News

In a development that could help clear its backlog of specimens awaiting testing, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced it has developed a faster test for Enterovirus D68 (EV-D68).

Deep brain simulation (DBS) -- surgically-implanted brain pacemakers that reversibly change brain activity and improve quality of life for many patients -- have been available since 1997 for essential tremor and approved for Parkinson's disease since 2002.

Readmission rates among cardiac surgery patients have been reported to range from approximately 14 percent to 63 percent, a rate that far exceeds that in patients who undergo other surgical procedures.

According to the Foundation for Quality Health Care, overall mortality rates associated with coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) hover at or below 2 percent, a 27 percent decrease from as recently as 2002.

Prescription opioid analgesics play an important and legitimate role for surgical patients, and proper use by surgeons ensures that patients find the pain relief they need with few adverse events.

A third patient has been diagnosed with Ebola in Dallas, TX. The unidentified woman is the second Texas Presbyterian Health worker to get the disease after caring for deceased Ebola victim Thomas Eric Duncan, local officials said in an early morning news conference. The patient, like nurse Nina Pham, is in isolation at Texas Presbyterian Health. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) along with Texas health officials are monitoring 75 people who had contact with Duncan, the visitor from Liberia who died of the disease Oct. 8.

NBC medical editor Nancy Snyderman, MD, apologized yesterday for breaking her agreement to stay home-sort of. Snyderman did not acknowledge that since she had contact with a cameraman who accompanied her to West Africa to report on Ebola--and who is now hospitalized with the virus-- she may have put the public's health at risk. She maintained she had done nothing wrong. But she said she was sorry everyone was worried by seeing her around town in the Princeton, NJ area.

Can pets pose an Ebola risk? According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the US Department of Agriculture and the American Veterinary Medical Association the State, the answer is "maybe." Making good on CDC Director Thomas Frieden, MD's promise to come up with guidelines for such cases, the CDC did so Oct. 13 in the form of a Q&A posted on its website.

Many doctors say they are unhappy in their work. But according to Todd Kashdan, PhD, a psychology professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA, that may not be such a bad thing. " The way we think when we're happy is very different from when we are mildly unhappy,

The nurse who contracted Ebola after caring for deceased Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan at a Dallas, TX hospital has been identified as Nina Pham, 26, a critical care specialist at Texas Presbyterian Health Hospital. The Dallas Morning News said the woman's identification has been confirmed by her family. Animal lovers are concerned also about the fate of her dog.

As concern mounts about the possibility of Ebola spreading throughout the US, hospitals are increasingly vigilant. At a news briefing Oct.13, CDC director Thomas Frieden, MD, said the agency has not changed its mind about not restricting travel to and from West Africa, and is focused on tightening infection control measures to "break the chain of infection." The CDC still has not learned how a nurse who cared for Dallas, TX, Ebola victim Thomas Eric Duncan got infected, but perhaps it was her gloves, Frieden suggested. Testing takes time, doctors elsewhere report.

Nancy Snyderman, MD, a medical editor for NBC news is under a New Jersey State Department of Health quarantine after www.PlanetPrinceton.com reported that she was violating an agreement to stay at home. Snyderman, a Princeton, NJ resident, may have been exposed to Ebola during a trip to Liberia. Celebrity watching in Princeton, NJ is usually a low-key affair. Not this time, Snyderman learned.

A nurse at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital who provided care for the Ebola patient hospitalized there has tested positive for Ebola in a preliminary test.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Oct. 10 approved a new drug combining ledipasvir and sofosbuvir (Harvoni/Gilead) as a treatment for chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. The approval is the third drug approved for chronic HCV in the past year. The others are simeprevir (Olysio/Janssen) and sofosbuvir (Sovaldi/Gilead).

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today approved Akynzeo to treat cancer chemotherapy related nausea and sickness.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a new angioplasty balloon catheter for the treatment of vascular disease. The Lutonix 035 Drug Coated Balloon Percutaneous Transluminal Angioplasty Catheter is the first drug-coated balloon approved for use to re-open arteries in the thigh and knee when those arteries are narrowed as a result of peripheral artery disease, the agency said.

Neurogenesis does not happen much in healthy brains, but it does after a stroke. In a mouse study, a Swedish team has determined how that happens. Their discovery could hold promise for regenerating neurons for many conditions. Reporting in Science , Jens Magnusson and colleagues called their finding "potentially useful for neuronal replacement strategies."

Researchers in Barcelona, Spain, have recently developed a fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, with colon cancer that aids in identifying significant genetic factors within human intestinal cancer.

As friends and family mourned Ebola victim Thomas Eric Duncan, there was some good news. Ebola tests done on a Dallas County Sherrif's deputy came back negative. The Texas State Department of Health made the announcement Oct. 9. The patient, identified as Michael Monnig, had briefly visited the apartment where Duncan was staying and on Oct. 8 was admitted to the hospital where Duncan died, Texas Health Presbyterian.

Animal lovers expressed outrage Oct. 8 as health officials in Spain made good on their pledge to euthanize the 12-year-old pet dog of a woman known to have the Ebola virus. But a research study published in Emerging Infectious Diseases in 2005 documented that many dogs in Africa that lived in neighborhoods where the virus was prevalent showed signs they were carrying the virus. The CDC supplied the Ebola tests for that research.

Doctors who treated Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan, the 42-year-old Liberian man who died in Dallas Oct. 8, likely missed their window of opportunity. "It's hard to say exactly what happened, but they sent him home and he came back later-and with Ebola, the earlier the treatment, the better," said Sanjay Gupta, MD, head of the emergency department at Franklin Hospital in Valley Stream, NY.

Heart trouble can start early for obese children, a German research team found. Writing in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Norman Manger, MD, and colleagues compared blood pressure, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and glucose metabolism in 61 obese children with that of 40 children with healthy weights. The obese group had an average BMI of about 31 while the control group's average BMI was about 20.

In women with aortic stenosis (AS) survival is linked to whether resulting left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) is adaptive or maladaptive. In men with AS, there is no such link, a German study found.

The US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recently released a draft version of screening recommendations for abnormal glucose and type 2 diabetes mellitus in adults who are at increased risk for diabetes, and is seeking public input on the suggestions.

Uceris (budesonide) is now approved in a new dose for the induction of remission in patients afflicted with active mild-to-moderate distal ulcerative colitis.

The first person in the United States to be diagnosed with the Ebola virus died on Wednesday morning according to multiple media reports, while another patient suspected of having Ebola was released from the hospital.

Study results show that the majority of adult patients with congenital heart disease and their clinicians ignore American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association recommendations that any non-cardiac surgery for these patients should be performed in regionalized centers of expertise.

Researchers compared outcomes from bariatric surgery with those achieved through medical weight management in patients with diabetes to determine the effectiveness of bariatric surgery in patients with BMI less than 35. They also evaluated a potential biomarker for identifying patients likely to experience the best surgical outcomes.

Researchers from the Hospital for Special Surgery, New York, have published a study indicating that component position alone is not protective against instability.

The body's immune system can be "taught" not to attack its own cells, such as in the case of multiple sclerosis, according to research published in Nature Communications.