Category: Health

The parents of an infant who beat the odds and survived despite an extreme brain malformation posted a picture of the boy’s first visit with Santa. Jaxon …

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Consumers have a right to file lawsuits under California law alleging food products are falsely labeled “organic,” the state Supreme Courtruled …

The second-degree murder convictions this week of a Los Angeles-area physician were the first against a U.S. doctor for recklessly prescribing drugs, the Los Angeles district attorney’s office said.

Dr. Hsiu-Ying “Lisa” Tseng was convicted of murder on Friday in a landmark case for killing three patients who overdosed on what a prosecutor called “crazy, outrageous amounts” of painkillers she prescribed.

It’s rare to bring homicide charges against a physician, but the case came amid a prescription drug abuse epidemic that has led lawmakers to try to rein in so-called pill mills that dole out medications with little scrutiny.

“You can’t hide behind a white lab coat and commit crimes,” Deputy District Attorney John Niedermann said. “Writing a prescription to someone knowing that they’re going to abuse it and potentially die was the theory of second-degree murder that we had.”

A dozen of Tseng’s patients died, though prosecutors only brought three murder charges because of other factors involved in some of those deaths, such as drugs prescribed by other doctors and a possible suicide.

Tseng, 45, showed no emotion as the convictions were read out loud, though her lawyer said she was emotional and very upset later. Jurors deliberated for 10 days before reaching the verdicts.

She was also convicted of illegally writing prescriptions for two of the deceased patients and 16 other people, including two undercover agents who were investigating how easily she prescribed addictive pain pills after brief office visits. She was acquitted of illegally writing a hydrocodone prescription to a third undercover officer.

Tseng prescribed “crazy, outrageous amounts of medication” to patients who didn’t need the pills, Niedermann told jurors in Los Angeles County Superior Court during closing arguments.

The doctor repeatedly ignored warning signs even after several patients died as she built a new medical clinic in Rowland Heights with the money she made from them, earning $5 million in one three-year period. One patient even overdosed in her office and had to be revived.

“Something is wrong with what you’re doing if your patients are dying,” Niedermann said.

Tseng’s lawyer said her client naively trusted her patients. Defense lawyer Tracy Green said patients testified they were legitimately in pain and later became dependent on the drugs, hiding their addictions by seeing other doctors and picking up prescriptions from different pharmacies.

Green had asked jurors to acquit Tseng on all but one drug count.

Tseng shouldn’t have been convicted of anything more than manslaughter and plans to appeal, Green said after the verdict.

“It’s disappointing,” Green said. “I don’t think it bodes well for doctors in America.”

Tseng faces up to life in prison when sentenced Dec. 14.

She was convicted of killing Vu Nguyen, 29, of Lake Forest, Steven Ogle, 25, of Palm Desert, and Joseph Rovero, 21, an Arizona State University student from San Ramon. The three died of overdoses between March and December 2009.

Tseng barely kept any records on the three men until she was contacted by the Medical Board of California. She then fabricated charts to make it look like she kept thorough records of diagnoses and noted she was weaning them off drugs, Niedermann said.

Tseng ignored pleas from family members of patients who demanded she stop prescribing drugs to them.

April Rovero, who lost her son almost six years ago, said she had waited for justice so long that she almost couldn’t believe it when she heard the words “guilty” uttered repeatedly.

She said her son and others were culpable at some level, but they had lost the ability to stop themselves and Tseng took advantage.

If her son were alive today, she’d tell him that his bad choice led to an outcome that could have a broader impact.

“This is something that could make a difference as we turn this doctor overprescribing situation around,” Rovero said. “I wish he was here, certainly, but his life has made a difference.”

Source:- abcnews

A Colorado woman told police she has no memory how she got nine miles from her Denver, Colo., home, even though she was found in her pajamas and with no shoes.

Taylor Gammel, 19, was missing for hours on Tuesday morning before she was found or rather “woke up” nine miles from her home, according to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office.

“She came out of a sleepwalking state and she was on the side of the road and recognized where she was,” Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office Public Information Officer Mark Techmeyer told ABC News.

