Wake Forest University
The timing of treatment may be a key factor in whether hormone replacement therapy (HRT) can slow heart vessel disease, report researchers from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center and Tufts-New England Medical Center in the winter issue of Menopausal Medicine.
Injections of a progesterone-type hormone may be able to prevent more than a third of pre-term births in women with a history of giving birth early, reported Paul J. Meis, M.D., of Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, today (Feb. 6) at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine in San Francisco. "The evidence of this treatment's effectiveness was so dramatic, the research was stopped early," said Meis, the national principal investigator and a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Wake Forest. "This drug is readily available and can be used by doctors to improve outcomes for mothers and babies."
A major clinical trial of blood pressure medications has concluded that an inexpensive diuretic (water pill) is more effective in treating high blood pressure and preventing cardiovascular disease than newer more expensive medications. The Antihypertensive and Lipid-Lowering Treatment to Prevent Heart Attack Trial (ALLHAT), conducted from February 1994 though March 2002, compared the drugs for use in starting treatment for high blood pressure. "The preferred drug is the diuretic for three reasons. It provides better control of hypertension; it reduces complications from hypertension--particularly heart failure-- more effectively; and it is 10 to 20 times less expensive than the other drugs used in the trial," said Curt Furberg, M.D., Ph.D., of Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, chairman of the study's steering committee.
Researchers say they have found defects in the gene that produces a common protein in urine and that these defects are linked to two inherited kidney diseases. For six years, the researchers had studied a family from Western North Carolina that has been plagued with a rare kidney disease, trying to learn more about the genetics of the disease. The gene ordinarily produces a protein called either uromodulin or Tamm-Horsfall protein. Uromodulin is the most common protein released into the urine, but its function is unclear. Researchers identified mutations in the gene leading to defects in the protein. Defects in this protein led to a disease called familial juvenile hyperuricemic nephropathy.
The total package of good physical and mental health is elusive for most American adults, according to new research. Two-thirds of U.S. adults participating in a 1995 survey reported some degree of physical or mental infirmity that kept them from being completely healthy. The remaining third of the survey group was split into nearly equal percentages of completely healthy and completely unhealthy individuals, say the study's authors.
