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Tag: medical treatment

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Therapeutic potential in COVID-19 with colchicine

Cr. Fusion Medical Animation

Source from MIMS.com

Based on a study, survival rate in patients with COVID-19 was improved with the use of colchicine, which are usually used for the treatment of gout and other inflammatory disorders as compared with standard of care (SoC).

The well-recognised anti-inflammatory effects and potential antiviral properties made it as one of the drugs that was considered for the treatment of COVID-19.  140 hospitalized patients who contracted COVID-19 had their outcomes evaluated as they were treated with SoC (hydroxychloroquine and/or intravenous dexamethasone; and/or lopinavir/ritonavir) and in 122 patients treated with colchicine and SoC.

The SoC group, have lower serum concentrations of C-reactive prottein and ferritin, as well as neutrophil count but higher PaO2/FiO2 ratio at baseline.

Survival when being compared over 21 days of follow-up, it was more favourable in the colchicine than the SoC group. A lower risk of death was strongly associated with colchicine, on Cox proprortional hazards regression (hazard ratio, 0.151).

At entry, there were a higher serum levels of ferritin, worse Pa02/Fi02 and poor survival at older age for the risk factors. 

With no treatment discontinuation due to severe adverse events, colchicine had a good safety profile. In nine patients, dosing was reduced from 1 to 0.5 mg/day due to diarrhoea.

With the aim of preventing the patient’s autoinflammatory response, the current study provides proof-of-concept data supporting the possible use of colchicine in the treatment of the early phase of COVID-19.

To determine the efficacy and safety of colchicine, properly designed trials are needed with the best protocol in terms of dosage and timing of administartion in patients with COVID-19, said the researchers.

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Differences between anxiety attacks and panic attacks

Cr. Victor Rodvang

Source from my.clevelandclinic.org

People have been using the terms “anxiety attack” and “panic attack” correspondingly, when in fact, they are two slightly different medical conditions.

A breakdown:

Anxiety is typical and although it is unpleasant, it helps motivate and protect individuals from threats.

Anxiety disorders comes in many forms and people usually respond to non-threatening things with outsized fear and dread.

Anxiety attacks is just another term for a panic attack.

Panic attacks occurs without warning and are intense attacks of fear and anxiety. It is usually harmless and last for about 15 to 20 minutes.

Panic disorder occurs when an individual has repeated panic attacks and it is also a type of anxiety disorder.

Panic attack symptoms

  • A feeling that what is happening around them is not real
  • Chest pain or discomfort
  • Chills or overheating
  • Dizziness
  • Fear of perhaps that they are dying or going crazy
  • Feeling that they might be choking
  • Increased heart rate
  • Nausea
  • Numbness
  • Sweating
  • Trembling or shaking

How to deal with panic attacks

  1. Labeling it. When panic attack happens, individual who are experiencing it often thinks that they are having a heart attack or losing their mind. It is advised to assure themselves that what is happening to them won’t kill them and that it will end.
  2. Keeping track. Note the attacks and when and where they happened, how long the duration was and things that might have triggered it.
  3. Breathe. Numerous claims from people of various backgrounds said that deep breathing exercises helps. It turns down the body’s panic response, helping the breath and heart rate to return back to normal.
  4. Distract the mind from focusing about the panic attacks. Do other things that helps. For example, smell something pleasant or watching a funny TV show.
  5. Getting help. Mental health professionals can help by using a Jedi mind trick, known as cognitive restructuring.

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Easy treatment for headaches

Cr. Adrian Swancar

Source from Healthline.com

Headache is defined as a pain arising from the head or upper neck of the body. The pain originates from the tissues and structures that surround the skull or the brain because the brain itself has no nerves that give rise to the sensation of pain (pain fibers). Several types of headaches exist, with tension headaches being the most common. Cluster headaches are painful and happen in groups or “clusters,” while migraines are a moderate-to-severe type of headache.

Keeping hydrate : The body need certain amount of fluid for it to properly function and by drinking too little, it may lead you to develop a headache. Researchers have found that the common cause of migraines and tension headaches mostly come from chronic dehydration. This can be relieved by drinking enough water which shown to relieve symptoms in dehydrated individuals within 30 minutes to three hours –  depending on their state.

Cr. LuAnn Hunt

Cr. Annie Spratt

Taking magnesium : A study suggests that treatment with 600mg of oral magnesium citrate per day helps in reducing the frequency and severity of migraine headaches. Headaches could be cured with prescribed medicines and can be prevented with consuming food that have high content of magnesium such as pumpkin seed, broccoli and certain amount of beans.

