Health and Medicine

Pill count has the greatest impact on adherence, survey reports

The total number of pills that need to be taken every day in HAART therapy has the greatest impact on adherence of 10 characteristics studied, according to a survey of HIV positive individuals, nearly two-thirds of whom had experienced at least three treatment regimens. The findings of the Perspectives on Adherence and Simplicity for HIV+ Patients on Antiretroviral Therapy (PASPORT) survey were presented here today at the

Pediatricians have another weapon in their arsenal to fight infections that have shown resistance to common antibiotics, according to data presented today by a team of investigators led by Baylor College of Medicine.

Study results showed that linezolid, a new type of antibiotic, is well-tolerated and as effective as the most common antibiotic, vancomycin, in treating infants and children with known or suspected gram-positive infections, reported Dr. Sheldon Kaplan, Baylor professor of

Among postmenopausal women, glucocorticoid users six times more likely to fracture

Daily dosing with oral glucocorticoids (corticosteroids) for chronic diseases was found to be a strong predictor of spinal fracture at one year, according to new data presented at the annual scientific meeting of the American College of Rheumatology (ACR). The risk of fracture was found to increase incrementally with every 1 mg increase above 7.5 mg in the daily dose of the glucocorticoid.

Phy

New weapon in the fight against cancer?

The use of live bacteria to treat cancer goes back a hundred years. But while the therapy can sometimes shrink tumors, the treatment usually leads to toxicity, limiting its value in medicine.

Now, researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have isolated a protein secreted by bacteria that kills cancer cells but appears to have no harmful side effects. Tested in mice injected with human melanomas, the protein shrank the maligna

17th International Congress on Thrombosis, Bologna, 26 October 2002: Important results from the EXPRESS clinical trial for the oral direct thrombin inhibitor (Oral DTI), EXANTA™ (oral ximelagatran and its active form, melagatran) show its superior efficacy in reducing risk of major venous thromboembolism (VTE), compared with a routinely used prophylactic treatment, enoxaparin, in major orthopaedic surgery.
Results show a significant 63 per cent relative risk reduction (2.3% vs 6.3%) in major ve

Washington University chemist offers radical new strategy in fight against cancer

Today, even the best cancer treatments kill about as many healthy cells as they do cancer cells but John-Stephen A. Taylor, Ph.D., professor of chemistry at Washington University in St. Louis, has a plan to improve that ratio. Over the last several years, Taylor has begun to lay the conceptual and experimental groundwork for a radical new strategy for chemotherapy — one that turns existing drugs into me