Nearly 12,000 people will die of head and neck cancer in the United States this year and worldwide cases will exceed half a million. A study published this week in the journal Carcinogenesis shows that in both cell lines and mouse models, grape seed extract (GSE) kills head and neck squamous cell carcinoma cells, while leaving healthy cells unharmed.
"It's a rather dramatic effect," says Rajesh Agarwal, PhD, investigator at the University of Colorado Cancer Center and professor at the Skaggs School of Pharmaceutical Sciences.
It depends in large part, says Agarwal, on a healthy cell's ability to wait out damage.
"Cancer cells are fast-growing cells," Agarwal says. "Not only that, but they are necessarily fast growing. When conditions exist in which they can't grow, they die."
Grape seed extract creates these conditions that are unfavorable to growth. Specifically, the paper shows that grape seed extract both damages cancer cells' DNA (via increased reactive oxygen species) and stops the pathways that allow repair (as seen by decreased levels of the DNA repair molecules Brca1 and Rad51 and DNA repair foci).
"Yet we saw absolutely no toxicity to the mice, themselves," Agarwal says.
Again, the grape seed extract killed the cancer cells but not the healthy cells.
"I think the whole point is that cancer cells have a lot of defective pathways and they are very vulnerable if you target those pathways. The same is not true of healthy cells," Agarwal says.
The Agarwal Lab hopes to move in the direction of clinical trials of grape seed extract, potentially as an addition to second-line therapies that target head and neck squamous cell carcinoma that has failed a first treatment.
This work was supported by the R01 grants AT003623 from the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine and CA91883 from the National Cancer Institute, NIH.
**Source: University of Colorado Denver
31 January 2012
Oxford, Harvard y otras 30 organizaciones coordinan sus bases de datos científicas
La Ciencia, ayudada por las nuevas tecnologías, genera una inmensa cantidad de datos, la mayor parte de las veces heterogéneos y, por eso, difícilmente comparables o accesibles. Por eso, unas 30 organizaciones científicas de todo el mundo se han puesto de acuerdo para crear un nuevo estandard común para la descripción de esta información almacenada en bases de datos sobre temas tan dispares como la genética o el medioambiente.
Los miembros de esta iniciativa, liderada por la Universidad de Oxford (Reino Unido) y el Instituto de Células Madre de Harvard (EEUU), explican esta semana en 'Nature Genetics' la necesidad de adoptar "tecnologías que faciliten la interoperabilidad y promuevan el crecimiento de la cultura del 'open data' común".
"Ahora estamos trabajando juntos para obtener los medios para manejar cantidades enormes de datos que de otra forma serían incompatibles", ha explicado Susanna-Assunta Sansone, líder de grupo del proyecto en la universidad británica. De momento, han puesto en marcha una web a través de la que se podrá acceder a toda la información: ISA Commons.
"Un ejemplo de cómo funciona esto en el Instituto de Células Madre de Harvard es que ahora podemos encontrar la relación entre experimentos con células madre de la sangre de los peces y tumores infantiles", señala Wilson Hide, director de la división de Bioinformática de este organismo.
La columna vertebral de esta nueva forma de archivar información la forman tres categorías que deben utilizar los participantes: "investigación (el contexto del proyecto) , estudio (unidad de investigación) y ensayo (medición analítica)". Sobre ellas "se articulan el descubrimiento, el intercambio y la integración de los datos", explican los responsables del proyecto.
La herramienta podría ser de gran utilidad para las grandes organizaciones, pero también para grupos pequeños que "podrán empezar a almacenar sus datos de laboratorio utilizando este sistema, siguiendo los estándares de la comunidad, sin necesidad de tener un apoyo bioinformático propio", ha subrayado Jules Griffin, de la Universidad de Cambridge. "Es como si Facebook nos permitiera a todos nuestra propia página web; de repente, no necesitas ser un experto en ordenadores para mostrar tu información al resto del mundo".
