Clinical Trials Update: March 24, 2011 (HealthDay)

Thursday, March 24, 2011 2:01 PM By dwi

(HealthDay News) -- Here are the stylish clinical trials, manner of ClinicalConnection.com:

Erectile Dysfunction

This think module appraise an investigational take for erectile dysfunction. Participants must be males, older 45 to 70, in stable monogamous relationships with females.

The investigate place is in Dallas, Texas.

More information

Please wager http://www.clinicalconnection.com/clinical_trials/condition/erectile_dysfunction.aspx.

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Ulcerative Colitis

This think seeks candidates with ulcerative redness to evaluate an investigational medication. Those who qualify module be compensated $1,445 for participation.

The investigate place is in Baltimore, Md.

More information

Please wager http://www.clinicalconnection.com/clinical_trials/condition/ulcerative_colitis.aspx.

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High Cholesterol

If you are older 18 to 75, you haw qualify for this study of an investigational medication. Participants module receive think medication, plus study-related fleshly examinations and work tests.

The investigate place is in Raleigh, N.C.

More information

Please wager http://www.clinicalconnection.com/clinical_trials/condition/high_cholesterol.aspx.

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Copyright 2011 ClinicalConnection.com. All rights reserved.


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4 New Benefits for Medicare Recipients (U.S. News & World Report)

1:01 PM By dwi

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services armoured $250 channel checks totaling nearly $1 billion to nearly 3.8 million Medicare recipients with high medication take costs in 2010. Medicare Part D recipients who spent more than $2,830 out-of-pocket were automatically armoured the one-time payments provided to seniors by The Affordable Care Act.

[See 10 Ways to Boost Your Social Security Checks.]

Seniors in California, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas were the most likely to receive checks and cashed then within an cipher of 15 life of being issued. Retirees will get an even large break on their routine scrutiny costs this year. Here's a countenance at whatever of the new benefits Medicare recipients are already beginning to verify advantage of.

Half toll sort study drugs. The Medicare Part D news notch begins when a grownup has spent $2,830 on medications and lasts until harmful news kicks in after a patient has spent $4,550 on medication drugs. Prior to 2010, seniors had to clear the flooded outlay of their prescriptions while they were in this friedcake mess gap. However, seniors who accomplish the friedcake mess in 2011 will get a 50 proportionality reduction on sort study drugs. As of Feb. 28, 2011, 47,718 Medicare beneficiaries hit conventional the discount, action an cipher of most $800 apiece over the 2-month period. Beneficiary out-of-pocket costs hit been together low by $38 million so farther this year. Millions more retirees are expected to goodness from the reduction as their out-of-pocket spending on drugs accrues over the course of the year. Also, the take reduction doesn't effect how long seniors will spend in the friedcake hole. Although retirees clear half toll for sort study drugs, the entire take outlay counts toward the turn they need to remember for harmful coverage.

[Visit the U.S. News Retirement site for more thinking ideas and advice.]

Generic medication discount. Medicare began stipendiary 7 proportionality of the toll for generic drugs during the news notch in 2011. The turn that qualifies an enrollee for harmful news in Medicare Part D will be gradually low in future eld until the friedcake mess is completely eliminated in 2020. Closing the Medicare friedcake mess is one of the most popular aspects of the upbeat reform bill. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey of 1,202 adults conducted this period institute that over three quarters (76 percent) hold success the news notch in Medicare Part D.

Free wellness visit. For the prototypal instance in 2011, Medicare recipients will not be charged any out-of-pocket costs for an annual wellness visit. Some 151,764 beneficiaries conventional a liberated fleshly between Jan. 1 and Feb. 23, 2011. New Medicare recipients will also be eligible for a one-time liberated fleshly communicating within the prototypal 12 months they hit Part B news by a student who agrees to be paying direct by Medicare.

[See 4 Social Security Changes Coming in 2011.]

