The study is the first to identify common genetic variants influencing stroke risk in the United States and may lead to better treatments, they reported on Wednesday.

While other stroke-related genes have been discovered, none involved such a wide portion of the population, said Eric Boerwinkle of The University of Texas Health Science Center.

“This is a first step in unraveling the genetic contributions of this debilitating disease,” said Boerwinkle, whose team was one of several contributing to the study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Stroke is the third-leading cause of death in the United States and causes serious long-term disabilities for many worldwide.

Boerwinkle said the teams found two genetic variants on chromosome 12 near two genes that are implicated in stroke. One, called WNK1, is associated with blood pressure control and the other, NINJ2, is linked with brain injury repair.

The two genes, next to each other, both are also strongly linked with ischemic stroke, which is the most common type of stroke and is caused by blocked blood vessels in the brain.

Boerwinkle said it is not clear which specific gene is implicated, but he said the most likely suspect is NINJ2.

They found two single-letter changes in the DNA, known as single nucleotide polymorphisms or SNPs — pronounced “snips” — near NINJ2 that seem to send the strongest stroke “signal.” One is found in about 20 percent of whites they checked and 10 percent of African-Americans.

Having just one copy of this genetic variation can raise the risk of ischemic strokes by about 30 percent, he said — although the study says it is unlikely the SNPs are the actual cause of stroke but probably associated with the actual genetic cause.

The findings come from an analysis of the genetic code of more than 19,000 people in the United States and Europe taking part in four long-term studies of cardiovascular risks.

The teams were looking for SNPs among 1,544 people who had strokes, compared with 18,058 people who did not.

Boerwinkle said more work needs to be done to sort out which genes are at play, but he said the findings should give drug companies a new target for researching better treatments.

Dr. Walter Koroshetz, deputy director of the U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, which supported the study, said the findings are not strong enough to alter a patient’s stroke prevention strategy.

But he said the results “will lead scientists to direct their attention to new, important biologic mechanisms and hopefully new treatments to prevent stroke.”

Scientists uncover genetic risks for stroke

Related posts

• Keeping tabs on blood pressure at home (0)
• The Stink in Farts Controls Blood Pressure (0)
• Stars, Networks Stand Up To Cancer (0)
• Researchers link BPA exposure to health concerns (0)
• Obesity Gene No Longer Wholly Responsible for Overweight People (0)

Patients also showed improvements in the functioning of the insulin-producing cells that are attacked and destroyed in patients with type 1 diabetes.

Four of the 23 patients who took part in the study remained insulin free for at least three years and one patient went without insulin injections for more than four years.

The patients were the first to receive the novel stem cell transplant therapy to treat their type 1 diabetes.

After receiving transplants of their own blood stem cells, about half of the patients in the study became insulin free for an average of two and a half years.

But the treatment, which included the use of highly toxic immune-system suppressing drugs, was not without troubling side effects.

Two patients developed pneumonia while hospitalized for immunosuppression therapy, and nine developed low sperm counts as a result of exposure to one toxic drug. The latest results from the study appear in the April 15 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Diabetes specialist David M. Nathan, MD, who was not involved with the study, tells WebMD that the stem cell treatment is promising, but he adds that the side effects remain troubling.

“This is a pretty bold intervention that can involve serious complications,” he says. “The hope is that this will lead to more benign treatments that can keep people off insulin.”
Stem Cells for Diabetes

All the patients included in the stem cell study had been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes within six weeks of treatment, and all were producing some insulin on their own, although this production was greatly diminished.

Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease in which the immune system attacks and destroys the insulin-producing cells within the pancreas.

The goal of the treatment was to kill the immune cells that were killing the insulin-producing cells and replace them with immature cells not programmed to disrupt insulin production.

The treatment, called autologous nonmyeloablative hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), involved several steps.

Soon after diagnosis, the patients were given drugs to stimulate production of blood stem cells. The blood stem cells were then removed from the body and frozen.

Patients were hospitalized and given the toxic drugs that killed their circulating immune cells, and then the harvested blood stem cells were put back into the patient.

The first patient to receive the treatment did not improve, probably because he had too few functioning insulin-producing cells left.

But 20 of the next 22 patients treated with the experimental therapy were able to do without insulin injections or greatly reduce their insulin use for a few months to several years.