Los miembros de esta iniciativa, liderada por la Universidad de Oxford (Reino Unido) y el Instituto de Células Madre de Harvard (EEUU), explican esta semana en 'Nature Genetics' la necesidad de adoptar "tecnologías que faciliten la interoperabilidad y promuevan el crecimiento de la cultura del 'open data' común".
"Ahora estamos trabajando juntos para obtener los medios para manejar cantidades enormes de datos que de otra forma serían incompatibles", ha explicado Susanna-Assunta Sansone, líder de grupo del proyecto en la universidad británica. De momento, han puesto en marcha una web a través de la que se podrá acceder a toda la información: ISA Commons.
"Un ejemplo de cómo funciona esto en el Instituto de Células Madre de Harvard es que ahora podemos encontrar la relación entre experimentos con células madre de la sangre de los peces y tumores infantiles", señala Wilson Hide, director de la división de Bioinformática de este organismo.
La columna vertebral de esta nueva forma de archivar información la forman tres categorías que deben utilizar los participantes: "investigación (el contexto del proyecto) , estudio (unidad de investigación) y ensayo (medición analítica)". Sobre ellas "se articulan el descubrimiento, el intercambio y la integración de los datos", explican los responsables del proyecto.
La herramienta podría ser de gran utilidad para las grandes organizaciones, pero también para grupos pequeños que "podrán empezar a almacenar sus datos de laboratorio utilizando este sistema, siguiendo los estándares de la comunidad, sin necesidad de tener un apoyo bioinformático propio", ha subrayado Jules Griffin, de la Universidad de Cambridge. "Es como si Facebook nos permitiera a todos nuestra propia página web; de repente, no necesitas ser un experto en ordenadores para mostrar tu información al resto del mundo".
**Publicado en "EL MUNDO"
Genetics study reveals how bacteria behind serious childhood disease evolve to evade vaccines
Genetics has provided surprising insights into why vaccines used in both the UK and US to combat serious childhood infections can eventually fail. The study, recently published in Nature Genetics, which investigates how bacteria change their disguise to evade the vaccines, has implications for how future vaccines can be made more effective. Pneumococcus (Streptococcus pneumoniae) causes potentially life-threatening diseases including pneumonia and meningitis. Pneumococcal infections are thought to kill around a million young children worldwide each year, though the success of vaccination programmes has led to a dramatic fall in the number of cases in countries such as the UK and US. These vaccines recognise the bacteria by its polysaccharide, the material found on the outside of the bacterial cell. There are over ninety different kinds -- or 'serotypes' -- of the bacteria, each with a different polysaccharide coating.
In 2000, the US introduced a pneumococcal vaccine which targeted seven of the ninety serotypes. This '7-valent' vaccine was extremely effective and had a dramatic effect on reducing disease amongst the age groups targeted. Remarkably, the vaccine has also prevented transmission from young children to adults, resulting in tens of thousands fewer cases of pneumococcal disease each year. The same vaccine was introduced in the UK in 2006 and was similarly successful.
In spite of the success of the vaccine programmes, some pneumococcal strains managed to continue to cause disease by camouflaging themselves from the vaccine. In research funded by the Wellcome Trust, scientists at the University of Oxford and at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta studied what happened after the introduction of this vaccine in the US. They used the latest genomic techniques combined with epidemiology to understand how different serotypes of the pneumococcus bacteria evolve to replace those targeted by the initial vaccine.
The researchers found bacteria that had evaded the vaccine by swapping the region of the genome responsible for making the polysaccharide coating with the same region from a different serotype, not targeted by the vaccine. This effectively disguised the bacteria, making it invisible to the vaccine. This exchange of genome regions occurred during a process known as recombination, whereby one of the bacteria replaces a piece of its own DNA with a piece from another bacterial type.
Dr Rory Bowden, from the University of Oxford, explains: "Imagine that each strain of the pneumococcus bacteria is a class of schoolchildren, all wearing the school uniform. If a boy steals from his corner shop, a policeman -- in this case the vaccine -- can easily identify which school he belongs to by looking at his uniform. But if the boy swaps his sweater with a friend from another school, the policemen will no longer be able to recognise him and he can escape. This is how the pneumococcus bacteria evade detection by the vaccine."
