3 treatments to slow skin cancerAcid skin peel, laser resurfacing, and a chemotherapy cream all remove precancerous skin growths and slow cancercancer -- but patients prefer the peel.
Precancerous growths, small areas of discrete roughness to the skin, come from too much sun, note VA researcher Basil M. Hantash, MD, PhD, and colleagues. Particularly when a person has a lot of them, they tend to become squamous cell carcinomas: skin cancerskin cancer.
Doctors often burn off these growths, called actinic keratoses, with liquid nitrogen. But there's evidence other ways of removing them work at least as well.
Also, the other techniques appear to do another very important thing: They slow the development of cancer.
Hantash, of Palo Alto, Calif., and colleagues compared three of these techniques in 24 men. The patients had an average age of 73; all but three had previously had skin cancers removed. Five similar patients served as an untreated comparison group.
Before treatment, the 24 men had dozens of precancerous facial growths.
The researchers treated the men with laser resurfacing, an acid skin peel, or a topical cream containing fluorouracil, a chemotherapy drug.
All treatments worked, reducing the number of precancerous skin growths by 83% (chemo cream), 89% (skin peel), and 92% (laser).
The treatments also seemed to slow the development of new skin cancers.
Left untreated, the patients would be expected to develop 1.7 new facial skin cancers a year.
That's pretty close to what happened in the untreated comparison group. But the treated patients had only 0.04 to 0.22 new skin cancers per year.
"In the ... acid peel arm, one cancer per 26.1 years would be expected, compared with 1 cancer per 6.79 and 4.77 years in the [laser] and [chemo cream] arms, respectively," Hantash and colleagues report.
The untreated comparison group, they calculated, had 1.57 new cancers per year: that is, one new cancer every eight months.
The patients who got the acid peel were much more compliant with treatment, and had fewer side effects than those treated with laser or chemo cream.
Hantash and colleagues note that repeated treatments may be needed. In any case, patients with precancerous facial growths must get careful follow-up care.
Because the study had several limitations -- including its small size, infrequent use of sunscreen, and a control group that was not randomly picked -- the researchers warn that their findings must be confirmed in larger studies.
Hantash and colleagues have reported their research in the August issue of the Archives of Dermatology.
Via:
Webmd
Alcohol heart protection may not be down to inflammatory markersA new study indicates that light to moderate alcohol drinking may exert cardioprotective effects in some, but in elderly men at least the mechanism of action does not seem to be down to a reduction in inflammatory markers as previously thought. Although
alcohol has been implicated in worsening some other chronic diseases and the overall effect of drinking on survival is not clear, some studies have shown that light to moderate drinking may reduce the risk of
heart disease. The effect was thought to be somehow connected with
inflammation, since reduction in levels of C-reactive protein and interleukin-6 circulating in the blood were seen to drop.
But the current study, which the researchers claim is the first with the specific aim of investigating the impact of inflammation on the relationship between alcohol consumption and health-related outcomes, found that these markers did not seem to be linked to heart disease incidence. This leads to the suspicion that some other, as yet unidentified mechanism may be at play.
Researchers led by Cinzia Maraldo, MD, at the University of Florida recruited 2487 adults without heart disease and aged between 70 and 79 years. The participants answered questions about disease diagnostics, medication and drinking habits during an initial interview, with telephone follow-up every six months and clinical examination every year.
Alcohol consumption was classified by number of drinks in a typical week over the past year. The categories were: former; never or occasional (less than one); light to moderate (one to seven); and heavier (more than seven).
Over a five-and-a-half year follow up, 397 participants had died and 383 experienced a cardiac event. Light to moderate drinkers were seen to have a 26 per cent lower risk of death over all and a 30 per cent lower risk of cardiac events, compared to those who drank never or rarely.
Heavy drinkers were seen to be more likely to die or have a cardiac event than never or rare drinkers.
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Nutra
Arrhythmias
When symptoms of arrhythmias are present, they may include:
Palpitations (a feeling of skipped heart beats, fluttering or "flip-flops," or feeling that your heart is "running away"). Pounding in your chest. Dizziness or feeling light-headed. Fainting. Shortness of breath. Chest discomfort. Weakness or fatigue (feeling very tired). Atrial Fibrillation
Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a type of arrhythmia. Most people with AF experience one or more of the following symptoms:
Heart palpitations (a sudden pounding, fluttering, or racing feeling in the heart). Lack of energy; tired. Dizziness (feeling faint or light-headed). Chest discomfort (pain, pressure, or discomfort in the chest). Shortness of breath (difficulty breathing during activities of daily living). Heart Valve Disease
Symptoms of Heart valve disease can include:
Shortness of breath and/or difficulty catching your breath. You may notice this most when you are active (doing your normal daily activities) or when you lie down flat in bed. Weakness or dizziness. Discomfort in your chest. You may feel a pressure or weight in your chest with activity or when going out in cold air. Palpitations (this may feel like a rapid heart rhythm, irregular heartbeat, skipped beats or a flip-flop feeling in your chest). If valve disease causes heart failure, symptoms may include: Swelling of your ankles, feet or abdomen. Swelling may also occur in your belly, which may cause you to feel bloated. Quick weight gain (a weight gain of two or three pounds in one day is possible). Symptoms do not always relate to the seriousness of your valve disease. You may have no symptoms at all and have severe valve disease, requiring prompt treatment. Or, as with mitral valve prolapse, you may have severe symptoms, yet tests may show minor valve disease.