Limiting alcohol intake : Evidence shown that alcohol can trigger migraines in about one-third of individuals who experience frequent headaches. It also cause tension and cluster headaches in many people. Alcohol is a vasodilator, which widens blood vessels and allows more flow of the blood which may cause headaches in some people. The body could lose fluids and electrolytes from frequent urination as alcohol also acts as a diuretic which can cause or worsen headaches.

Cr. Giovanna Gomes

Cr. Gregory Pappas

Getting enough sleep : Sleeping less than you required can be detrimental to your health and may even cause headaches in some people. It is found that people who has sleep deprivation had more frequent and severe headaches but getting too much sleep has also been shown to trigger headaches. It is advised to have a minimum of 6 hours sleep a day, depending on the individual.

Practice yoga : One of the ways to relieve stress and improve your overall quality of life would be relaxing with yoga. A study was conducted and it showed that the effects of yoga therapy on 60 people with chronic migraines were reduced more than those who received conventional care alone.

Cr. Kiki Vega

Cr. Peter Secan

Having caffeinated liquid : Drinking beverages with caffeine such as tea or coffee may provide relief for a headache. It improves mood, increases alertness and constricts blood vessels. It also helps increase the effectiveness of common medications like acetaminophen and ibuprofen which are used to treat headaches with mindful caffeine intake.

Exercise : Increasing your activity level is said  to be one of the simplest ways in reducing headaches. A study which involved 91 people in 40 minutes of indoor cycling, three times a week was effective in reducing headache frequency than practicing relaxation techniques.

Cr. Jenny Hill

Cr. Dominik Martin

Sip some ginger tea : Ginger root has many beneficial compounds, including antioxidants and anti-inflammatory substances and they also helps reducing nausea and vomiting, which usually are the common symptoms associated with severe headaches.

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TB antibiotics in reaching targets

Cr. Simone van der Koelen

Source from Sciencedaily.com

Researchers have built up another technique that empowers them to envision how well antibiotics against tuberculosis (TB) reach at their pathogenic targets inside human hosts. The discoveries, published in the journal Science, boost understanding of how antibiotics work and could help direct the development of new antibiotics, which are truly necessary in the fight against drug-resistance.

TB treatment

TB stays as one of the world’s deadliest infectious diseases, with over a million TB-related deaths worldwide every year.

At the point when an individual is infected with Mtb (mycobacteria), their immune system attempts to clear the microorganism by calling upon specialised immune cells called as macrophages that perceive and engulf Mtb. However, the bacteria frequently discover ways to survive and duplicate, causing illness. Patients require at least four antibiotics for at six months to defeat the disease.

It was previously unknown whether antibiotics enter all the compartments of the macrophage where the Mtb hide and duplicate.

The method pioneered in this study, which consolidates three kinds of imaging (correlated light, electron and nano-scale ion microscopy), permits researchers to picture the circulation of TB drugs in Mtb-infected human macrophages at high resolution, for the first time.

A test-case TB drug

Utilizing bedaquiline as an test-case, the group contaminated human macrophages with Mtb, and following up after two days, they treated them with the medication. Their imaging results revealed that bedaquiline accumulated in various compartments of the cell, most eminently, inside lipid droplets.

The bacteria can interact with and consume these lipid droplets. Be that as it may, the group (Crick-led team) didn’t know whether bedaquiline would be moved to the bacteria, or whether the lipid droplets were retaining the antibiotic and keeping it from arriving at the bacteria. Including a chemical that kept lipid droplets from forming significantly decreased the measure of bedaquiline in Mtb, proposing that the lipid drops are responsible for moving antibiotic to the bacteria.

“Now that we can see exactly where antibiotics go once they enter macrophages, we can build up a much clearer picture of how they reach their targets, and harness these observations to design more effective treatments in the future, not only for TB but for other infectious diseases too” says Max Gutierrez, Crick group leader and senior author of the paper.

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Bleeding and cardiovascular risks heightens after consumption of NSAIDs

Cr. JESHOOTS.com

Source from MIMS.com

Researchers conducted a study that investigated the risk for cardiovascular and bleeding events according to groups of antithrombotic medications and subtypes of NSAIDs. The first diagnosed MI in the nationwide cohort study was retrieved from 108,232 patients that they have accessed the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service database between 2009 and 2013.

Based on their prescribed antithrombotic medications, the patients were divided into groups  with the thromboembolic cardiovascular and clinically relevant bleeding events as the study outcomes.

Concomitant NSAID treatment significantly elevated the risk for cardiovascular events and bleeding events compared with no NSAID treatment over a mean follow-up of 2.3 years. Celecoxib and meloxicam showed the lowest risk of cardiovascular and bleeding events among NSAID subtypes.

