A person who receives a heart transplant from someone of the same gender is more likely to survive the subsequent few years than someone getting a new heart from a donor of the opposite sex, researchers reported November 12 at the American Heart Association’s annual Scientific Sessions meeting.
“This was something that was speculated” based on smaller studies from single institutions, says surgeon Eric Weiss of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. With the new findings, he says, “we basically supported the hypothesis.”
To do so, he and his colleagues tapped into a nationwide database of every adult heart transplant in the United States from 1998 to 2007—18,240 recipients. The researchers were able to track heart recipients’ progress for 3.4 years on average, with data for some people stretching out over 10 years.
One-fourth of heart recipients died during the study. The records show that people who got a heart from a donor of the opposite sex were 15 percent more likely to die during the study period than people who got a gender-matched heart. The female donor/male recipient combination yielded the greatest risk, a 23 percent increase of death.
Sex-mismatched recipients were also more likely to develop transplant immune rejection during the first year. Female recipients getting gender-mismatched hearts had the highest rejection rates.
In rejection, the recipient’s immune system identifies the new organ as foreign and attacks it. The greatest risk of transplant rejection occurs during the first year after the transplant, although the danger never goes away fully, Weiss says.
Both risks — of death or immune rejection — remained about the same at the three-year and five-year points after transplant, Weiss says.
The authors accounted for differences between donors and recipients, other than gender, that might influence how well a transplant progresses. These differences included age, race, diabetes status, kidney function, immunological match and recipient frailty.
“This is evidence that these investigators identified a signal where gender mismatch was in fact a concern,” says Clyde Yancy, a transplant cardiologist at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas.
The biological reasoning behind the seeming risk of a gender-mismatched donor heart — and particularly for women receiving one — might rest with the Y chromosome, which only men have, Weiss says.
But the full explanation probably goes deeper, says Yancy. “A woman’s immune system is sensitized to a larger array of common antigens in the donor pool after pregnancy,” he says. That may include antigens — any compounds that elicit an immune reaction — found on the Y chromosome, he says, and could account for the higher rejection rate in women seen here and in smaller studies.
At present, transplant teams do their best to match donors and recipients by body size and blood type. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Moving beyond current methods and even beyond gender, Yancy says these findings also add credence to the argument that transplant centers need to develop a rapid system for identifying better immune matches between donors and recipients.
The usefulness of sex-based matching would come up only if there were more than one heart available, Yancy says. And he cautions that any benefit of gender matching might be lost if it means waiting for a matched heart and delaying a transplant.
Weiss says he and his colleagues are interested in developing a formula that would clarify for doctors how to match up the best possible donors with recipients, also assuming more than one heart is available. http://LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN-ESQUIRE.US
For the time being, Weiss says patients “are still much better off receiving an organ than trying to live with end-stage heart failure, whether [the heart] is from a male or female.”
Showing posts with label Esquire. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Esquire. Show all posts
Friday, May 1, 2009
Thursday, December 25, 2008
bigger 5.big.002003 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Progressively larger brains evolved in primates of all stripes, not just humans. We can thank a common capacity for solving a broad range of problems, from coordinating social alliances to inventing tools, according to a new study.http://louisjsheehan.blogstream.com
This conclusion challenges a popular theory that big, smart brains arose primarily because they afforded advantages when it came to negotiating complex social situations during human evolution.
"The ability to learn from others, invent new behaviors, and use tools may have [also] played pivotal roles in primate-brain evolution," say Simon M. Reader of McGill University in Montreal and Kevin N. Laland of the University of Cambridge in England. In an upcoming report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the two zoologists chronicle links between an array of intelligent behaviors and enhanced brain size in primates.http://louisjsheehan.blogstream.com
Reader and Laland examined approximately 1,000 scientific studies of behavior in 116 of the world's 203 known primate species. They identified 553 instances of animals discovering new solutions to survival-related problems, 445 observations of individuals learning skills and acquiring information from others, and 607 episodes of tool use.