Dr Bowden and colleagues identified a number of recombined serotypes that had managed to evade the vaccine. One in particular grew in frequency and spread across the US from east to west over several years. They also showed that during recombination, the bacteria also traded a number of other parts of the genome at the same time, a phenomenon never before observed in natural populations of pneumococcus. This is of particular concern as recombination involving multiple fragments of DNA allows rapid simultaneous exchange of key regions of the genome within the bug, potentially allowing it to quickly develop antibiotic resistance.
The original 7-valent vaccine in the US has now been replaced by a 13-valent vaccine, which targets thirteen different serotypes, including the particular type which had escaped the original vaccine. In the UK, the 7-valent vaccine resulted in a substantial drop in disease overall. This overall effect was a mixture of a large drop in frequency of the serotypes targeted by the vaccine with some growth in serotypes not targeted by the vaccine. The 13-valent vaccine was introduced in the UK in 2010.
Derrick Crook, Professor of Microbiology at the University of Oxford and Infection Control Doctor at the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust, adds: "Childhood vaccines are very effective at reducing disease and death at a stage in our lives when we are susceptible to serious infections. Understanding what makes a vaccine successful and what can cause it to fail is important. We should now be able to understand better what happens when a pneumococcal vaccine is introduced into a new population. Our work suggests that current strategies for developing new vaccines are largely effective but may not have long term effects that are as successful as hoped."
Dr Bernard Beall, a scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention commented: "The current vaccine strategy of targeting predominant pneumococcal serotypes is extremely effective, however our observations indicate that the organism will continue to adapt to this strategy with some measurable success."
The Wellcome Trust, which part-funded this research, views combating infectious disease and maximising the health benefits of genetic research as two of its strategic priorities. Dr Michael Dunn, Head of Molecular and Physiological Sciences at the Wellcome Trust commented: "New technologies allow us to rapidly sequence disease-causing organisms and see how they evolve. Coupled with collaborations with epidemiologists, we can then track how they spread and monitor the potential impact this will have on vaccine efficiency. This will provide useful lessons for vaccine implementation strategies."
** Source: Wellcome Trust
In 2000, the US introduced a pneumococcal vaccine which targeted seven of the ninety serotypes. This '7-valent' vaccine was extremely effective and had a dramatic effect on reducing disease amongst the age groups targeted. Remarkably, the vaccine has also prevented transmission from young children to adults, resulting in tens of thousands fewer cases of pneumococcal disease each year. The same vaccine was introduced in the UK in 2006 and was similarly successful.
In spite of the success of the vaccine programmes, some pneumococcal strains managed to continue to cause disease by camouflaging themselves from the vaccine. In research funded by the Wellcome Trust, scientists at the University of Oxford and at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta studied what happened after the introduction of this vaccine in the US. They used the latest genomic techniques combined with epidemiology to understand how different serotypes of the pneumococcus bacteria evolve to replace those targeted by the initial vaccine.
The researchers found bacteria that had evaded the vaccine by swapping the region of the genome responsible for making the polysaccharide coating with the same region from a different serotype, not targeted by the vaccine. This effectively disguised the bacteria, making it invisible to the vaccine. This exchange of genome regions occurred during a process known as recombination, whereby one of the bacteria replaces a piece of its own DNA with a piece from another bacterial type.
Dr Rory Bowden, from the University of Oxford, explains: "Imagine that each strain of the pneumococcus bacteria is a class of schoolchildren, all wearing the school uniform. If a boy steals from his corner shop, a policeman -- in this case the vaccine -- can easily identify which school he belongs to by looking at his uniform. But if the boy swaps his sweater with a friend from another school, the policemen will no longer be able to recognise him and he can escape. This is how the pneumococcus bacteria evade detection by the vaccine."