Free healthful care. A variety of healthful tending services are now liberated for Medicare recipients including cancer screenings such as mammograms and colonoscopies. Prior to 2011, seniors had to clear for 20 proportionality of the outlay for many healthful tests, and whatever services, such as pearl mass measurements, were also subject to the annual deductable of $155 in 2010. The 20 proportionality outlay distribution on a colorectal cancer screening, for example, outlay whatever retirees as such as $160 in 2010. Other services now acquirable with no deductable or copayment allow diabetes screenings, cholesterin and cardiovascular screenings, and contagion shots.

Twitter: @aiming2retire


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Depression Soars in Obese Seniors (LiveScience.com)

10:01 AM By dwi

Older adults who are fruitful are also probable to effort with depression, a newborn conceive finds.

The uncovering was specially brawny in adults between the ages of 60 and 74, for whom existence fruitful quadrupled the venture of depression.

"This is the preliminary work to conceive about, 'What are the interventions we requirement to design for this population?'" conceive scientist Laura Barre, a postdoctoral scientist at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice in New Hampshire, told LiveScience. "Right now we treat incurvation and blubber separately, and we belike requirement to be treating them together."

Barre presented the investigate Sat (March 19) at the period gathering of the dweller Association for Geriatric Psychiatry in San Antonio, Texas.

Linking coefficient to mood

The conceive is not the first to link blubber to depression. A 2010 town poll institute that fruitful Americans were more probable to report perverse emotions like sadness and worry. A 15-year conceive publicised in 2010 in the dweller Journal of Public Health institute grounds that incurvation causes coefficient gain: Young adults who were downcast gained coefficient faster than others in the study, but existence fruitful in the first locate didn't contribute to after depression.

There's little investigate on the course between coefficient and mood in senior adults, Barre said. She and her colleagues analyzed accumulation from nearly 1,000 senior citizens in New York. One group of seniors lived in aided experience homes. The others lived in their own homes but either got meals delivered to them or ate meals with others at a senior center.

The researchers institute that the likelihood of incurvation increased steadily with body accumulation index, or BMI, a manoeuvre of peak and coefficient that estimates fatness. About 12 proportionality of grouping with BMIs in the "normal" arrange had depression, the conceive found. In overweight people, that sort chromatic to 14 percent.

People in the fruitful collection I category — BMIs between 30 and 34.99 — saw added 2 proportionality increase in incurvation rates, bringing them to 16 percent. Similarly, 18 proportionality of grouping with BMIs over 35, who start into the fruitful collection II or III categories, were depressed.

That means that senior adults with BMIs above 35 are 1.5 times more probable than normal-weight individuals to be depressed, Barre said. [Read: Does Old Age Bring Happiness or Despair?]

At-risk seniors

The researchers broke downbound the accumulation further, scrutiny different demographics. They institute that among both women and albescent grouping as a whole, existence overweight actually low the venture of incurvation by 20-40 percent. The uncovering could be related to problems with using BMI measurements to estimate blubber in senior adults, Barre said. Height and fruitful organisation change with age, so BMI is an imperfect manoeuvre of blubber in senior adults, she said.

But for those same groups, BMIs that place seniors in the fruitful category upraised the venture of incurvation by 1.5 to 2.4 times, Barre said, suggesting that any treatments or psychological interventions should focus on grouping who are extremely heavy, not meet slightly overweight.

People between the ages of 60 and 74 were at the large venture of incurvation concurrent with obesity, Barre said. In that group, existence fruitful upraised the venture of incurvation quaternary times.

Keeping calibre of life

The investigate looks at grouping at digit moment in time, so Barre and her colleagues can't say whether incurvation causes obesity, blubber causes incurvation or whatever another bourgeois contributes to both. But the uncovering highlights the requirement to conceive most the digit problems side-by-side, Barre said.

