Medical Research

The study of how bodies develop immunities has become important to every medical speciality and additional courses in the field are needed in medical schools, physicians urged in a recent report in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. "The future holds great promise for the allergy and clinical immunology," wrote Dr. John E. Salvaggio of Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans and Dr. K. Frank Austen of the Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston.

Cognitive decline may start earlier than previously thought - about age 45, according to a study released this week - but that doesn't mean those hitting middle age should think their brain functions are doomed. "I think the notion that we do things as well when we're older as when we're younger is not that tenable," said Dr. Marc L. Gordon, chief of neurology at Zucker Hillside Hospital and an Alzheimer's disease researcher at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research , both in New York.

A new prostate test that relies on measuring levels of a blood protein called EPCA-2 accurately found cancer 94% of the time, a significant improvement over the current PSA test, according to a study released Wednesday. Each year, about 1.6 million men undergo biopsies because they test positive on a PSA test -- but only about 230,000 of them actually have cancer.

Chimpanzees have long done their part for medical research. They have been inoculated and infected; they have donated their blood. Their contributions have aided the understanding and treatment of hepatitis and autoimmune diseases. As man's closest primate relative, they are extraordinary stand-ins for humans. But advances in medical research and technology have made experimentation on chimps unnecessary in all but a few biomedical projects. That was the conclusion of a recent study by a committee of scientists and ethicists assembled by the Institute of Medicine.

The heavily advertised drug Vytorin is no better than an inexpensive generic drug at blocking the damaging effects of high cholesterol levels, according to new data released by the drug's manufacturers Monday. In a study of 720 patients funded by the manufacturers, Vytorin -- a combination of the drugs simvastatin and ezetemibe -- reduced levels of LDLs, the so-called bad cholesterol, by about 29% more than simvastatin alone.

Answering the "decaf or regular" question has become more problematic. Caffeine can give some people the jitters, keeping them awake or speeding up their heart rate, but decaffeinated coffee, researchers have found, may be bad for your heart. Java without the jolt increases the levels of so-called bad cholesterol in the bloodstream and reduces levels of good cholesterol, researchers reported last week at a meeting of the American Heart Assn. in Dallas.

The first outbreak was devastating enough. But within weeks came another outbreak. Then another and another. For Gina Caprio, then 22, the virus that causes genital herpes was nightmarish, "like my life was over." An antiviral drug managed to keep the virus under control, preventing recurrences, but she had to take it every day, year-round.

Patients who receive treatment for a minor stroke within 24 hours reduce their risk of a second stroke by 80% compared with those who wait three days or more to see a doctor, according to a new study released today. Many patients who experience the relatively mild and temporary symptoms of a minor stroke -- slurred speech, arm weakness and dizziness -- often forgo seeing a doctor for days or weeks. Some doctors also fail to initiate immediate treatment for such symptoms.

IBM's Watson supercomputer may be best known for handily beating "Jeopardy!" game show champs. Now it's being harnessed to help doctors at Cedars-Sinai's cancer clinic in Los Angeles stay up-to-date on medical breakthroughs and treatments. Doctors at the Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute will be the first to use the technology, IBM said, and they will help the computer company make tweaks to the system -- the first commercial application of the computer since its "Jeopardy!"

About 4 million adult Americans with a mild form of asthma may not need to take daily steroid doses, but instead can use the drug only as needed to control symptoms, says a new study supported by the National Institutes of Health. The change would make drug use more convenient, minimize side effects from the powerful drugs and possibly save the nation as much as $2 billion per year, the study concludes.

IBM's Watson supercomputer may be best known for handily beating "Jeopardy!" game show champs. Now it's being harnessed to help doctors at Cedars-Sinai's cancer clinic in Los Angeles stay up-to-date on medical breakthroughs and treatments. Doctors at the Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute will be the first to use the technology, IBM said, and they will help the computer company make tweaks to the system -- the first commercial application of the computer since its "Jeopardy!"