Dr Bowden and colleagues identified a number of recombined serotypes that had managed to evade the vaccine. One in particular grew in frequency and spread across the US from east to west over several years. They also showed that during recombination, the bacteria also traded a number of other parts of the genome at the same time, a phenomenon never before observed in natural populations of pneumococcus. This is of particular concern as recombination involving multiple fragments of DNA allows rapid simultaneous exchange of key regions of the genome within the bug, potentially allowing it to quickly develop antibiotic resistance.
The original 7-valent vaccine in the US has now been replaced by a 13-valent vaccine, which targets thirteen different serotypes, including the particular type which had escaped the original vaccine. In the UK, the 7-valent vaccine resulted in a substantial drop in disease overall. This overall effect was a mixture of a large drop in frequency of the serotypes targeted by the vaccine with some growth in serotypes not targeted by the vaccine. The 13-valent vaccine was introduced in the UK in 2010.
Derrick Crook, Professor of Microbiology at the University of Oxford and Infection Control Doctor at the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust, adds: "Childhood vaccines are very effective at reducing disease and death at a stage in our lives when we are susceptible to serious infections. Understanding what makes a vaccine successful and what can cause it to fail is important. We should now be able to understand better what happens when a pneumococcal vaccine is introduced into a new population. Our work suggests that current strategies for developing new vaccines are largely effective but may not have long term effects that are as successful as hoped."
Dr Bernard Beall, a scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention commented: "The current vaccine strategy of targeting predominant pneumococcal serotypes is extremely effective, however our observations indicate that the organism will continue to adapt to this strategy with some measurable success."
The Wellcome Trust, which part-funded this research, views combating infectious disease and maximising the health benefits of genetic research as two of its strategic priorities. Dr Michael Dunn, Head of Molecular and Physiological Sciences at the Wellcome Trust commented: "New technologies allow us to rapidly sequence disease-causing organisms and see how they evolve. Coupled with collaborations with epidemiologists, we can then track how they spread and monitor the potential impact this will have on vaccine efficiency. This will provide useful lessons for vaccine implementation strategies."
** Source: Wellcome Trust
Nuevo premio para la campaña publicitaria 'Pastillas contra el dolor ajeno'
'Pastillas contra el dolor ajeno', el trabajo de la agencia murciana Germinal Comunicación para Médicos Sin Fronteras, se ha alzado con The Grand Cup 2011 en Estambul. Se trata del máximo galardón de la Intercontinental Advertising Cup (The Cup), celebrado en Estambul del 24 al 27 de enero.
Esta misma campaña ha conseguido otras dos copas en las categorías 'Product & Services' (Best of Social Engagements) y 'Admaking' (Best of Strategy), según fuentes de la organización.
Con su éxito en la quinta edición de The Cup, esta campaña, una de las más premiadas de los últimos tiempos, cierra un año en el que ha conseguido más de 15 premios en festivales nacionales e internacionales, entre los que se cuentan una Copa de Iberoamérica, un Sol de Platino y dos Oros en el pasado FIAP.
En The Cup, el único certamen de carácter intercontinental, se premian las ideas creativas por encima de cualquier otro criterio, compitiendo entre sí piezas y campañas con independencia del medio o la categoría específicos para los que fueron desarrollados.
Germinal se convierte en la segunda agencia española que consigue The Grand Cup, tras JWT, ganadora en 2008 con su campaña para Freixenet 'The Key to Reserva'. De las cinco ediciones celebradas hasta la fecha, tres han sido ganadas por países integrantes del FIAP, ya que a las dos victorias españolas, hay que añadir la de BBDO Argentina en 2007.
Jorge Martínez, máximo responsable creativo de la campaña, y socio fundador de Germinal, ha destacado que "el triunfo de esta campaña es el triunfo de la creatividad y de las ideas, así como la prueba evidente de que la publicidad, cuando se vuelcan en ella energía y talento, se convierte en una poderosa herramienta para transformar y mejorar nuestro entorno".