Gammel was reported missing by her parents around 6 a.m. Tuesday, though she hadn’t been seen since 10 p.m. the night before when she went to bed.

Techmeyer said Gammel was wearing sweatpants, a t-shirt and socks when she was found. Techmeyer said there’s a chance that Gammel might have been able to take a bus part of the way, but without an ID, wallet or money, he doubts that was possible.

Dr. Shlini Paruthi, a board-certified sleep specialist and associate professor of pediatrics and internal medicine at St. Louis University, said Gammel’s nine-mile walk is not unheard of.

“It’s a subconscious state and for the most part [sleepwalkers] do look awake…they have their eyes open and they have a glassy look to their eyes,” explained Paruthi. “They can do simple behaviors and walk down steps. They can do routine behaviors…kids will urinate in the wrong place or they wake up in the wrong place.”

Paruthi said some people will even sleep eat or sleep drive without ever waking.

“This is something that can be so scary for the person when they find out what happened,” Paruthi said.

Paruthi said sleepwalking is most common in young children but that it can happen to people at any age. Paruthi said loud noises, sleep apnea or heartburn can cause a teen or adult to start sleepwalking.

Paruthi said it’s key for a patient with sleepwalking problems to take safety steps such as installing door or window alarms, so that either the sleepwalker or their family will be alerted if they try to make a break for it. She also said it’s important for the family to lock up anything dangerous such as knives, guns or even car keys if a family member is sleepwalking around the house.

As for the urban legend that you should never wake a sleepwalker, Paruthi said it’s usually safe to wake up a sleepwalker as long as it’s gently. She did, however, emphasize that a sleepwalker can occasionally be violent upon waking.

“I think the most important thing is certainly realizing that there are safety measures that all family members can take,” said Paruthi.

Source:- abcnews

In a major shift, the American Cancer Society is recommending that women at average risk of breast cancer get annual mammograms starting at age 45 rather than at age 40, and that women 55 and older scale back screening to every other year.

While the change may seem confusing, they are only guidelines and women should talk to their doctors about their individual risk factors, said Dr. Laura Shepardson, a breast cancer expert at the Cleveland Clinic.

“Using that information in conjunction with her values and preferences for her own care, a woman and her clinician should be able to come up with a good screening schedule for that individual patient,” Shepardson said in a news release.

The new guidelines, published on Tuesday in JAMA, fall more closely in line with guidelines from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a government-backed panel of experts that recommend biennial breast cancer screening starting at age 50 for most women.

The Task Force’s 2009 recommendations to reduce the frequency and delay the start of mammogram screening were based on studies suggesting the benefits of detecting cancers earlier did not outweigh the risk of false positive results, which needlessly expose women to additional testing, including a possible biopsy.

When the Task Force first recommended pushing back the start of mammogram screening from 40 to age 50, many advocacy groups, including the American Cancer Society, decried the change. Some experts charged that it would result in more women dying from breast cancer.

A recent draft of updated guidelines from the Task Force in April that have not yet been finalized acknowledge some women in their 40s may benefit, and say the decision of screening women in their 40s should be based on individual discussions between a woman and her doctor.

“You see this moving from a one-size-fits-all approach to something that’s more personalized and more individualized, which is where medicine is going,” said Dr. Kevin Oeffinger, a primary care doctor at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, who chaired the panel that crafted the new American Cancer Society guidelines.

The new ACS guidelines are the result of a review of new evidence on the benefits and harms of breast cancer screening. It found that younger women through age 54 benefit more from annual screening than biennial screening. Oeffinger said biennial screening among women older than age 55 is acceptable, because women’s breasts tend to be less dense and their cancers tend to grow more slowly after menopause.

The ACS guidelines also recommend women continue screening as long as they are healthy or until their life expectancy falls below 10 years. Dr. Avice O’Connell, director of women’s imaging at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York, said the new guidelines are more moderate and consider women under age 50 more seriously than those of the U.S. Preventive Task Force. “These new guidelines provide much better guidance to the clinicians and public of what should be done,” said O’Connell, who was not involved with the new guidelines.

