Sleep Disturbance May Be Very Early Warning of Bipolar Risk

Severely disturbed sleep patterns may be an early indicator of the risk of developing bipolar disorder (BD) and may allow early intervention, new research shows.Speaking here at EPA 2012: 20th European Congress of Psychiatry, Phillip Ritter, MBBS, of the Clinic and Polyclinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus of the University of Dresden in Germany, said that sleep is highly altered in mania and depression and is the most common prodromal symptom of mania in patients with BD. Studies have shown that these...

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Oral Vitamin D Boosts Intranasal Steroid Effect in Rhinitis

Adding an oral vitamin D supplement to regular intranasal corticosteroid dosing can improve symptoms of seasonal allergic rhinitis beyond that seen with corticosteroids alone in patients who are not vitamin D deficient, according to study results presented here at the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology 2012 Annual Meeting.The findings add to a number of reports at the meeting suggesting that vitamin D supplementation might be beneficial in patients with allergies."Vitamin D has been shown to play a role in innate...

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Frequent Chocolate Consumption Linked to Lower BMI

 A recent study showed that frequent chocolate consumption was associated with lower body mass index (BMI), even when adjusting for calorie intake, saturated fat intake, and mood.Beatrice A. Golomb, MD, PhD, associate professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego, and colleagues described their findings in a research letter published in the March 26 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.The authors used data from 1018 patients already being screened for inclusion in a widely sampling clinical study evaluating noncardiac...

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Guidelines Define Hemoglobin Levels for Transfusion

Red blood cell (RBC) transfusions in most hospitalized patients should be performed based on "restrictive," rather than "liberal," hemoglobin levels (7 - 8 g/dL), according to new clinical guidelines from the American Association of Blood Banks (AABB).The new guidelines are based on a systematic literature review and were formulated by a multinstitutional panel of 20 experts led by Jeffrey L. Carson, MD, from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey–Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, and were published...

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Curcumin Holds Promise as Treatment for Brain Tumors

Can a lowly spice help fight the battle against pediatric brain tumors?Maybe, according to preliminary research published in a recent issue of BMC Cancer. Curcumin, a major component of the spice turmeric, has been shown to have chemopreventive and chemotherapeutic properties. Past research also demonstrates that it has the potential to destroy human medulloblastoma cells cultured in the laboratory.In the current study, researchers were able to identify a protein as a candidate biomarker in order to better predict which patients...

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Excessive Cured Meat Intake May Be Harmful to COPD Patients

Excessive consumption of cured meat is associated with an increased risk for hospital readmission among patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), report Jordi de Batlle, BMedBiol, from the Centre for Research in Environmental Epidemiology, Hospital del Mar Research Institute, the CIBER Epidemiología y Salud Pública, and the Department of Experimental and Health Sciences, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain, and colleagues. Results from their study were scheduled to be published online March 8 in the European...

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Exercise and Rest Both Effective for Some Patients With Back Pain

Exercise might not always be the best treatment approach for some low back pain sufferers. A new randomized trial shows no difference in pain, disability, or general health among patients with lower back pain and Modic changes (MCs) — edema or fatty degeneration in the vertebral endplate — who followed an exercise regime and those who adopted a routine of rest and load reduction.The finding that rest results in the same small improvements as a more active treatment approach challenges the idea that exercise should be the "gold standard" for patients...

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SibermedOs 1.0

Tuntutan jaman untuk mengubah budaya kerja berbasis kertas (Paperwork) menjadi tanpa kertas (Paperless) sudah menyentuh ke segala bidang, tak terkecuali bidang kesehatan. Rekam medis elektronik merupakan yang paling hangat dibahas dalam dasawarsa terakhir sebagai salah satu penerapan budaya kerja paperless di bidang kesehatan. Berbagai negara di dunia sudah beralih ke EMR karena memiliki banyak manfaat terutama efisiensi dan efektifitas pelayanan...

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Does Drinking Coffee Increase Glaucoma Risk?

An analysis of the health records of more than 75,000 women has found a positive association between heavy coffee drinking and the development of exfoliation glaucoma (EG) or EG suspect, according to data presented here at the American Glaucoma Society 22nd Annual Meeting."We believe that coffee consumption is a reasonable candidate to consider," said lead investigator Louis Pasquale, MD, FARVO, associate professor of ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts.Dr. Pasquale explained that previous randomized trials have...

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Up-to-date Management of Gout

AbstractPurpose of review Gout is a true crystal deposition disease, extremely painful and bone and tissue damaging if untreated. It is the only curable form of arthritis. Although we have many treatments to cure gout, it is a disease that is consistently undertreated/mismanaged and perceived by clinicians and the lay public as a 'laughable condition' with the patients' lifestyle often held erroneously to account. This article would give you...

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