A six-year collaboration between two faculty members at the Miller School of Medicine
Women undergoing treatment for breast cancer might fight off distressing side effects and improve psychological well-being by staying off the couch. According to the University of Miami (UM) study, women who are physically active during treatment have less depression and an enhanced quality of life and report less debilitating fatigue.
‘Women who are physically active may also have more confidence in their own ability to continue with family-related, household, work-related, or social activities, which bring meaning and satisfaction to their lives,’ says Jamie M. Stagl, M.S., doctoral student in Clinical Health Psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences at UM and lead author of the study. ‘This may lead to appraisals of lower fatigue, heightened quality of life, and less depression.’
UM researchers studied the reported physical activity of 240 women recently diagnosed with non-metastatic breast cancer and recruited from four to 10 weeks post-surgery. Participants attended a 10-week, group-based Cognitive Behavioral Stress Management (CBSM) intervention, or a one-day psychoeducation ‘self-help’ comparison group. In addition, researchers monitored the women’s reported physical activity levels.
While these researchers have previously shown that stress management improves breast cancer treatment, the current study reveals that there are additional benefits for women who are also physically active through treatment.
‘Women who increased the amount of time they spent being physically active between the weeks after surgery and their adjuvant therapy had less ‘fatigue disruption’
Attitude may play an important role in how exercise affects menopausal women, according to Penn State researchers, who identified two types of women — one experiences more hot flashes after physical activity, while the other experiences fewer.
‘The most consistent factor that seemed to differentiate the two groups was perceived control over hot flashes,’ said Steriani Elavsky, assistant professor of kinesiology. ‘These women have ways of dealing with (hot flashes) and they believe they can control or cope with them in an effective way on a daily basis.’
Women who experienced fewer hot flashes the day after participating in vigorous to moderate physical activity were more likely to be part of the group that felt they had control over their hot flashes. Women who had more hot flashes following exercise were likely to be those who felt they had very few ways of coping with their hot flashes, Elavsky and her colleagues report in a recent issue of Maturitas.
Elavsky suggested that cognitive behavioural therapy may help some women feel they have more control over their bodies and reactions to hot flashes.
The participants with fewer hot flashes the day after vigorous exercising were also less likely to experience anxiety and depression. However, women who had fewer hot flashes the day after only light or moderate physical activity had higher levels of pessimism and depression than others.
‘The bottom line for research is that people need to look at individual differences,’ said Elavsky. ‘It’s not enough anymore to do a study and look at overall impact of an exercise program on symptoms. It’s very clear that we need to look at the different responses that women might have, and try to understand these individual differences more.’
Elavsky and her colleagues followed 24 menopausal women for the length of one menstrual cycle, or for 30 days if they were no longer menstruating. Each woman used a personal digital assistant to record hot flashes and wore an accelerometer at the hip to track physical activity. The women in the study regularly had hot flashes before the start of the study, experiencing from five to 20 a day.
‘The real-time reporting of symptoms and the objective measurement is a strength of the study,’ said Elavsky. ‘There aren’t any studies out there that use both of these approaches.
A research team from East Anglia, awarded a grant from children
A 25 per cent increase in high blood pressure screening in 19 developing countries would reduce the number of cardiovascular disease (CVD) events and deaths that occur each year by up to 3 per cent in these countries. The preliminary data presented today at the World Congress of Cardiology are the first findings from a new report from Harvard that will be published later this year.
The study found that around 900 million people in developing countries have high blood pressure but that only one-third are aware of their disease. Moreover, only 100 million of these people receive treatment, while only 5 per cent of the total are controlled.
Against this backdrop, this study was designed to assess the cost-effectiveness of an intervention to increase screening by 25 per cent in developing countries using a non-lab screening tool to treat those with a systolic blood pressure of greater than 140 mmHg and CVD risk of greater than 20 per cent.
The study found that screening an additional 25 per cent of the population would lead to an increase of more than 10 per cent in the rate of appropriate treatment of hypertension in high-risk individuals. The intervention would lead to about a 1-3 per cent reduction in CVD events and deaths. Furthermore, the incremental cost-effectiveness ratios of these screening programs were found to be well below one times GDP per capita in the 19 developing countries assessed.
‘Strategies to increase the screening for hypertension could lead to significant reductions in CVD deaths, at costs that are considered to be acceptable according to WHO recommendations,’ said Dr. Thomas Gaziano, assistant professor, Harvard School of Medicine.
CVD is the world
About 71,500 women in the United States are diagnosed with a gynaecologic cancer every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Researchers from University Hospitals Case Medical Center have developed a more effective way to treat gynaecologic cancers, shortening radiation treatment time from five weeks to three days.
The new method, stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) has been used on other types of cancer, but University Hospitals Case Medical Center is the first treatment facility to apply it to gynaecologic cancers.
Dr. Charles Kunos, who co-authored the article, said the radiation therapy machine ‘looks like a robot you would make cars with, and targets specific cancer cells.’
Unlike traditional radiation therapy, SBRT uses focused radiation beams and targets well-defined tumours. In order to focus in on the region, the tumours need to be imaged and marked (using fiduciary markers) in advance. During treatment with the Cyberknife system (from Accuray), patients need to be immobilised, and even the movement from the patient
A new Northwestern Medicine brain-machine technology delivers messages from the brain directly to the muscles — bypassing the spinal cord — to enable voluntary and complex movement of a paralysed hand. The device could eventually be tested on, and perhaps aid, paralysed patients.