Patients who remained insulin-independent showed significant improvement in their ability to produce insulin two years after treatment, compared to pre-treatment production levels.

The ability to show direct improvement in insulin-producing cell function is important because critics have questioned whether the treatment really works.

Soon after being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, many patients enter what is known as a “honeymoon” period, thought to result from improved diet and lifestyle.

It has been suggested that the early improvements seen in the patients who got the stem cell treatment was because of this lifestyle-related remission and not the treatment.

“This treatment actually stopped the autoimmune process and the remaining [insulin-producing] cells that were not destroyed worked well enough to keep many of these patients off insulin,” Nathan says.

Stem Cells Promising for Type 1 Diabetes

Related posts

• Rapid HIV evolution avoids attack (0)
• New breast cancer vaccine helps body fight tumors (0)
• More parents ponder cancer gene tests for kids (0)
• Mini antibodies: biotech’s next big thing? (0)
• MannKind founder says inhaled insulin system could be ‘blockbuster’ (0)

Treating Alzheimer’s with the hormone insulin, or with drugs to boost its effect, may help patients, they claim.

The journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports insulin could protect against damage to brain cells key to memory.

UK experts said the find could be the basis of new drug treatments.

The relationship between insulin and brain disease has been under scrutiny since doctors found evidence that the hormone was active there.

The latest study, joint research between Northwestern University in the US and the University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, looked at the effects of insulin on proteins called ADDLs, which build up in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients and cause damage.

They took neurons – brain cells – from the hippocampus, a part of the brain with a pivotal role in memory formation.

These were treated with insulin and a drug called rosiglitazone, given to type II diabetics to increase the effect of the hormone on cells.

After this, the cells were far less susceptible to damage when exposed to ADDLs, suggesting that insulin was capable of blocking their effects.

Treatment hope

Professor William Klein, from Northwestern, said that drugs to boost the brain’s sensitivity to insulin could provide “new avenues” for treating Alzheimer’s disease.

“Sensitivity to insulin can decline with aging, which presents a novel risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease – our results demonstrate that bolstering insulin signalling can protect neurons from harm.”

His colleague, Professor Sergio Ferreira, from Rio de Janeiro, said: “Recognising that Alzheimer’s disease is a type of brain diabetes points the way to novel discoveries that may finally result in disease-modifying treatments for this devastating disease.”

A spokesman for the Alzheimer’s Research Trust said that the study shed light on how insulin interacted with toxic proteins linked to the disease.

“People with diabetes are at higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s. It is well known that insulin affects how the brain works, and this research adds more evidence to the possibility that Alzheimer’s could be a type of brain diabetes.

“The most exciting implications are that some diabetes drugs have the potential to be developed as Alzheimer’s treatments.”

BBC NEWS | Health | Alzheimer’s ‘is brain diabetes

Related posts

• Surprise Finding May Lead to Leukemia Treatment (0)
• New Diabetes Drug Works Well in Trial (0)
• Gastric Bypass Surgery Less Helpful for Diabetics (0)
• Worm ‘may help treat arthritis’ (0)
• When Diabetics Get Sick (0)

Encouraging findings on several different drugs were presented Thursday at the CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium in Texas.

First in the line-up, the osteoporosis drug zoledronic acid (Zometa) appears to shrink breast tumors in patients who undergo chemotherapy.

The drug is already approved to treat breast cancer that has spread to the bone and, earlier this year, was reported to lower the risk of breast cancer recurrence in pre-menopausal women with early estrogen- or progesterone-positive tumors.

In an analysis of slightly more than 200 women, those who received Zometa in addition to chemotherapy had better results than those receiving chemotherapy alone. After compensating for variables such as estrogen receptor status and treatment duration, residual invasive tumor size was 42.4 millimeters in the chemotherapy alone group, and 28.2 millimeters in the combination group.

“This data suggests that zoledronic acid is doing something more than protecting bone,” said study senior author Dr. Robert Coleman, a professor of medical oncology at the University of Sheffield in England. “It’s not practice-changing. It’s hypothesis-generating, which will lead to the design of new trials to look at this in detail. But this is the first patient-related evidence.”