The researchers then consulted previously obtained data on brain size relative to body size in different primates. In particular, they focused on the volume of the structures that make up what scientists call the executive brain, a frontal region thought to be crucial for complex thinking.
Species that have the proportionately largest executive brains are the ones that most often innovate, learn from others, and use tools, Reader and Laland contend. These three facets of intelligence vary together as primate brains enlarge, they say. There's no evidence in any species of an evolutionary trade-off between these traits, such as an increase in innovation accompanying a decline in social learning.
A related report by neuroscientist Barbara L. Finlay of Cornell University and her colleagues concluded that different brain regions in mammals enlarged all together during mammalian evolution, not in piecemeal fashion related to specific functions. Whole-brain evolution was driven by changes in the timing of early brain development in individuals, says Finlay. In all species, late-generated structures�including the executive brain�have grown the largest, Finlay's team asserted in the April 2001 Behavioral and Brain Sciences.http://louisjsheehan.blogstream.com
Reader and Laland provide "important new evidence" that wide-ranging thinking skills shared by many primate species encouraged the evolution of large brains, comment psychologist Robert M. Seyfarth and biologist Dorothy L. Cheney, both of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, in a comment published with the new report.
They suggest that intellectual accomplishments unique to people, such as language use, may have played a smaller role in the evolution of our sizable brains than has often been thought.http://louisjsheehan.blogstream.com
This conclusion challenges a popular theory that big, smart brains arose primarily because they afforded advantages when it came to negotiating complex social situations during human evolution.
"The ability to learn from others, invent new behaviors, and use tools may have [also] played pivotal roles in primate-brain evolution," say Simon M. Reader of McGill University in Montreal and Kevin N. Laland of the University of Cambridge in England. In an upcoming report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the two zoologists chronicle links between an array of intelligent behaviors and enhanced brain size in primates.http://louisjsheehan.blogstream.com
Reader and Laland examined approximately 1,000 scientific studies of behavior in 116 of the world's 203 known primate species. They identified 553 instances of animals discovering new solutions to survival-related problems, 445 observations of individuals learning skills and acquiring information from others, and 607 episodes of tool use.
The researchers then consulted previously obtained data on brain size relative to body size in different primates. In particular, they focused on the volume of the structures that make up what scientists call the executive brain, a frontal region thought to be crucial for complex thinking.
Species that have the proportionately largest executive brains are the ones that most often innovate, learn from others, and use tools, Reader and Laland contend. These three facets of intelligence vary together as primate brains enlarge, they say. There's no evidence in any species of an evolutionary trade-off between these traits, such as an increase in innovation accompanying a decline in social learning.
A related report by neuroscientist Barbara L. Finlay of Cornell University and her colleagues concluded that different brain regions in mammals enlarged all together during mammalian evolution, not in piecemeal fashion related to specific functions. Whole-brain evolution was driven by changes in the timing of early brain development in individuals, says Finlay. In all species, late-generated structures�including the executive brain�have grown the largest, Finlay's team asserted in the April 2001 Behavioral and Brain Sciences.http://louisjsheehan.blogstream.com
Reader and Laland provide "important new evidence" that wide-ranging thinking skills shared by many primate species encouraged the evolution of large brains, comment psychologist Robert M. Seyfarth and biologist Dorothy L. Cheney, both of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, in a comment published with the new report.
They suggest that intellectual accomplishments unique to people, such as language use, may have played a smaller role in the evolution of our sizable brains than has often been thought.http://louisjsheehan.blogstream.com
Thursday, November 13, 2008
barium 662.bar.7 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
The periodic table of elements in Justin Urgitis's office is unusual. It contains the same notations for all the elements, including carbon, silicon and germanium, in the same positions, as does any other. But his table at pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, Inc., also boasts lavish pictures of his own samples of carbon, silicon and germanium on it, thanks to a large (and growing) collection at his home in Uncasville, Conn. In fact, it allows him to use that age-old line: "Want to come upstairs and see my barium?"
