Among the patients with CLL trigger Ibrutinib and rituximab 95% response rate

University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer from the Center researchers United States blood of no. 55 times tournament report targeted therapy ibrutinib and antibody rituximab treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukemia patients meet the phase II clinical trials in high-risk almost everything.

View the original article here

Exercise, diet habits improving among youth: study

By Genevra Pittman

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Over the last decade, U.S. kids and teenagers have started getting slightly more exercise and reduced their television watching, a new study suggests.

Using surveys conducted in middle and high schools, researchers also found increases in the number of days youth reported having breakfast each week and in how often they ate fruits and vegetables. Those trends have corresponded to a leveling off in obesity rates, but not a decline, the study showed.

"I would like to believe that all the public health efforts focusing on increasing physical activity and increasing fruit and vegetable consumption are having an effect, because that seems to be a pattern," Ronald Iannotti, the lead author on the study from the University of Massachusetts Boston, said.

"The fact that (obesity) is leveling off, that's a surprise and a major change from the steady increase that we've seen over time," Iannotti, who worked on the study while at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Bethesda, Maryland, said. "This is great news."

He and co-author Jing Wang analyzed surveys given to a nationally-representative sample of students in sixth through tenth grades in 2001-2002, 2005-2006 and 2009-2010 as part of the Health Behavior in School-aged Children study. Each survey period included responses from between 9,000 and 15,000 adolescents.

The researchers found "encouraging" trends on measures of most diet and lifestyle habits.

For example, the number of days each week that kids reported being physically active for at least 60 minutes increased from 4.3 in 2001-2002 to 4.5 in 2009-2010, with similar trends among boys and girls. Likewise, youth reported eating breakfast on three school days each week on the first survey and 3.3 days on the last.

The average number of hours students spent watching TV each day fell from 3.1 to 2.4, with drops in both weekday and weekend viewing.

Frequency of fruit and vegetable consumption also rose slightly over time - although it remained at less than one daily serving of each, on average - and consumption of sweets and soft drinks fell.

However, the proportion of survey participants who were overweight or obese, based on their own height and weight reports, did not decrease, the researchers wrote Monday in Pediatrics.

Rates of obesity - defined as body mass index, a measure of weight in relation to height, in the 95th percentile or higher - rose from 10.3 percent in 2001-2002 to 12.7 percent in 2005-2006, then held steady through the final survey.

"This is encouraging, because at least it looks like things have kind of stabilized, and at least they're not going in the wrong direction," Marian Huhman, who studies health communication and health campaigns at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said.

"Maybe it just takes a few years for the outcomes of obesity changes to follow from the behavioral changes," she added.

Huhman, who wasn't involved in the study, pointed to the "effort on many, many fronts" that may have led to the positive changes in physical activity, sedentary behavior and diet - such as walk-to-school programs and campaigns targeting food marketing.

However, adolescents "are still largely not meeting the recommendations for amount of screen time, amount of physical activity (and) amount of fruit and vegetable consumption," she said.

Iannotti echoed that concern.

"Although they're increasing, the recommendation is five servings of fruits and vegetables per day. And we're looking at one or two," he told Reuters Health.

"There's still vast room for improvement."

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/cxXOG Pediatrics, online September 16, 2013.

View the original article here

Treat the fungus among us with nontoxic medicinal compound

Sep. 12, 2013 — A Kansas State University microbiologist has found a breakthrough herbal medicine treatment for a common human fungal pathogen that lives in almost 80 percent of people.

Govindsamy Vediyappan, assistant professor of biology, noticed that diabetic people in developing countries use a medicinal herb called Gymnema slyvestre to help control sugar levels. He decided to study the microbiological use of Gymnema slyvestre -- a tropical vine plant found in India, China and Australia -- to see if it could treat a common human fungal pathogen called Candida albicans.

The investigation was successful on two levels: Vediyappan's research team found the medicinal compound is both nontoxic and blocks the virulence properties of the fungus so that it is more treatable. The results are important for human health, biomedical applications and potential drug development.

"We have shown that this compound is safe to use because it doesn't hurt our body cells, yet it blocks the virulence of this fungus under in vitro conditions," Vediyappan said. "Taking the medicine could potentially help patients control the invasive growth of the fungus and also help bring their sugar levels down."

Candida albicans is one of the major fungal pathogens in humans because it lives in oral and intestinal areas as a normal flora, Vediyappan said. But the fungus can overgrow and can cause oral, intestinal and genital infections. The fungus kills almost 30 percent of people who have it and it is a concern among cancer patients -- especially patients with neck or oral cancer -- HIV patients, organ transplant patients and other people with compromised immune systems.

The fungus can grow in two forms: a treatable yeast and a difficult-to-treat hyphal form. Once the fungus transforms from a yeast to a hyphal growth it becomes difficult to treat because the hyphal growth has long filament-like structures that can spread into various organs. Vediyappan's study aimed to block the hyphal growth form.

"Once it gets into the tissue, it spreads like roots and is difficult to contain by our immune system," Vediyappan said.

If the fungus remains in yeast form, it is easy to manage and does not invade tissues. Vediyappan's research team purified gymnemic acid compounds that prevented the transition stage from occurring and stopped the fungus spread. The gymnemic acids come from the leaves of Gymnema sylvestre, a traditional medicinal plant.