Para Francisco José González, director del Festival Iberoamericano de la Publicidad y The Cup en España, "el hecho de que una pequeña agencia de Murcia se haya colado en los rankings entre las grandes multinacionales, obteniendo el máximo galardón del festival más internacional de nuestro sector, es un hito extraordinario que demuestra que el talento es, y seguirá siendo, la base fundamental de industria publicitaria".
Esta misma campaña ha conseguido otras dos copas en las categorías 'Product & Services' (Best of Social Engagements) y 'Admaking' (Best of Strategy), según fuentes de la organización.
Con su éxito en la quinta edición de The Cup, esta campaña, una de las más premiadas de los últimos tiempos, cierra un año en el que ha conseguido más de 15 premios en festivales nacionales e internacionales, entre los que se cuentan una Copa de Iberoamérica, un Sol de Platino y dos Oros en el pasado FIAP.
En The Cup, el único certamen de carácter intercontinental, se premian las ideas creativas por encima de cualquier otro criterio, compitiendo entre sí piezas y campañas con independencia del medio o la categoría específicos para los que fueron desarrollados.
Germinal se convierte en la segunda agencia española que consigue The Grand Cup, tras JWT, ganadora en 2008 con su campaña para Freixenet 'The Key to Reserva'. De las cinco ediciones celebradas hasta la fecha, tres han sido ganadas por países integrantes del FIAP, ya que a las dos victorias españolas, hay que añadir la de BBDO Argentina en 2007.
Jorge Martínez, máximo responsable creativo de la campaña, y socio fundador de Germinal, ha destacado que "el triunfo de esta campaña es el triunfo de la creatividad y de las ideas, así como la prueba evidente de que la publicidad, cuando se vuelcan en ella energía y talento, se convierte en una poderosa herramienta para transformar y mejorar nuestro entorno".
Para Francisco José González, director del Festival Iberoamericano de la Publicidad y The Cup en España, "el hecho de que una pequeña agencia de Murcia se haya colado en los rankings entre las grandes multinacionales, obteniendo el máximo galardón del festival más internacional de nuestro sector, es un hito extraordinario que demuestra que el talento es, y seguirá siendo, la base fundamental de industria publicitaria".
**AGENCIAS
Early intervention may curb dangerous college drinking
The first few weeks of college are a critical time in shaping students' drinking habits. Now Penn State researchers have a tailored approach that may help prevent students from becoming heavy drinkers. "Research shows there is a spike in alcohol-related consequences that occur in the first few weeks of the semester, especially with college freshmen," said Michael J. Cleveland, research associate at the Prevention Research Center and the Methodology Center. "If you can buffer that and get beyond that point and safely navigate through that passage, you reduce the risk of later problems occurring."
The researchers tested two different methods of intervention on incoming freshmen -- parent-based intervention and peer-based intervention. Cleveland and his colleagues found that students who were non-drinkers before starting college, and who received the parent-based intervention, were unlikely to escalate to heavy drinking when surveyed again during the fall semester of their first year.
Students who were heavy drinkers during the summer before college were more likely to transition out of that group if they received either parent-based intervention or peer-based intervention. However, if a heavy-drinker received both interventions, there was no enhanced effect. Cleveland reported online in Psychology of Addictive Behaviors that 8 percent of the incoming freshmen were heavy drinkers the summer before starting college. The researchers surveyed the students again during the fall semester and found 28 percent of the freshmen now drank heavily. The results of the study were based on a study of 1,275 high-risk matriculating college students originally conducted in 2006 by Rob Turrisi, professor of biobehavioral health. Turrisi and his colleagues randomly assigned students to one of four intervention groups -- parent-based intervention only, peer-based intervention only, both parent- and peer-based intervention or no intervention -- and then surveyed the students on their drinking behaviors the summer before they entered college and then again during their first fall semester.
The parent-based intervention involved parents receiving a 35-page handbook outlining how to discuss the issue of alcohol and how to relate to their college student. Parents were asked to fill out an evaluation of the booklet, which also served as a measure to determine how many parents read the material. All parents completed the evaluations.
