONE WARS: More people drop landlines for cell phones

Posted: Published on March 24th, 2012

(RNN) - While no one can predict the future, history proves that people will virtually always choose a method that is more convenient, more efficient and more cost effective. Cell phones seem to win that battle on all fronts. But does that mean that the landline phone is on a virtual deathbed? This is the first of three stories in a series that explores the place of both cell phones and landline phones and how each will co-exist moving forward. -- As cell phones become sharper and more powerful, so do people's demand for their use. It is safe to say they have helped shape the world's culture. The technology that people can hold in the palm of their hand has made immediate impacts on the economy, media, entertainment and even the family structure. Asking people younger than 30 to imagine the world without cell phones would be akin to asking people older than 50 to imagine the world without the Vietnam War. Findings listed in the National Health Interview Survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show a gradual drift toward dropping home phones, or landlines. Between 2006 and 2009, the number of people who had … Continue reading →

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Beta cell stress could trigger the development of type 1 diabetes

Posted: Published on March 24th, 2012

ScienceDaily (Mar. 22, 2012) In type 1 diabetes (T1D), pancreatic beta cells die from a misguided autoimmune attack, but how and why that happens is still unclear. Now, JDRF-funded scientists from the Indiana University School of Medicine have found that a specific type of cellular stress takes place in pancreatic beta cells before the onset of T1D, and that this stress response in the beta cell may in fact help ignite the autoimmune attack. These findings shed an entirely new light into the mystery behind how changes in the beta cell may play a role in the earliest stages of T1D, and adds a new perspective to our understanding how T1D progresses, and how to prevent and treat the disease. In the study, published in the March 22 issue of the journal Diabetes, the researchers, led by Sarah Tersey, Ph.D., assistant research professor of pediatrics, and Raghavendra Mirmira, M.D., Ph.D., professor of pediatrics and medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine, show for the first time in a mouse model of T1D that beta cells become stressed early in the disease process, before the animal develops diabetes. In response to the stress, beta cells activate a cell death pathway … Continue reading →

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Stem-Cell Trial Failed to Treat Heart Failure

Posted: Published on March 24th, 2012

SATURDAY, March 24 (HealthDay News) -- An innovative approach using patients' own bone marrow cells to treat chronic heart failure came up short in terms of effectiveness, researchers report. Use of stem cell therapy to repair the slow, steady damage done to heart muscle and improve heart function is safe, but has not been shown to improve most measures of heart function, the study authors said. "For the measures we paid most attention to, we saw no effect, there is no question about that," said researcher Dr. Lemuel Moye, a professor of biostatistics at the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston. "Ultimately, this is going to pay off handsomely for individuals and for public health in general, but it's going to take years of work," Moye said. "We are the vanguard looking for new promising lines of research." While the hoped-for results didn't materialize, there appeared to be a small improvement in some patients, he said. "When we looked at another commonly used measure of heart function called ejection fraction, or the strength of the heart's pumping, that's where all the action was," Moye noted. It's hard to know which measures of heart function to look at, … Continue reading →

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