Coleman spoke, along with researchers involved with other trials, at a Thursday teleconference. Other studies showing promise included:

Postmenopausal women with estrogen receptor- and/or progesterone receptor-positive breast cancer who took the aromatase inhibitor exemestane (Aromasin) had a 15 percent relative reduction in recurrences and a 19 percent reduction in the risk of distant metastasis, compared with those taking tamoxifen alone. “Exemestane is very effective at preventing recurrences,” said Dr. Stephen Jones, medical director of U.S. Oncology Research in Houston. Exemestane, like other aromatase inhibitors, blocks production of estrogen, while tamoxifen, long the gold standard in breast cancer therapy, inhibits the hormone’s effects in the body.Seventy percent of women receiving Herceptin (trastuzumab), a drug used to treat HER2-positive breast cancer, plus chemotherapy

before

surgery survived three years without a recurrence. Only slightly more than half of women receiving chemotherapy alone survived that long. The incidence of major heart problems was low. “Herceptin given before surgery with chemotherapy significantly [reduces the likelihood] of a recurrence in patients with advanced HER2-positive cancer, and most likely will translate into a benefit in terms of survival,” said Dr. Luca Gianni, director of medical oncology at the National Cancer Institute in Milan, Italy. “We think that this data establishes preoperative Herceptin with chemotherapy as a standard treatment option for women with advanced HER2-positive breast cancer.”Combining lapatinib (Tykerb), another HER2 inhibitor, with an aromatase inhibitor (in this case, letrozole) prolonged progression-free survival from three months among those taking letrozole (Femara) alone to 8.2 months in women taking both drugs. These patients had HER-2-positive metastatic breast cancer. “The combination shows benefits in controlling the disease and controlling it for longer than using endocrine therapy alone,” said Stephen Johnston, a consultant in medical oncology and reader in breast cancer medicine at Royal Marsden Hospital and Foundation in the United Kingdom. “The suggestion is that combined therapy may be the best approach.”Finally, aromatase inhibitors may be poised to replace tamoxifen as standard treatment to prevent breast cancer recurrence in women who have already undergone conventional therapy, according to a new meta-analysis. The analysis looked at two groups: women with postmenopausal estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer who took tamoxifen for five years after standard treatment and women who took tamoxifen but then switched to an aromatase inhibitor after initial treatment. “The data are still early but it does show a statistically significant advantage in [women who were switched from tamoxifen to an aromatase inhibitor] but not in [women who took tamoxifen for the full five years],” said Dr. James Ingle, director of the breast cancer program at the Mayo Clinic, in Rochester, Minn. “But you have to remember our experience with tamoxifen. It took 10 to 15 years to see the full effect of tamoxifen.”

washingtonpost.com

Related posts

• New breast cancer vaccine helps body fight tumors (0)
• Extra Virgin Olive Oil vs. Breast Cancer (0)
• Bone Drugs May Help Fight Breast Cancer (0)
• What is inflammatory breast cancer and is it worse than regular breast cancer? (0)
• Tau Protein Expression Predicts Breast Cancer Survival (0)

Although diabetics are advised to limit dietary protein to delay the progression of kidney disease, recent observations suggest that the benefit to the kidneys may have to do with “the protein source rather than quantity,” the investigators note in the American Journal of Kidney Diseases.

Despite research linking fish to improved outcomes in diabetics, they add, epidemiological evidence of this benefit is scarce.

Dr. Amanda I. Adler, at the Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit in Cambridge, and fellow researchers therefore conducted a population-based cross-sectional analysis of 22,000 subjects.

Among the 517 subjects with diabetes, the prevalence of albumin (protein) in the urine (macroalbuminuria), an indication of kidney disease, was 8.3 percent.

According to food questionnaire responses, 18 percent of diabetics who ate fish less than once a week had macroalbuminuria, versus 4 percent of those who included fish in their diet more than twice a week.

After adjusting the data for clinical, social, demographic, lifestyle, and dietary factors, regular fish consumption remained a significant predictor of freedom from macroalbuminuria among diabetics.

Adler’s group suggests that “the unique nutrient composition of fish” may prevent kidney damage by enhancing blood sugar control or improving lipid profiles.

They suggest that these findings set the stage for nutritional intervention trials to determine the optimal types of fish, modes of preparation, and dietary frequency to best protect the kidneys of patients with diabetes.