For peer-based intervention, subjects met one-on-one with a trained peer facilitator once within the first two weeks on campus. The meetings were 45 to 60 minutes long and included "perceived and actual descriptive norms for drinking, drinking consequences, alcoholic caloric consumption and hours of exercise required to burn those calories," the researchers report.
All students included in the survey were former high school athletes, chosen because this group is considered at high risk for heavy alcohol use and its consequences, which include risky sex, driving drunk and personal injury or death.
In the new investigation, Cleveland and his colleagues approached the study differently. Rather than focusing on average levels of drinking -- peak blood alcohol content, drinks per weekend and drinks per week -- Cleveland reanalyzed the data using a person-centered approach to determine students' patterns of drinking as well as how the students responded to intervention. This allowed the researchers to examine how drinking patterns varied throughout the week as well as how the interventions could be linked to students' transitions from one sub-group to another.
"We found four sub-groups of drinkers, which is an important advance to understanding different types of drinking that were present in this college sample," said Cleveland.
The sub-groups included non-drinkers, who did not report drinking alcohol at all; weekend non-bingers, who tended to only consume alcohol socially on Fridays and Saturdays; weekend bingers, who were likely to report binge drinking and getting drunk in the past month on Fridays and Saturdays; and heavy drinkers, who reported drinking every day of the week, most notably Thursdays.
Although neither intervention strategy appeared to influence the weekend drinkers, whether bingers or non-bingers, the intervention effects on the nondrinkers and heavy drinkers were promising, said Cleveland.
"From here we may be able to tailor the intervention to different types of students, identifying those students who are at different types of risk," said Cleveland. "By figuring out a way to match the intervention to the individual you can also maximize your resources for intervention."
**Source: Penn State
The researchers tested two different methods of intervention on incoming freshmen -- parent-based intervention and peer-based intervention. Cleveland and his colleagues found that students who were non-drinkers before starting college, and who received the parent-based intervention, were unlikely to escalate to heavy drinking when surveyed again during the fall semester of their first year.
Students who were heavy drinkers during the summer before college were more likely to transition out of that group if they received either parent-based intervention or peer-based intervention. However, if a heavy-drinker received both interventions, there was no enhanced effect. Cleveland reported online in Psychology of Addictive Behaviors that 8 percent of the incoming freshmen were heavy drinkers the summer before starting college. The researchers surveyed the students again during the fall semester and found 28 percent of the freshmen now drank heavily. The results of the study were based on a study of 1,275 high-risk matriculating college students originally conducted in 2006 by Rob Turrisi, professor of biobehavioral health. Turrisi and his colleagues randomly assigned students to one of four intervention groups -- parent-based intervention only, peer-based intervention only, both parent- and peer-based intervention or no intervention -- and then surveyed the students on their drinking behaviors the summer before they entered college and then again during their first fall semester.
The parent-based intervention involved parents receiving a 35-page handbook outlining how to discuss the issue of alcohol and how to relate to their college student. Parents were asked to fill out an evaluation of the booklet, which also served as a measure to determine how many parents read the material. All parents completed the evaluations.
For peer-based intervention, subjects met one-on-one with a trained peer facilitator once within the first two weeks on campus. The meetings were 45 to 60 minutes long and included "perceived and actual descriptive norms for drinking, drinking consequences, alcoholic caloric consumption and hours of exercise required to burn those calories," the researchers report.
All students included in the survey were former high school athletes, chosen because this group is considered at high risk for heavy alcohol use and its consequences, which include risky sex, driving drunk and personal injury or death.
In the new investigation, Cleveland and his colleagues approached the study differently. Rather than focusing on average levels of drinking -- peak blood alcohol content, drinks per weekend and drinks per week -- Cleveland reanalyzed the data using a person-centered approach to determine students' patterns of drinking as well as how the students responded to intervention. This allowed the researchers to examine how drinking patterns varied throughout the week as well as how the interventions could be linked to students' transitions from one sub-group to another.
"We found four sub-groups of drinkers, which is an important advance to understanding different types of drinking that were present in this college sample," said Cleveland.