The differences between the two sets of guidelines shows there is no single or correct answer for when and how often women should be screened for breast cancer, said Dr. Nancy Keating of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

Dr. Keating, who co-wrote a commentary accompanying the new guidelines, said the differences between the two groups emphasize the need to talk to patients and understand their preferences about breast cancer screening.

The new ACS guidelines also recommend against clinical breast exams in which doctors physically check a woman’s breasts for lumps and they stress that cost should not be a barrier to breast cancer screening. For an uninsured woman, a mammogram of both breasts costs about $300, according to Healthcare Bluebook.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force said in a statement the group will review the evidence and guidelines from the American Cancer Society as they finalize their recommendations.

Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have deciphered the long-sought atomic structure of PRC2, an enzyme complex that plays a key role in the development of several types of cancer, in particular blood cancer.

PRC2, or polycomb repressive complex 2, is a key regulator of human development and controls gene expression patterns by altering the structure of chromatin, a complex formed by protein and DNA. As an enzyme complex, PRC2 modifies a protein in chromatin, resulting in key changes in chromatin structure that silence certain genes. Abnormal regulation of PRC2 function, often caused by mutations in the PRC2 gene, has been linked to cancers such as lymphoma, leukemia, brain tumors, and other diseases, including Weaver syndrome, a rare congenital disorder associated with rapid growth, skeletal abnormalities, and delayed development.

“Our findings bring us one step closer to understanding the chemistry of how PRC2 functions in normal cells and how mutations in the gene cause disease,” said senior author Dr. Xin Liu, Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and of Biophysics at UT Southwestern.

The findings were published online Oct. 16 by the journal Science.

“Producing either too much or too little PRC2 enzyme can unexpectedly silence or activate genes, which is not good for the cell. This study revealed how a ‘normal’ level of PRC2 enzyme activity is kept and regulated in cells,” explained Dr. Liu, also a member of the Cecil H. and Ida Green Center for Reproductive Biology Sciences and the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center, and a W.W. Caruth, Jr. Scholar in Biomedical Research.

Dr. Liu said the findings identify the various ways that PRC2 acts, which in turn is helpful in understanding the chemical basis of related diseases and should aid in the development of new treatments for those diseases.

“Indeed, several clinical trials are currently ongoing to target PRC2, and we believe our work will shed light on these and other studies in drug development by offering insights into how PRC2 works at the atomic level,” he said.

In particular, Dr. Liu indicated that small-molecule drugs are being developed to inhibit PRC2 enzyme activity for treatment of some types of lymphoma. These drugs may prove beneficial, he said, since PRC2 has been found to be overly active in promoting further development of these cancer types.

The findings lay the groundwork for further investigation of PRC2 function and regulation in both normal and diseased cells. Among next steps, the research team led by Dr. Liu is now elucidating how PRC2 is regulated during interactions with chromatin and how the complex interacts with other cellular proteins on and off chromatin. This work may offer a deeper and more thorough understanding of PRC2 function and its dysregulation in human disease.

From a science perspective, this finding is groundbreaking. The 4-year-long investigation — for the first time — revealed the 3-D atomic structure of PRC2, in this case from a fungus and at high resolution. Some molecules known to regulate the enzyme activity of PRC2 in both normal and cancer cells were captured in action in the structure as well. This work not only solved some long-standing mysteries about the molecular mechanisms of PRC2 enzyme catalysis and regulation, but also provided a structural framework for the development of future cancer therapies.

“The widely used analytic technique of X-ray crystallography was utilized to deduce the protein structures based on X-ray diffraction patterns of PRC2 crystals generated at synchrotron particle accelerators,” said Dr. Lianying Jiao, a postdoctoral researcher in the Liu lab and first author of the study.

The research was supported by grants from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, the Welch Foundation, the Rita Allen Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Liu also received support as a W.W. Caruth, Jr. Scholar in Biomedical Research at UT Southwestern, and from the Cecil H. and Ida Green Center Training Program in Reproductive Biology Sciences.

The study used resources of the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory and of the Advanced Light Source at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, both supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science.

Journal Reference: ScienceMag.org

The Senate on Monday delivered a strong vote of confidence to a bipartisan spending bill that’s needed to head off a government shutdown at midnight …