Reuters

Related posts

• Consumer Group Files Suit Vs Coke On VitaminWater (1)
• When Diabetics Get Sick (0)
• Surprise Finding May Lead to Leukemia Treatment (0)
• Stevia’s Sweeter Than Sugar, But Is It Safe? (0)
• Premixed Insulin May Offer Better Blood Sugar Control (0)

Researchers say the push comes at a crucial time in the battle against a disease which has been beaten back several times before, only to resurge with deadly vigor.

For Dr. Zena Mtajuka, an exhausted warrior on the frontlines of the fight against one of the planet’s most devastating diseases, a vaccine cannot come quickly enough.

“Malaria is our number one killer in this district,” said Mtajuka in her cramped office at Bagamoyo District Hospital north of Tanzania’s capital Dar es Salaam.

“The hardest thing is that members of the community come to the hospital too late. It makes them harder to save.”

Bagamoyo is one of almost a dozen research sites where scientists are in the final stages of preparing for a large-scale efficacy and safety trial of the “RTS,S” vaccine developed by GlaxoSmithKline PLC.

The trial, which is slated to begin in early 2009 and will involve 16,000 children in seven African countries, is the largest ever undertaken on the continent. Its funders, including groups supported by the Gates Foundation, hope it will result in a new and effective strategy against the disease.

Bagamoyo’s malaria burden is typical of many places in tropical Africa, home to most of the roughly one million people who die each year because of the mosquito-borne illness.

Public health officials estimate malaria costs Africa $12 billion due to deaths and lost productivity, a twin burden the world’s poorest continent cannot afford.

Public health advocates have cited malaria as an emerging global health success story, with new drugs, bed nets and insecticides contributing to sharp drops in infection rates in a number of countries.

Mtajuka said insecticide-treated bed nets and indoor spraying are not universally available here despite campaigns to promote them.

“Some people are using bed nets, but not all of them. Some are simply too poor to afford them,” Mtajuka said. “And since I’ve been here there’s been no indoor spraying. I think we had it once, three years ago, but not since then.”

Mtajuka, who already manages the hospital’s HIV/AIDS clinic, had to learn the malaria job fast. Her predecessor as malaria officer died earlier this year — of malaria.

Reuters

Related posts

• Two asthma drugs risky but Advair OK (0)
• Two anti-smoking drugs to carry mental-health warnings (0)
• Bristol-Myers joins Exelixis for cancer drugs (0)
• Worm ‘may help treat arthritis’ (0)
• Tetrabenazine (0)

Crestor, known chemically as rosuvastatin, reduced heart attack, stroke, need for bypass or angioplasty procedures and cardiovascular death by a surprising 45 percent over less than two years.

Results of the study, funded by AstraZeneca and called Jupiter, could help open a vast new market for statins as it shines a bright light on C-reactive protein — an indicator of arterial inflammation — and its connection to serious heart risks.

“Jupiter should dramatically change prevention guidelines,” Dr. James Willerson, director of the Texas Heart Institute in Houston, said in a statement.

“If your high sensitivity CRP (hsCRP) is high, you should be on statin therapy regardless of your cholesterol level. This is an approach we can start using tomorrow,” Willerson said.

Data from the study, presented at an American Heart Association meeting, should also help differentiate AstraZeneca’s powerful drug from rivals, such as Pfizer Inc’s Lipitor, in a crowded cholesterol market that includes generic options.

The 17,802-patient study was stopped more than two years early by independent safety monitors because the benefit from 20 milligrams of Crestor daily was so pronounced — 142 heart events with Crestor versus 251 on placebo. For every 25 patients treated, one serious heart event was avoided.

Heart attacks were cut by 54 percent, strokes by 48 percent and the need for angioplasty or bypass was cut by 46 percent compared with a placebo. Study subjects taking Crestor were also 20 percent less likely to die from any cause, a secondary goal of the trial.

EXCEEDING EXPECTATIONS

The benefits to men, women and minorities alike with healthy cholesterol levels were nearly twice what doctors expect from statins among even patients with high cholesterol.

But these were patients who under current guidelines would never be prescribed a statin — already the world’s most widely used prescription drugs — because they had excellent cholesterol levels.

“Half of all heart attacks and strokes occur in men and women with normal cholesterol,” said Dr. Paul Ridker, director of the Center for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston, who led the study.

“We’ve been searching for ways to improve detection of risk in those patients,” Ridker said.