The sub-groups included non-drinkers, who did not report drinking alcohol at all; weekend non-bingers, who tended to only consume alcohol socially on Fridays and Saturdays; weekend bingers, who were likely to report binge drinking and getting drunk in the past month on Fridays and Saturdays; and heavy drinkers, who reported drinking every day of the week, most notably Thursdays.
Although neither intervention strategy appeared to influence the weekend drinkers, whether bingers or non-bingers, the intervention effects on the nondrinkers and heavy drinkers were promising, said Cleveland.
"From here we may be able to tailor the intervention to different types of students, identifying those students who are at different types of risk," said Cleveland. "By figuring out a way to match the intervention to the individual you can also maximize your resources for intervention."
**Source: Penn State
Alcohol and your heart: Friend or foe?
A meta-analysis done by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) into the relationship between alcohol consumption and heart disease provides new insight into the long-held belief that drinking a glass of red wine a day can help protect against heart disease. "It's complicated," says Dr. Juergen Rehm, director of social and epidemiological research at CAMH. Dr. Rehm's paper, co-authored by Michael Roerecke, was recently published in the journal Addiction. "While a cardioprotective association between alcohol use and ischaemic heart disease exists, it cannot be assumed for all drinkers, even at low levels of intake," says Dr. Rehm.
Ischaemic heart disease is a common cause of illness and death in the Western world. Symptoms are angina, heart pain, and heart failure. Based on 44 studies, the analyses used 38,627 ischaemic heart disease events (including deaths) among 957,684 people.
"We see substantial variation across studies, in particular for an average consumption of one to two drinks a day," says Dr. Rehm. The protective association may vary by gender, drinking patterns, and the specific health effects of interest. Differential risk curves were found by sex, with higher risk for morbidity and mortality in women.
Moreover, for any particular individual, the relationship between alcohol consumption and ischemic heart disease should not be isolated from other disease outcomes. Even at low levels, alcohol intake can have a detrimental effect on many other disease outcomes, including on several cancers.
"Even one drink a day increases risk of breast cancer, for example," says Dr. Rehm. "However, with as little as one drink a day, the net effect on mortality is still beneficial. After this, the net risk increases with every drink."
"If someone binge drinks even once a month, any health benefits from light to moderate drinking disappear." Binge drinking is defined more than four drinks on one occasion for women, and more than five for men.
Given the complex, potentially beneficial or detrimental effects of alcohol on ischaemic heart disease in addition to the detrimental effects on other disease categories, any advice by physicians on individual drinking has to take the individual risk constellation (such as familial predisposition for certain diseases and behavior with respect to other risk factors) into consideration.
"More evidence on the overall benefit-risk ratio of average alcohol consumption in relation to ischaemic heart disease and other diseases is needed in order to inform the general public or physicians about safe or low-risk drinking levels," the study concludes. "Findings from this study support current low-risk drinking guidelines, if these recognize lower drinking limits for women."
**Source: Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
Ischaemic heart disease is a common cause of illness and death in the Western world. Symptoms are angina, heart pain, and heart failure. Based on 44 studies, the analyses used 38,627 ischaemic heart disease events (including deaths) among 957,684 people.
"We see substantial variation across studies, in particular for an average consumption of one to two drinks a day," says Dr. Rehm. The protective association may vary by gender, drinking patterns, and the specific health effects of interest. Differential risk curves were found by sex, with higher risk for morbidity and mortality in women.
Moreover, for any particular individual, the relationship between alcohol consumption and ischemic heart disease should not be isolated from other disease outcomes. Even at low levels, alcohol intake can have a detrimental effect on many other disease outcomes, including on several cancers.
"Even one drink a day increases risk of breast cancer, for example," says Dr. Rehm. "However, with as little as one drink a day, the net effect on mortality is still beneficial. After this, the net risk increases with every drink."
"If someone binge drinks even once a month, any health benefits from light to moderate drinking disappear." Binge drinking is defined more than four drinks on one occasion for women, and more than five for men.