A small but growing number of element collectors—enabled by the vast marketplace of the Internet—can actually extend such invitations. Elements-seller Dave Hamric of Metallium, Inc., says he has about 2,000 names on his mailing list. Using the periodic table as a shopping list, they gather elements used either in technical applications or compounds mixed with other elements or in nearly pure form, amassing collections that can be beautiful, instructive and representative of the fundamental components of our universe.
Urgitis' longtime interest in chemistry is typical of his fellow element collectors. "In high school, I loved going to class and seeing the teacher's demonstration of something in the lab, maybe blowing something up," he says. He often proposed dangerous experiments that his teacher nixed, such as producing nitrogen triiodide, a contact explosive, in his high school lab. Then, in college, where he earned a degree in forensic chemistry, he began to acquire iodine, magnesium, aluminum, cobalt and other elements in pure or nearly pure form. The samples of these common elements can cost as little as a few dollars. http://louisejesheehan.blogspot.com
One day, "it occurred to me that it would be fun to have samples of all of them," he remembers. He found some Web sites devoted to element collecting, and over the past five years has assembled a hoard of nearly every one that it is possible to acquire—82 of the 118 known or presumed elements, by his count though this number varies from collector to collector. (The remaining elements are too radioactive, expensive and/or rare to collect even in small quantities.)
Thirty years ago, before the Internet, an element collector could not have made such rapid progress. Sales venues like eBay now list thousands of specimens for sale at any one time, making collecting far less burdensome than searching in person through chemical supply stores and curiosity shops. "I have every stable element on the periodic table, plus thorium and radium," Urgitis says, and he treats these mildly radioactive elements carefully. http://louisejesheehan.blogspot.com
Some collectors still acquire a few specimens for the collection the old-fashioned way. They pull tungsten filaments from lightbulbs, cannibalize silicon chips, find sulfur compounds in pharmacies, chip magnesium from campfire starters, and buy neodymium magnets. Or, like Heather Harrison, a mechanical engineer in Salt Lake City, they extract radioactive americium from smoke detectors. Harrison is a collector of old recordings, wine, and antiques (she spoke over a collectible telephone from the 1920s when interviewed for this article)—"the sort of person you'd read about someday being killed in an avalanche of her own collections," she says. "For me elements are just a part of that pattern," one she memorized in the form of the periodic table as a child. http://louisejesheehan.blogspot.com
She began seriously acquiring elements three years ago and is currently about 15 specimens short of making her collection as complete as it can get. "I'm missing osmium, iridium and some of the remaining platinum-group metals," she says. Retailers typically make such precious elements affordable by selling them in minute quantities. Most collectors interested in buying the rare metal rhenium, for instance—as Harrison recently did—will have to be satisfied with a tiny amount, because its price in nearly pure form has fluctuated around $10,000 per ounce.
Harrison keeps her mercury, which is toxic, in a bottle cradled in foam and sealed in an airtight case. Her specimens of rubidium and cesium would ignite or explode with exposure to air, so she purchased them entombed within sturdy acrylic blocks. Many easily available elements such as sodium and fluorine are dangerous if touched, inhaled or allowed to combine with others. Collectors reduce the risks by researching the toxicity and dangers of every element they acquire, keeping their baubles out of the reach of pets and children, and adding to their collections in small quantities.
"You have to research every one of them for toxicity," says Harrison, who uses the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics as a guide. "Risks can be managed, but you need to understand what you have. The vast majority of elements are quite safe."
Given the perceived dangers, she does not share her enthusiasm for elements with everyone. "If I talk to people who are not scientifically inclined or are afraid of science, I might not want to say anything about it," she says. "They might get the idea that I'm a mad scientist who cares nothing about safety. I may be a mad scientist, but I'm far too safety conscious to be a real mad scientist." Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
For these element collectors the risks are just part of the fun. "There are only a small number of icons that are universally recognized," says Theodore Gray, an element-collecting guru and Illinois software developer who manages a spectacular element resource at periodictable.com. "The periodic table is one of them. We don't often think of it as something populated by real objects, and it's a revelation when you can see it's made of real stuff, not just words printed in the table." Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
A small but growing number of element collectors—enabled by the vast marketplace of the Internet—can actually extend such invitations. Elements-seller Dave Hamric of Metallium, Inc., says he has about 2,000 names on his mailing list. Using the periodic table as a shopping list, they gather elements used either in technical applications or compounds mixed with other elements or in nearly pure form, amassing collections that can be beautiful, instructive and representative of the fundamental components of our universe.