“We can no longer assume that a patient with low cholesterol is a safe patient,” he said in an interview.

Dr. Robert Glynn, the study’s statistician, estimated that about 250,000 heart attacks, strokes, angioplasty and bypass procedures or deaths could be avoided in the United States alone if the Jupiter strategy was applied for five years.

Incidence of physician-reported diabetes was higher in the Crestor group — 245 versus 196 — a finding researchers said was consistent with other statin studies.

But incidence of cancer and cancer deaths were lower in the Crestor group — 298 and 35 for Crestor, compared with 314 and 58 on placebo.

The Jupiter data should provide a stark contrast between Crestor and rival combination cholesterol medicine Vytorin sold by Merck & Co and Schering-Plow Corp, which has been under assault from critics who say it has not proved that it cuts heart attack or death and may raise cancer risks.

Researcher have said that the cancer data from Jupiter and a controversial Vytorin study could both be a chance finding.

Volunteers in the Jupiter trial were middle-aged men and women with elevated hsCRP of greater than 2 milligrams/liter. The average was about 4 mg/liter, while the preferred level is less than 1 mg, Ridker said.

Patients on Crestor saw CRP levels drop by an average of 37 percent and LDL came down by 50 percent, researchers said.

It was not immediately clear whether the dramatic benefits were more the result of intensive LDL lowering or the impact on CRP levels.

“Getting CRP down on top of LDL lowering appears to have added incremental benefit,” Ridker said,

Reuters

Related posts

• Data released early to show lung drug Spiriva safe (0)
• Memory Loss Linked to Sleep Apnea (0)
• Health moves halve early deaths (0)
• Gene Mutation Is Tied to Fast Fat Breakdown (0)
• FDA warns against some diet pills sold on the Web (0)

The benefit appeared stronger in those under the age of 52, according to research that was presented Sunday at the American Heart Association’s annual scientific sessions, in New Orleans.

The findings, the first to demonstrate such an effect, may help explain why the flu shot lessens the risk of cardiovascular events in people with coronary artery disease, but the real current value of the data may lie in it convincing more people to get their annual shot.

“This kind of data is super helpful to me with patients in the clinic, particularly if they’ve had a blood clot,” said Dr. Ann Bolger, the William Watt Kerr professor of clinical medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, said during a news conference on Sunday. “It’s another nail to hammer on.”

Venous thromboembolism (VTE) refers to the development of a blood clot in a vein. Such a clot can be life-threatening if breaks off and travels to the lung (pulmonary embolism).

Experts had previously known that the flu vaccine can reduce the risk of cardiovascular events in people with coronary artery disease, but it wasn’t clear why.

“We had interesting epidemiological data before that flu increased cardiovascular deaths, but we didn’t know where from,” Bolger said. “This interesting observation implies that if you get the flu shot and avoid infection, you’re less likely to get clots in the veins and arteries.”

The authors compared 727 patients with one documented episode of VTE (deep vein thrombosis or pulmonary embolism) and no history of cancer within the past five years (cancer is a risk factor for clots) with an equal number of controls with no history of clots.

Participants filled out questionnaires regarding past medical history, especially risk factors for VTE, and whether or not they had had a flu shot in the past year. They were followed for five years.

In all, 28 percent of people who had had a clot and 32 percent of controls had been vaccinated.

Individuals who had had a flu shot were 26 percent less likely to develop a blood clot.

People younger than 52 were 48 percent less likely to form a blood clot. In women under the age of 51, the risk reduction was 50 percent, and in women under 51 taking birth control pills or estrogen replacement therapy, the risk reduction was 59 percent.

Researchers can only speculate as to why the flu shot might have this protective effect.

“There is an indication that influenza can induce systemic inflammation by increasing interleukin 6,” said study author Dr. Joseph Emmerich, a professor of vascular medicine at the University Paris Descartes and head of INSERM Lab 765, which investigates thrombosis. “If it was only due to the prevention of influenza in vaccinated people, we would have a much more important decrease in the incidence [of clots] during the winter season compared to other parts of the year.”

In fact, there was no such seasonal swing.