Heart Attack (Myocardial Infarction or MI)
Symptoms can include:
Discomfort, pressure, heaviness, or pain in the chest, arm or below the breastbone Discomfort radiating to the back, jaw, throat or arm Fullness, indigestion or choking feeling (may feel like heartburn) Sweating, nausea, vomiting or dizziness Extreme weakness, anxiety or shortness of breath Rapid or irregular heartbeats During a heart attack, symptoms last 30 minutes or longer and are not relieved by rest or oral medications (medications taken by mouth). Initial symptoms can start as a mild discomfort that progresses to significant pain.
Some people have a heart attack without having any symptoms (a "silent" MI). A silent MI can occur among all people, though it occurs more often among diabetics.
If you think you are having a heart attack, DO NOT DELAY. Call for emergency help (dial 911 in most areas). Quick treatment of a heart attack is very important to lessen the amount of damage to your heart.
Quit smoking and improve your asthmaQuitting smoking may have a quick pay off for people with asthma. A single smoke-free week may be all it takes to start seeing improvements in asthma patients' lung function, researchers report in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
"In smokers with asthma, improvement in lung function occurs as early as one week after smoking cessation, with a further improvement up to six weeks," write Rekha Chaudhuri, MD, and colleagues. Chaudhuri works at Scotland's University of Glasgow.
"Active cigarette smoking is known to worsen the severity of asthma," the researchers point out. They studied 20 asthma patients (average age: mid- to late 40s) who were smokers.
The patients had smoked for at least 28 years and currently smoked more than 20 cigarettes a day, on average. For the study, half agreed to quit smoking for at least six weeks. The others kept on smoking.
Before and after the experiment, patients took lung function tests.
In one of those tests, the patients forcibly exhaled as much air as possible in one second's time. When the study started, the patients' scores on that test were lower than what would be expected for normal, healthy lungs.
After one week of not smoking, scores on that same lung function test -- called FEV1 -- began to improve. The gains continued for six weeks for the new nonsmokers.
The quit-smoking group also showed a drop in neutrophils -- a type of white blood cell -- in the thick fluid called sputum made in the lungs and airways. Neutrophils are part of the body's immune system, which helps fight off infection and illness. They can also be used as a measure of inflammation.
Meanwhile, no such improvements were seen in the patients who kept smoking.
via:
Webmd
FDA approves 1-a-day AIDS pillHouston patients infected with HIV could start taking a one-a-day AIDS "cocktail" as early as next week, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which announced its approval of Atripla tablets Wednesday.
The availability of the drug, which combines three drugs made by two companies, was applauded by doctors and patients who say it will improve treatment and quality of life by making it easier to adhere to a life-saving medication regimen.
"This has been the holy grail of HIV treatment, really," said Dr. Mark Kline, chief of retrovirology at Texas Children's Hospital. "They've taken three drugs that, individually, are very, very good drugs, well-tolerated, safe and potent. This has been a long-sought-after goal."
AIDS activist Keith Folger of Washington, D.C., who started on 36 pills a day about 11 years ago, said he plans to switch to the new pill. He recalled having to take pills every 2 1/2 hours and how some of them often stuck in his throat.
"It was just awful. Now all a doctor is going to have to say is, 'I want you to take one of these before you go to bed,' " said Folger, who is leaving a position with the National Association of People with AIDS. "How easy is that?"
The drug also is expected to be a powerful weapon in the global AIDS fight, said U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, who called it a "key breakthrough" in an FDA news release. Simplified drug regimens are easier to stick to, and, therefore, more effective and cheaper — an important consideration for developing nations hardest hit by HIV.
Atripla is a combination of drugs already on the market: Sustiva, made by Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Truvada, a drug from Gilead Sciences (actually a combination of two Gilead drugs called Viread and Emtriva).
Unprecedented allianceThe historic collaboration is the first of its kind in the field of HIV/AIDS, the FDA said. Bristol-Myers Squibb and Gilead formed a joint venture to commercialize the drug in the United States. Atripla was approved in three months under the FDA's fast-track program.
The price of the new drug will be the sum of the components, or about $1,100 for a month's supply, a spokeswoman for Gilead said. She said health insurance programs are expected to reimburse for Atripla at the same level as other HIV medications. In addition, the companies will work with public health programs, such as the Harris County Hospital District, to ensure low-income patients have access to the pill.
Dr. Roberto Andrade, a Baylor College of Medicine assistant professor who works with HIV patients at the hospital district's Thomas Street Health Center, which sees about 4,000 patients a year, marveled at the drug companies' cooperation. He said the effort created an unprecedented advance in terms of scaling back drug quantity unseen in any other medical field he could think of.
"Everybody benefits," Andrade said. "We believe the best therapy for HIV is the therapy patients will take."
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Symptoms of Heart DiseaseEach type of heart disease has different symptoms, although many heart problems have similar symptoms. The symptoms you experience depend on the type and severity of your heart condition. Learn to recognize your symptoms and the situations that cause them. Call your doctor if you begin to have new symptoms or if they become more frequent or severe.
Coronary Artery Disease
The most common symptom is angina. Angina can be described as a discomfort, heaviness, pressure, aching, burning, fullness, squeezing or painful feeling in your chest. It can be mistaken for indigestion or heartburn. Angina is usually felt in the chest, but may also be felt in the shoulders, arms, neck, throat, jaw or back.
Other symptoms that can occur with coronary artery disease include:
Shortness of breath Palpitations (irregular heart beats, skipped beats or a "flip-flop" feeling in your chest) A faster heartbeat Weakness or dizziness Nausea Sweating
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webmd