The research appears in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS ONE in an article titled "Gymnemic acids inhibit hyphal growth and virulence in Candida albicans."

Gymnema extract is commonly used to treat diabetes and other ailments because it is a cost-effective treatment, Vediyappan said. Often, people drink the extract to control their sugar levels or to lose weight.

Although Vediyappan's research team is not the first to discover gymnemic acid compounds, the team is the first to discover that the compounds block the fungal transition. The researchers found that the compounds work quickly, too, which was an important characteristic. The treatable fungal yeast can transition to a hyphal growth within 30 minutes of an infection. When the hyphal transition has occurred, it will grow into branched filaments.

The gymnemic acid compounds are nontoxic, which is especially important for cancer patients and other immunocompromised patients. The gymnemic acids can stop the unwanted invasive infection while preserving important healthy cells.

The Candida albicans fungus also makes a biofilm, which is a fungal cell collection that can be difficult to treat. The researchers found that the gymnemic acid compounds converted the biofilm back to treatable yeast cells.

"This compound prevents the biofilm formation because hyphae are the major builders of biofilms and biofilms are resistant to antifungals," Vediyappan said. "Yeast cells by themselves cannot make biofilms and are sensitive to antifungal treatments."

Another interesting aspect: The gymnemic acid compounds also stopped the growth of Aspergillus, another fungal pathogen that can affect heart transplant patients and leukemia patients.

Vediyappan plans future studies to research mode of action, potential drug development, diabetes applications and other ways to improve treatment for Candida albicans and other fungal pathogens.

View the original article here

Diabetes Rising Rapidly Among U.S. Kids

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

SATURDAY, June 9 (HealthDay News) -- Diabetes is increasing among U.S. children at an alarming rate, say researchers who report jumps of more than 20 percent since 2001 for type 2 disease, which is linked to excessive weight and sedentary lifestyles, and type 1 diabetes, which is an autoimmune disease.

"Both types of diabetes are increasing," said study co-author Dr. Dana Dabelea, associate dean for faculty affairs at the University of Colorado School of Public Health in Aurora. "For type 2, we have some clues as to why it's increasing, but for type 1, we still need to better understand the triggers of this disease."

Many of the type 2 diagnoses are explained by the rise in overweight and obese children. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 17 percent of U.S. children and teens are obese -- three times the number of a generation ago.

Type 1 diabetes occurs when the body's immune system mistakenly turns on healthy cells responsible for producing insulin, a hormone needed to metabolize the carbohydrates in food. It's been suggested that exposure to certain viruses may trigger the onset of type 1 diabetes. It is not linked to lifestyle factors, such as being overweight.

The exact cause of type 2 diabetes is less clear. People with type 2 either don't produce enough insulin, or their bodies don't use insulin efficiently. The disease is linked to sedentary lifestyles and to being overweight. However, other factors may be responsible, too. The disease can often be controlled in its early stages with lifestyle changes that include losing weight and becoming more active.

The first study found that about 189,000 people under the age of 20 had diabetes in the United States. Of those, 168,000 had type 1, and more than 19,000 had type 2.

From 2001 to 2009, the number of American children with type 2 diabetes increased 21 percent, and cases of type 1 ballooned 23 percent, the researchers found.

The study also found that children with type 2 were more likely to have protein in their urine than children with type 1 diabetes, suggesting that they might be at greater risk for early kidney damage. Youngsters with both types of diabetes also showed early indications of damage to the nerve system that regulates the heart and its blood vessels, according to the study.

The researchers also found that children with diabetes who watched more than three hours of television daily had poorer blood sugar control and higher levels of triglycerides, a blood fat, than children who watched less TV.

Dabelea and her colleagues were scheduled to present their findings on Saturday at the American Diabetes Association annual meeting in Philadelphia. The study was funded by the CDC and the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

In another presentation planned for the meeting, researchers who are also from the University of Colorado studied children with type 2 diabetes and found the disease may progress more rapidly in young people than in older folks. With an average follow-up of just four years, this study found that about one-third of children with type 2 diabetes had high blood pressure, compared to 12 percent at the start of the study. Almost 17 percent showed early signs of kidney damage, and 13 percent had early signs of eye disease.

"Type 2 is not a benign condition in children," said Dabelea.

Dr. Joel Zonszein, director of the clinical diabetes center at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City, said he wasn't surprised by either study's findings on type 2 diabetes.

"We're seeing more children with type 2, and at younger ages. They often have more aggressive disease at the time of diagnosis and other conditions, such as [abnormal cholesterol levels]," he said. "I'm concerned because these are young people being diagnosed with an adult disease, and they will probably progress to cardiovascular disease much faster."

Zonszein was surprised at the dramatic rise in the rates of type 1 diabetes. "I don't know what would cause more autoimmune disease in type 1," he said.

While there are no known ways to prevent type 1 diabetes, both experts said that a healthy lifestyle can go a long way to preventing type 2 in children. Zonszein's first recommendation is to get TVs out of children's bedrooms.

Both Zonszein and Dabelea recommended a healthy diet with lots of fruits and vegetables, and an active lifestyle, not just for the children, but for the whole family.

Data and conclusions presented at meetings should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed medical journal.

More information

The American Diabetes Association has more information on type 1 diabetes, and type 2 diabetes.

Copyright c 2012?HealthDay. All rights reserved.