The authors stated in their research that although NSAID treatment should be avoided after MI, celecoxib and meloxicam could be considered as alternative options in cases in which NSAID use is unavoidable.

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Diabetic ketoacidosis in children equals to hypertension

Cr. Rene Bernal

Source from MIMS.com

Study has found that for children with diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA), hypertension is a common phenomenon.

Researchers gathered 1,258 patients who had sufficient haemodynamic data for the present analysis while using data from the Paediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network. Out of these, 12.2 percent had documented hypertension at presentation.

In under 2 hours, hypertension were resolved quickly in 36 children and for 118 episodes, hypertension lasted for 2 hours. During DKA treatment, the blood pressure was normal at baseline in 196 patients but progressed to hypertension during DKA treatment. Developed at any time during DKA, the resulting overall rate of hypertension was at 27.8 percent.

The median duration of  hypertension was 4.0 hours and at presentation, correlated with more severe acidosis and stage 2 or 3 acute kidney injury. On the contrary, at baseline, lower glucose levels or glucose-corrected sodium concentrations were associated with hypertension at presentation.

Lower scores on the Glasgow Coma Scale and more severe acidosis correlated with the development of hypertension at any point during DKA. Severe acidosis, stage 2 acute kidney injury, and younger patient age are also directly correlated with hypertension severity.

The researchers stated that a central mechanism may be involved in causing abnormal haemodynamic regulation with the development of hypertension during DKA treatment and the association of hypertension with altered mental status.

They also added that it is necessary to better understand relationships of regional cerebral blood flow abnormalities during DKA is necessary and how these relate to life-threatening cerebral injuries in some children.

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Early ageing of ovary: A future health problem?

Cr. Andre Piacquadio

Source from MIMS.com

A large cohort study that was presented at the 2020 ESHRE Meeting suggested that early ovarian ageing may be predictive of later health problems.

Few oocytes in Assisted Reproductive Technology (Art) were harvested from young women with premature ovarian ageing and were discovered to have a much higher risk of age-related diseases such as cardiovascular diseases (CVD) and osteoporosis compared to those with undergoing normal ovarian ageing and happens to be in line with what was known so far regarding early menopause.

Mette Wulf Christensen from Aarhus University in Denmark suggested that a few oocytes that were repeatedly harvested in well stimulated ART cycles is a likely predictor of advanced menopausal age when seen in young women and may thus serve as an early marker of accelerated general ageing. There is also an association shown between early menopause with a greater risk of CVD, osteoporosis, and death. She also said that identifying women at risk of early menopause may thus allow early preventive health initiatives in terms of  a healthy lifestyle.

The national cohort study that was based in Danish included >19,000 young women (≤37 years) who were undergoing their first ART treatment in a fertility clinic between the period of 1995-2014 with the number of oocytes harvested in the first and following cycles serves as a marker.

In a follow-up of 6 years span, women with early ovarian ageing for overall-disease risk has a higher risk than those with a normal oocyte field and they consisted of Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease, all-cause death, cancer, cataract, Charlson Comorbidity index, CVD, early retirement benefit, osteoporosis and type 2 diabetes.

To be specific, the early ovarian ageing group was significantly more likely to develop osteoporosis, CVD, comorbidity, and have early retirement benefit than women with normal ovarian ageing.

Christhensen concluded that it is important to have a counselling towards the women who are affected with a much earlier menopause, with the introduction of a new lifestyle habit or  applying the use of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to reduce the adverse health risks.

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Vaccines : Proven to be safe after a two decade study

Cr. CDC

Source from MIMS.com

There have been many doubts from naysayers who criticize the usage of vaccines as they claimed it could make their child get autistic and how it would make them get infected with the disease they are trying to prevent instead.

A recent US study that was conducted for over a 20-year period recently revealed that they have debunked the myths and shown that vaccines are relatively safe via existing postmarketing surveillance programmes, stated the authors.

The vaccines that were approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) – the initial and subsequent labels – between 1 January 1996 and 31 December 2015 were included in the retrospective cohort study.

Out of the fifty-seven FDA-approved vaccines that were analysed, fifty-three (93 percent) initially had approval that were supported by randomized controlled trials, with a median cohort size of 4,161 participants.

There were similarities in the initial approval trial characteristics in vaccines with and without postmarketing, safety-related label modifications. The most common safety issue prompting label modifications was the expansion of population restrictions, followed by allergies with postmarketing surveillance as the most common source of safety data.

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