Urgitis' longtime interest in chemistry is typical of his fellow element collectors. "In high school, I loved going to class and seeing the teacher's demonstration of something in the lab, maybe blowing something up," he says. He often proposed dangerous experiments that his teacher nixed, such as producing nitrogen triiodide, a contact explosive, in his high school lab. Then, in college, where he earned a degree in forensic chemistry, he began to acquire iodine, magnesium, aluminum, cobalt and other elements in pure or nearly pure form. The samples of these common elements can cost as little as a few dollars. http://louisejesheehan.blogspot.com
One day, "it occurred to me that it would be fun to have samples of all of them," he remembers. He found some Web sites devoted to element collecting, and over the past five years has assembled a hoard of nearly every one that it is possible to acquire—82 of the 118 known or presumed elements, by his count though this number varies from collector to collector. (The remaining elements are too radioactive, expensive and/or rare to collect even in small quantities.)
Thirty years ago, before the Internet, an element collector could not have made such rapid progress. Sales venues like eBay now list thousands of specimens for sale at any one time, making collecting far less burdensome than searching in person through chemical supply stores and curiosity shops. "I have every stable element on the periodic table, plus thorium and radium," Urgitis says, and he treats these mildly radioactive elements carefully. http://louisejesheehan.blogspot.com
Some collectors still acquire a few specimens for the collection the old-fashioned way. They pull tungsten filaments from lightbulbs, cannibalize silicon chips, find sulfur compounds in pharmacies, chip magnesium from campfire starters, and buy neodymium magnets. Or, like Heather Harrison, a mechanical engineer in Salt Lake City, they extract radioactive americium from smoke detectors. Harrison is a collector of old recordings, wine, and antiques (she spoke over a collectible telephone from the 1920s when interviewed for this article)—"the sort of person you'd read about someday being killed in an avalanche of her own collections," she says. "For me elements are just a part of that pattern," one she memorized in the form of the periodic table as a child. http://louisejesheehan.blogspot.com
She began seriously acquiring elements three years ago and is currently about 15 specimens short of making her collection as complete as it can get. "I'm missing osmium, iridium and some of the remaining platinum-group metals," she says. Retailers typically make such precious elements affordable by selling them in minute quantities. Most collectors interested in buying the rare metal rhenium, for instance—as Harrison recently did—will have to be satisfied with a tiny amount, because its price in nearly pure form has fluctuated around $10,000 per ounce.
Harrison keeps her mercury, which is toxic, in a bottle cradled in foam and sealed in an airtight case. Her specimens of rubidium and cesium would ignite or explode with exposure to air, so she purchased them entombed within sturdy acrylic blocks. Many easily available elements such as sodium and fluorine are dangerous if touched, inhaled or allowed to combine with others. Collectors reduce the risks by researching the toxicity and dangers of every element they acquire, keeping their baubles out of the reach of pets and children, and adding to their collections in small quantities.
"You have to research every one of them for toxicity," says Harrison, who uses the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics as a guide. "Risks can be managed, but you need to understand what you have. The vast majority of elements are quite safe."