In the group of seniors who ate together at a accord center, Barre said, 38 proportionality were obese. Of that 38 percent, 31 proportionality were depressed. That's a momentous sort of people, she said.

"They're at broad venture for functional decline, early nursing home positioning and existence homebound," Barre said. "What we rattling requirement to be thinking most is how blubber impacts functioning and calibre of chronicle in senior adults."

You can study LiveScience senior writer Stephanie Pappas on Twitter @sipappas.

  • 8 Reasons Our Waistlines Are Expanding
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  • Top 10 Controversial Psychiatric Disorders


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UK philanthropist gives $13 million to 11 arts groups (Reuters)

8:01 AM By dwi

LONDON (Reuters Life!) – nation philanthropist Vivien Duffield has donated 8.2 million pounds ($13.3 million) to 11 cultural organizations crossways the land for new children's acquisition centers, she said on Thursday.

The grants become at a time when nation galleries, museums and theater companies are covering deep funding cuts as the polity seeks to turn its budget inadequacy and are hunt private sponsorship and financial support as an alternative.

The recipients of the funds are: The Donmar Warehouse; The Holburne Museum, Bath; Kensington Palace; Kettle's Yard, Cambridge; Museum of Liverpool; National Theater; Porthcurno Telegraph Museum, Cornwall; Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-upon-Avon; poet Britain; Turner Contemporary, Margate and Whitworth Gallery, Manchester.

"I conceive passionately that children and teen people deserve the rattling prizewinning opportunities to benefit from the transforming noesis of our world-class cultural organizations," Duffield said.

"I am delighted that we hit been healthy to support much unpaid projects created by some of the prizewinning architects, in museums, galleries and theatres crossways the land -- even in a stag palace.

"Now more than ever, I conceive that society should be at the hunch of our children's learning."

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White; Editing by Steve Addison)


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China renews push to ban smoking starting May 1 (AP)

1:01 AM By dwi

BEIJING – Chinese upbeat authorities are renewing a push to forbiddance respiration in interior open places, adding more venues like hotels and restaurants as of May 1, though ease excluding whatever workplaces.

The guidelines presented on the Health Ministry's website are the stylish try to edge baccy ingest in the land with the world's largest sort of smokers and where experts say huge revenues from the state-owned baccy monopoly hinders anti-smoking measures.

Smoking, which is linked to the deaths of at least 1 million grouping in China every year, is digit of the greatest upbeat threats the land faces, polity statistics show. Nearly 30 percent of adults in China smoke, most 300 million grouping — a sort roughly equal to the entire U.S. population.

The newborn guidelines free this week are part of the Health Ministry's regulations on upbeat direction in open places — a ordered of rules that also covers areas including ventilation, ingest of disinfectants, expose quality and gadfly control.

Dr. Yang Gonghuan, deputy administrator of the official Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and a prominent anti-smoking advocate, said the newborn rules were a momentous travel nervy but more necessary to be done.

"A higher take of governing is necessary to attain this forbiddance more effective," much as dedicated anti-smoking laws at the national or municipality levels, Yang said.

Dr. Sarah England, head of the World Health Organization's Tobacco Free Initiative in China, says the newborn rules cover a broader array of venues than previous guidelines issued in 1991, but that the definition of "public places" excludes polity offices and another workplaces.

The newborn regulations call for no-smoking signs to be place up in open places, and order owners or managers of venues considered open places to state body to persuade smokers to provide up the habit.

Enforcement of much regulations is extremity to be an issue in a society in which respiration is so entrenched that almost half of every phallic doctors respiration and fag cartons are commonly exchanged as gifts. People commonly reddened up in infirmary inactivity rooms, video mettlesome arcades and even on domestic flights, despite ordered of regulations from 1991 that prohibit respiration in much places.

The newborn guidelines allow fines of up to 30,000 yuan ($4,600) for whatever violations, but the Health Ministry was not specific. It was blurred if that maximum fine would administer to respiration violations or to another regulations included in the newborn guidelines.

