Contact Information Available for logged-in reporters only Newswise MAYWOOD, IL A major study has found that giving stroke patients medications to lower their blood pressure during the first 48 hours after a stroke does not reduce the likelihood of death or major disability. The study is published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. At least 25 percent of the population has high blood pressure, which greatly increases the risk of stroke. Lowering blood pressure has been shown to reduce the risk of stroke. The study investigated whether there also would be a benefit to lowering blood pressure immediately after a stroke. The study included more than 4,000 stroke patients in 26 hospitals across China, who were randomly assigned to receive blood pressure medications or to discontinue blood pressure medications. At 14 days or hospital discharge, there were no statistically significant differences between the groups in mortality or disability. Blood pressure often is elevated following a stroke. But in most cases, treatment is unnecessary because the blood pressure declines naturally over time, and lowering blood pressure may be contraindicated, said stroke specialist Jose Biller, MD, chair of the Department of Neurology of Loyola University Medical Center. It is important … Continue reading →

Contact Information Available for logged-in reporters only Babies who develop leukemia during the first year of life appear to inherit an unfortunate combination of genetic variations that can make the infants highly susceptible to the disease, according to a new study at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the University of Minnesota. The research is available online in the journal Leukemia. Doctors have long puzzled over why it is that babies just a few months old sometimes develop cancer. As infants, they have not lived long enough to accumulate a critical number of cancer-causing mutations. Parents always ask why their child has developed leukemia, and unfortunately we have had few answers, said senior author Todd Druley, MD, PhD, a Washington University pediatric oncologist who treats patients at St. Louis Childrens Hospital. Our study suggests that babies with leukemia inherit a strong genetic predisposition to the disease. The babies appear to have inherited rare genetic variants from both parents that by themselves would not cause problems, but in combination put the infants at high risk of leukemia. These variants most often occurred in genes known to be linked to leukemia in children, said Druley, an assistant professor of … Continue reading →

Genetic testing can help doctors choose the most effective and economical drugs to prevent blood clots in the half a million patients in the U.S. who receive coronary stents each year, according to a new study led by a UC San Francisco researcher. The work, reported in the February 18, 2014 Annals of Internal Medicine, demonstrates that genetically guided personalized medicine, often perceived as pricier than traditional approaches, can both lower costs and increase the quality of health care. Dhruv Kazi, MD, MSc, MS Our results counter the general perception that personalized medicine is expensive, said Dhruv Kazi, MD, MSc, MS, assistant professor of medicine at UCSF and first author of the new study. What we have shown is that individualizing care based on genotype may in fact be very cost-effective in some settings, because it allows us to target the use of newer, more expensive drugs to the patients who are most likely to benefit from them. According to the American Heart Association, about 500,000 patients per year in the U.S. receive stents to open up coronary arteries after experiencing unstable angina or a heart attack. These patients routinely begin a one-year regimen of aspirin taken daily in combination … Continue reading →