Given the perceived dangers, she does not share her enthusiasm for elements with everyone. "If I talk to people who are not scientifically inclined or are afraid of science, I might not want to say anything about it," she says. "They might get the idea that I'm a mad scientist who cares nothing about safety. I may be a mad scientist, but I'm far too safety conscious to be a real mad scientist." Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
For these element collectors the risks are just part of the fun. "There are only a small number of icons that are universally recognized," says Theodore Gray, an element-collecting guru and Illinois software developer who manages a spectacular element resource at periodictable.com. "The periodic table is one of them. We don't often think of it as something populated by real objects, and it's a revelation when you can see it's made of real stuff, not just words printed in the table." Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
It may be time for mental-health workers to pick up a new depression-fighting tool—the telephone. People taking antidepressant drugs for a bout of depression do particularly well, at least over a 6-month period, if they also take part in a program that includes telephone psychotherapy, a new study finds.
Evidence of telephone therapy's mood-enhancing effect raises the prospect of expanding the reach of depression treatment, says the investigation's director, psychiatrist Gregory E. Simon of Group Health Cooperative in Seattle. Many people suffering from depression don't take antidepressants—even if the drugs have been prescribed for them—and never receive psychotherapy of any kind. Feelings of discouragement when a medication doesn't work right away and the stigma associated with psychological treatment contribute to this problem, Simon holds.
"With this telephone program, we can help many depressed people who aren't reached by traditional in-person treatments," he says. Simon and his coworkers describe their results in the Aug. 25 Journal of the American Medical Association.
Between November 2000 and May 2002, the researchers recruited 600 adults who were beginning antidepressant treatment at medical clinics run by Group Health Cooperative, a prepaid health plan. Generally, primary care physicians had prescribed fluoxetine (Prozac) or related medications. The study excluded people who were already receiving in-person psychotherapy or planned to do so.http://louis-j-sheehan.info
Participants were randomly assigned to one of three treatments: typical primary care follow-ups; typical care plus at least three "care-management" telephone calls over 3 months from mental-health clinicians, who checked on medication use and provided feedback from a patient to his or her primary care physician; and typical care plus care management and eight sessions of cognitive-behavioral therapy delivered by phone.
During the cognitive-behavioral therapy, the clinician and patient discussed ways to increase pleasant activities, reverse negative thoughts, and manage daily affairs. Each session lasted 30 to 40 minutes.
Six months after a person's treatment began, 80 percent of those who received telephone psychotherapy reported a marked decline in depression symptoms, compared with 66 percent of the care-management group and 55 percent of those who got only typical primary care follow-ups. Participants who received telephone psychotherapy reported the most satisfaction with their treatment.
Psychiatric interviews conducted by phone at that time also found that interviewer-detected signs of depression had diminished most sharply in the telephone-psychotherapy group. These results fit with evidence that cognitive-behavioral therapy delivered in person boosts the effectiveness of antidepressant drugs (SN: 8/21/04, p. 116: http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20040821/fob4.asp).
Psychologist Alan E. Kazdin, director of Yale University's Child Conduct Clinic, regards Simon's project as part of a broad movement to make psychological treatments more easily available through sources such as the Internet and self-help manuals, as well as the telephone.
"Telephone psychotherapy won't replace typical psychotherapy, but it will add to what clinicians can do," he says. "We can help more people if we have a diversified portfolio of treatments for mental disorders." Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire
Thursday, June 12, 2008
dandruff Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire 18882
s the epidermal layer continually replaces itself, cells are pushed outward where they eventually die and flake off. In most people, these flakes of skin are too small to be visible. However, certain conditions cause cell turnover to be unusually rapid, especially in the scalp. For people with dandruff, skin cells may mature and be shed in 2 - 7 days, as opposed to around a month in people without dandruff. The result is that dead skin cells are shed in large, oily clumps, which appear as white or grayish patches on the scalp, skin, and clothes. http://louis1j1sheehan1.blogspot.com
http://Louis-J-Sheehan.de
Dandruff has been shown to be the result of three required factors:[1]
1. Skin oil commonly referred to as sebum or sebaceous secretions[2]
2. The metabolic by-products of skin micro-organisms (most specifically Malassezia yeasts)[3][4][5][6][7]
3. Individual susceptibility
Common older literature cites the fungus Malassezia furfur (previously known as Pityrosporum ovale) as the cause of dandruff. While this fungus is found naturally on the skin surface of both healthy people and those with dandruff, it was discovered that a scalp specific fungus, Malassezia globosa, is the responsible agent.[8] This fungus metabolizes triglycerides present in sebum by the expression of lipase, resulting in a lipid byproduct oleic acid (OA). Penetration by OA of the top layer of the epidermis, the stratum corneum, results in an inflammatory response in susceptible persons which disturbs homeostasis and results in erratic cleavage of stratum corneum cells.[5]
Rarely, dandruff can be a manifestation of an allergic reaction to chemicals in hair gels/sprays, hair oils, or sometimes even dandruff medications like ketoconazole.