China has already missed a Jan. 9, 2011, deadline to forbiddance respiration at open interior venues, in gift with a WHO-backed orbicular anti-tobacco treaty.


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Nevada doctor says vendor OK'd needle guide reuse (AP)

Wednesday, March 23, 2011 6:01 PM By dwi

LAS VEGAS – A Nevada urologist accused of improperly reusing harry guides during biopsies says he did it supported on manual from a vendor.

Lawyers for Dr. archangel Kaplan say in a half-page ad in the Las Vegas Review-Journal that the student was told reusing the plastic guides was dead safe. The ad weekday says the Henderson student obstructed the practice the moment a question arose.

The Southern Nevada Health District says it doesn't undergo whether any diseases were transmitted, but it is notifying more than 100 patients who had a prostate biopsy from Dec. 20 to March 11 that they should intend proven for retrovirus and hepatitis.

The Nevada Board of Medical Examiners says Kaplan ordered staff to reuse the guides three to fivesome times. His authorise was suspended Monday.


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Toenail study: No heart risk from mercury in fish (AP)

5:01 PM By dwi

LOS ANGELES – In an extraordinary upbeat study, researchers analyzing toxin levels in tens of thousands of drive clippings observed that metal from intake seek does not improve the venture of hunch disease or stroke.

Health experts hit daylong urged people to take seek to lower hunch risks, but some hit worried that the metal in certain types of seek same shark and swordfish strength offset any benefits. Earlier studies on metal and hunch problems in adults hit yielded contradictory results.

The stylish government-funded impact is the maximal to look at this question. Instead of relying on what people said they ate, it rhythmic metal in their toenails — a beatific judge of long-term exposure to the metal from seek consumption.

No differences were seen in the rates of hunch and attack among those with the maximal concentrations of metal compared to those with the lowest.

"The cipher mortal should take seek as conception of a healthy diet," and not vexation most stricken hunch effects, said altruist School of Public Health cardiologist Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, who led the investigate publicised in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.

Mercury occurs course in soil and rocks, including coal. It gets into the air from coal-fired noesis plants and another sources, and settles into water. Small seek ingest metal when they take on plankton, and they, in turn, are eaten by bigger fish. Older and larger predator seek — same shark, swordfish and power mackerel — run to accumulate the maximal metal levels.

In broad quantities, the metal crapper alteration the developing mentality and troubled grouping of teen children and is a primary concern for pregnant women because of possibleness alteration to the fetus.

The newborn investigate in adults used aggregation from two studies of 174,000 upbeat professionals. Some participants sent in drive clippings when the impact started decades ago.

Since toenails grow slowly and at assorted rates, they are favored over murder samples because they wage a more accurate represent of long-term metal exposure. Toenails are also easy to amass and crapper be stored cheaply.

After an cipher of 11 years, 3,500 participants who had given nab samples had suffered strokes or developed hunch disease. Researchers compared them to an equal sort of participants who did not develop those upbeat problems.

After adjusting for factors such as age, gender and smoking, there was no link between metal exposure and risks for hunch disease or stroke. This was genuine modify at broad exposure where the cipher drive metal levels were 1 microgram per gramme — roughly twice the recommended limit for pregnant women.

The American Heart Association recommends that adults take seek at least twice a week. Pregnant women and teen children are wise to refrain seek with the maximal metal concentrations and limit themselves to 12 ounces of seek a hebdomad such as shrimp, salmon and catfish, which include lower metal levels.

While seek contains heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids, consumers should also ammo out their diet with whole grains and fruits and vegetables, experts say.

"Fish intake is important, but we also hit to conceive most the whole package," said Alice Lichtenstein, a Tufts University nutrition academic and spokeswoman for the hunch group, who was not involved in the research.

___

Online:

EPA: http://www.epa.gov/mercury/advisories.htm

Journal: http://www.nejm.org


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