Given the complex, potentially beneficial or detrimental effects of alcohol on ischaemic heart disease in addition to the detrimental effects on other disease categories, any advice by physicians on individual drinking has to take the individual risk constellation (such as familial predisposition for certain diseases and behavior with respect to other risk factors) into consideration.
"More evidence on the overall benefit-risk ratio of average alcohol consumption in relation to ischaemic heart disease and other diseases is needed in order to inform the general public or physicians about safe or low-risk drinking levels," the study concludes. "Findings from this study support current low-risk drinking guidelines, if these recognize lower drinking limits for women."
**Source: Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
Desde ahora .las comunidades autónomas decidirán los precios de los fármacos
Por primera vez, las comunidades autónomas tendrán voz y voto en la financiación de un nuevo medicamento. La nueva estructura del Ministerio de Sanidad y Asuntos Sociales prevé la participación de dos representantes de comunidades autónomas en la comisión interministerial de precios de los fármacos. Hasta la fecha, el Ministerio de Sanidad tenía la potestad exclusiva para decidir qué medicamentos debían tener financiación y fijar su precio. El Gobierno central siempre decidía, pero eran las comunidades autónomas las que pagaban la factura.
Esta situación, considerada injusta para la mayoría de los Gobiernos regionales, es la que ha querido corregir el nuevo equipo de Sanidad. Los dos representantes autonómicos serán elegidos a propuesta del Consejo Interterritorial del Sistema Nacional de Salud, el organismo que coordina a las comunidades autónomas con el Ministerio y donde participan todos los consejeros de Sanidad. Aún no hay orden del día para la celebración del próximo consejo interterritorial pero podría ser a mediados del próximo mes de febrero. Será entonces cuando se elija a los dos consejeros de Sanidad que tendrán voz en la comisión. Su participación será rotatoria.
La Comisión estará presidida por Pilar Farjas, secretaria general del Ministerio de Sanidad. Su vicepresidenta será la directora de Farmacia, Sagrario Pérez Castellanos, también del Ministerio. En las vocalías, además de los consejeros, habrá representantes de los ministerios de Hacienda e Industria.
-El nuevo «sintrom»
Al final de la legislatura, el anterior equipo de Sanidad dio luz verde a la financiación pública de cinco nuevos medicamentos de alto coste, como el sustituto del popular «sintrom», que no gustó a las comunidades. El nuevo «sintrom», que toman los enfermos cardiovasculares para la prevención del ictus y evitar la formación de coágulos, cuesta 63 euros mensuales frente a los 3 del fármaco tradicional. En España lo toman 650.000 pacientes.
**Publicado en "ABC"
Esta situación, considerada injusta para la mayoría de los Gobiernos regionales, es la que ha querido corregir el nuevo equipo de Sanidad. Los dos representantes autonómicos serán elegidos a propuesta del Consejo Interterritorial del Sistema Nacional de Salud, el organismo que coordina a las comunidades autónomas con el Ministerio y donde participan todos los consejeros de Sanidad. Aún no hay orden del día para la celebración del próximo consejo interterritorial pero podría ser a mediados del próximo mes de febrero. Será entonces cuando se elija a los dos consejeros de Sanidad que tendrán voz en la comisión. Su participación será rotatoria.
La Comisión estará presidida por Pilar Farjas, secretaria general del Ministerio de Sanidad. Su vicepresidenta será la directora de Farmacia, Sagrario Pérez Castellanos, también del Ministerio. En las vocalías, además de los consejeros, habrá representantes de los ministerios de Hacienda e Industria.
-El nuevo «sintrom»
Al final de la legislatura, el anterior equipo de Sanidad dio luz verde a la financiación pública de cinco nuevos medicamentos de alto coste, como el sustituto del popular «sintrom», que no gustó a las comunidades. El nuevo «sintrom», que toman los enfermos cardiovasculares para la prevención del ictus y evitar la formación de coágulos, cuesta 63 euros mensuales frente a los 3 del fármaco tradicional. En España lo toman 650.000 pacientes.
**Publicado en "ABC"
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