‘We are eavesdropping on the natural electrical signals from the brain that tell the arm and hand how to move, and sending those signals directly to the muscles,’ said Lee E. Miller, the Edgar C. Stuntz Distinguished Professor in Neuroscience at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and the lead investigator of the study. ‘This connection from brain to muscles might someday be used to help patients paralysed due to spinal cord injury perform activities of daily living and achieve greater independence.’
The research was done in monkeys, whose electrical brain and muscle signals were recorded by implanted electrodes when they grasped a ball, lifted it and released it into a small tube. Those recordings allowed the researchers to develop an algorithm or ‘decoder’ that enabled them to process the brain signals and predict the patterns of muscle activity when the monkeys wanted to move the ball.
These experiments were performed by Christian Ethier, a post-doctoral fellow, and Emily Oby, a graduate student in neuroscience, both at the Feinberg School of Medicine. The researchers gave the monkeys a local anaesthetic to block nerve activity at the elbow, causing temporary, painless paralysis of the hand. With the help of the special devices in the brain and the arm
Forced body cooling known as therapeutic hypothermia has reduced in-hospital deaths among sudden cardiac arrest patients nearly 12 percent between 2001 and 2009, according to a Mayo Clinic study being presented at the upcoming American Academy of Neurology 2012 Annual Meeting in New Orleans. The research is among several Mayo abstracts that will be discussed at the conference.
The goal of therapeutic cooling is slowing the body’s metabolism and preventing brain damage or death. It is believed that mild therapeutic hypothermia suppresses harmful chemical reactions in the brain and preserves cells. Two key studies published in 2002 found therapeutic hypothermia more effective for sudden cardiac arrest patients than traditional therapies. Mayo researchers analysed a database covering more than 1 million patients and found mortality rates among in-hospital sudden cardiac arrest patients dropped from 69.6 percent in 2001 — the year before the studies appeared — to 57.8 percent in 2009, the most recent data available.
‘Because we reviewed such a large number of cases, we are confident that the reduction in mortality among in-hospital sudden cardiac arrest patients is significant and sustained,’ says co-author Alejandro Rabinstein, M.D., a Mayo Clinic neurologist. ‘We continue to seek answers to the questions: Why did this trend develop, and how can we accelerate it,’ says co-author Jennifer Fugate, D.O.
These measures are important because disease accumulates in the cortex over time, and inflammation in the cortex is a sign the disease has progressed.
EurekAlertVarian Medical Systems and Siemens Healthcare announce global collaboration to advance clinical capabilities and offerings in radiotherapy and radiosurgery.
Varian Medical Systems and Siemens Healthcare have announced the signing of a strategic global partnership to provide advanced diagnostic and therapeutic solutions and services for treating cancer with image-guided radiotherapy and radiosurgery. The collaboration covers the mutual marketing and representation of products for imaging and treatment in the global radiation oncology business. This collaboration further comprises the development of software interfaces between Siemens and Varian treatment systems. The two companies will also investigate opportunities for joint development of new products for image-guided radiotherapy and radiosurgery.
Under the agreement that was signed this week, Varian will represent Siemens diagnostic imaging products such as CT, PET/CT or MRI to radiation oncology clinics around the world beginning immediately in most international markets and expanding to North America later this year. Siemens Healthcare will similarly represent Varian equipment and software for radiotherapy and radiosurgery within its offerings to its healthcare customers. This will enable the companies to offer comprehensive solutions to support the entire clinical workflow from imaging to treatment. Siemens will continue to service and support its global installed base of approximately 2,000 medical linear accelerators. The agreement will give Siemens customers more choices for therapy equipment, including smooth transition and interface to Varian equipment, as aging accelerators are due for replacement.
Furthermore, Varian and Siemens will develop interfaces that will enable connecting Varian
The use of a dedicated pediatric imaging department (with dedicated pediatric computed tomography (CT) technologists) for pediatric CT scans significantly reduces the radiation dose delivered to the patient, according to a study.
When performed and monitored properly, the benefits of CT scans outweigh the potential long-term risk of radiation. To minimise the potential adverse effects of radiation exposure to pediatric patients, it is necessary to reduce the dose of radiation delivered to these patients while preserving the diagnostic quality of the images produced.
‘There are many strategies for reducing radiation dose. The use of protocols with adjusted exposure parameters for pediatric patients on the basis of child size, organ system scanned and the size of the region scanned is most notable. However, compliance with these protocols can be challenging for technologists, particularly when scanning a combination of adult and pediatric patients,’ said Heather L. Borders, MD, lead author of the study.
A retrospective review of abdominal and pelvic CT console dose and exposure parameter data on 495 patients from a combined pediatric and adult radiology department and subsequently 244 patients from a dedicated pediatric radiology department was performed. Patients were divided into 1 of 8 weight categories for analysis.
A statistically significant decrease in the estimated effective dose for abdominal and pelvic CT studies was observed in all but one of the weight categories at the pediatric radiology department compared with the pediatric and adult radiology department.
‘Imaging pediatric patients in a dedicated pediatric imaging department with dedicated pediatric CT technologists may result in greater compliance with pediatric protocols and significantly reduced patient dose,’ said Borders.
‘Conversely, greater scrutiny of compliance with pediatric dose-adjusted CT protocols may be necessary for departments that scan both children and adults,’ she said.
EurekAlert
April 2024
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