Janeen Delany describes herself as an "old hippie" who's smoked plenty of marijuana. But she never really dabbled in hallucinogens -- until two years ago, at the age of 59. A diagnosis of incurable leukemia had knocked the optimism out of the retired plant nurserywoman living in Phoenix. So she signed up for a clinical trial to test whether psilocybin -- the active ingredient in "magic mushrooms" -- could help with depression or anxiety following a grim diagnosis. Delaney swallowed a blue capsule of psilocybin in a cozy office at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

As chairman and chief executive of her own company, Dr. Robin Smith is a significant player in the world of biopharmaceutical products and research. Self-confident, poised and well traveled, she is used to dealing with movers and shakers. But when she negotiated an agreement with her company's latest business partner, she didn't deal directly with the top executive. He is, after all, the pope. In an agreement that tends to elicit the response "Really?," the Vatican recently signed a $1-million compact with Smith's New York company, NeoStem, to collaborate on adult stem cell education and research.

Intelligence is in the genes, researchers reported Tuesday in the journal Molecular Psychology. The international team, led by Ian Deary of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and Peter Visscher of the Queensland Institute of Medical Research in Brisbane, Australia, compared the DNA of more than 3,500 people, middle aged and older, who also had taken intelligence tests.  They calculated that more than 40% of the differences in intelligence among...

What is it that makes marijuana more frightening to the federal government than cocaine or morphine? The Drug Enforcement Administration has steadfastly, over decades, listed marijuana as a Schedule I drug, meaning that it has no medical value and that the potential for abuse is high. Cocaine and morphine, far more dangerous and habit-forming, are listed as Schedule II because they have some medical value. Last week the DEA ruled once again, a decade after it made the same decision, that marijuana is a potentially dangerous drug without known medical benefits.

The W. M. Keck Foundation on Monday will announce a gift of $150 million to boost scientific research at USC's medical school and at two affiliated hospitals, adding to the university's recent success in attracting supersized donations. The gift is the single largest in the 57-year history of the Keck Foundation, which has backed many scientific projects, including the famous Keck Observatory and telescopes in Hawaii. For USC, the money marks the third mega-gift since March, for a total of $460 million, as new President C. L. Max Nikias seeks to build the Los Angeles university's endowment.

Widespread overuse of CT scans and variations in radiation doses caused by different machines -- operated by technicians following an array of procedures -- are subjecting patients to high radiation doses that will ultimately lead to tens of thousands of new cancer cases and deaths, researchers reported today. Several recent studies have suggested that patients have been unnecessarily exposed to radiation from CTs or have received excessive amounts, but two new studies published Tuesday in the Archives of Internal Medicine are the first to quantify the extent of exposure and the related risks.

As more and more Americans take cholesterol-lowering drugs known as statins, Dr. Beatrice A. Golomb has carved out a niche investigating a less-publicized aspect of these cardiac wonder drugs: patients' complaints of memory loss, irritability and nerve and muscle pain. Golomb, an assistant professor of medicine at UC San Diego, also leads a five-year, $5-million study funded by the National Institutes of Health.

The gig : Dr. Gary K. Michelson, 62, is a billionaire inventor of surgical devices and a retired orthopedic surgeon who has devoted an estimated $300 million of his fortune to an assortment of causes. Topping the list: animal welfare, medical research, online textbooks and tropical rain forests. An early influence: Michelson vividly recalls the childhood event in Philadelphia that set him on his path to medicine: His grandmother suffered from a crippling spinal deformity that made it impossible for her to distinguish between hot and cold in her extremities.

At least 2.6 million fetuses die worldwide after the 28th week of pregnancy every year, a number that has declined only modestly in recent years, researchers said Wednesday. Fully half of those stillbirths occur during delivery, in large part because women do not receive adequate medical care during the event, according to the first comprehensive study of the problem, reported in six papers and eight commentaries in the journal Lancet. The number of stillbirths could be reduced by 45% by 2015 in the most affected countries at a cost of only $2.32 per person by such simple expedients as improving obstetric care; treating syphilis infections and hypertension in pregnant women; and identifying and treating medical conditions that block fetal growth, experts said.