The heart association recommends that individuals with heart disease get an annual flu shot. Patients with cardiovascular disease should get the nasal spray vaccine.

washingtonpost.com

Related posts

• Healthy people may benefit from statins too (0)
• Tau Protein Expression Predicts Breast Cancer Survival (0)
• Searching for a Breast Cancer Vaccine (0)
• Researchers link BPA exposure to health concerns (0)
• New study firmly ties hormone use to breast cancer (0)

Publishing in the October issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine, researchers from the University of Washington tracked 10,704 Medicare beneficiaries (average age of 75.6 years) who had diabetes and were enrolled in a disease management program in Florida. The participants’ depression status was assessed by physician diagnosis, patient reports of antidepressant use, and answers to a brief screening test.

The researchers followed the participants for two years and recorded any deaths and causes of death that took place during that time.

The participants who had both diabetes and depression had an approximately 36 percent to 38 percent increased risk of dying from any cause. A total of 12.1 percent of these participants died during the study, compared with 10.4 percent of the participants without depression.

Participants who were treated with antidepressant medications in the year prior to the study had a 24 percent increased risk of death, compared to the participants who were not depressed. The study’s authors suspect that the participants treated with antidepressants may have had more severe depression than other mildly depressed participants.

There was no difference in the incidence of cardiovascular or cerebrovascular events between the participants who took antidepressants and those who were not depressed.

“Rates of mortality from vascular disease may be decreasing in recent years among patients with diabetes due to more aggressive treatment of high blood pressure, cholesterol, and glucose levels, as well as widespread use of preventative medications such as aspirin and beta blockers,” the researchers surmised.

The study’s authors said there were several reasons why depression was associated with increased risk of death among the participants in their study.

First, depression has been associated with poor self-care and increased risk of poor health habits such as smoking and overeating. And, depression has been linked with nervous system disorders, endocrine system disorders, and inflammatory markers.

The authors noted that their study has certain limitations. The participants were selected from only one area of the United States, and the follow-up period was relatively short. And the study did not collect information on education, income, weight, smoking habits, physical activity, or compliance in taking medications.

Older Diabetics With Depression Face Higher Death Rate on Yahoo! Health

Related posts

• Gastric Bypass Surgery Less Helpful for Diabetics (0)
• The Stink in Farts Controls Blood Pressure (0)
• Salt Contributes to Resistant High Blood Pressure (0)
• New Diabetes Drug Works Well in Trial (0)
• Keeping tabs on blood pressure at home (0)

Crohn’s disease is an inflammatory disorder of the gastrointestinal tract. It causes abdominal pain, fever, nausea, vomiting, weight loss and diarrhea. There is no known cure for Crohn’s disease.

Treatment options for people with Crohn’s disease include intravenous infusions of infliximab, which blocks tumor necrosis factor, an important cause of inflammation in Crohn’s disease. Another treatment, azathioprine, is taken orally, and suppresses the immune system.

In a study funded by Centocor Inc., the company that manufactures Remicade, researchers studied 508 people with moderate to severe Crohn’s disease.

They found that infliximab alone or in combination with azathioprine was a statistically more effective treatment than azathioprine alone. Specifically, 57 percent of patients who received combination therapy and 44 percent of those who received infliximab alone achieved steroid-free remission after 26 weeks, compared with 30 percent of patients who received azathioprine alone.

“Historically, patients with Crohn’s disease have been treated sequentially with steroids, then azathioprine, then monoclonal antibodies such as infliximab. This study definitively demonstrates that infliximab-based strategies are more effective than azathioprine,” lead author William Sandborn, a gastroenterologist at the Mayo Clinic, said in a clinic news release. “Clinicians should consider a shift in practice to incorporate this new data.”

In addition, 61 percent of the patients who received combination therapy also experienced bowel healing. This is important, since bowel healing is associated with a reduced risk of hospitalization and surgery.

“Our goal with this study was to determine if infliximab-based treatment strategies were safe and more effective than treatment with azathioprine in these patients,” said Sandborn. “For patients, this new therapy is an opportunity for remission and a significant improvement in quality of life.”

Infliximab-Based Treatment Effective for Crohn’s Patients on Yahoo! Health

Related posts

• Prostate Cancer Vaccine Meets Goal (0)
• Medical Marijuana – Myth or Reality? (0)
• FDA Approves Milnacipran for Fibromyalgia (0)
• Worm ‘may help treat arthritis’ (0)
• When Diabetics Get Sick (0)