There is no convincing evidence that food (such as sugar or yeast), excessive perspiration, or climate have any role in the pathogenesis of dandruff. However, certain oily foods or excessive intake of 'junk food' can trigger the appearance of dandruff .
Seborrheic dermatitis
Flaking is a symptom of seborrheic dermatitis. Joseph Bark notes that "Redness and itching is actually seborrheic dermatitis, and it frequently occurs around the folds of the nose and the eyebrow areas, not just the scalp." Dry, thick, well-defined lesions consisting of large, silvery scales may be traced to the less common psoriasis of the scalp.
Seasonal changes, stress, and immuno-suppression seem to affect seborrheic dermatitis.
[edit] Treatment of fungal infection
There have been many strategies for the control of dandruff. Simply increasing shampooing will remove flakes.[9] However, elimination of the fungus results in dramatic improvement. Regular shampooing with an anti-fungal product can reduce recurrence.
Active ingredient Example of product
Sodium Bicarbonate Baking Soda
Zinc pyrithione[10] Head & Shoulders, Johnson and Johnson ZP-11, Clinic All Clear, Pantene Pro V,Sikkai Powder
Ketoconazole[11] Nizoral, or Fungoral
Selenium sulfide Selsun Blue, Vichy Dercos Anti-Dandruff shampoo, other varieties of Head & Shoulders
Tea tree oil[12] Himalaya Anti-dandruff shampoo
Tar[13] Neutrogena T/Gel Polytar
Piroctone olamine (INCI)[14] Octopirox
http://Louis-J-Sheehan.de
Dandruff has been shown to be the result of three required factors:[1]
1. Skin oil commonly referred to as sebum or sebaceous secretions[2]
2. The metabolic by-products of skin micro-organisms (most specifically Malassezia yeasts)[3][4][5][6][7]
3. Individual susceptibility
Common older literature cites the fungus Malassezia furfur (previously known as Pityrosporum ovale) as the cause of dandruff. While this fungus is found naturally on the skin surface of both healthy people and those with dandruff, it was discovered that a scalp specific fungus, Malassezia globosa, is the responsible agent.[8] This fungus metabolizes triglycerides present in sebum by the expression of lipase, resulting in a lipid byproduct oleic acid (OA). Penetration by OA of the top layer of the epidermis, the stratum corneum, results in an inflammatory response in susceptible persons which disturbs homeostasis and results in erratic cleavage of stratum corneum cells.[5]
Rarely, dandruff can be a manifestation of an allergic reaction to chemicals in hair gels/sprays, hair oils, or sometimes even dandruff medications like ketoconazole.
There is no convincing evidence that food (such as sugar or yeast), excessive perspiration, or climate have any role in the pathogenesis of dandruff. However, certain oily foods or excessive intake of 'junk food' can trigger the appearance of dandruff .
Seborrheic dermatitis
Flaking is a symptom of seborrheic dermatitis. Joseph Bark notes that "Redness and itching is actually seborrheic dermatitis, and it frequently occurs around the folds of the nose and the eyebrow areas, not just the scalp." Dry, thick, well-defined lesions consisting of large, silvery scales may be traced to the less common psoriasis of the scalp.
Seasonal changes, stress, and immuno-suppression seem to affect seborrheic dermatitis.
[edit] Treatment of fungal infection
There have been many strategies for the control of dandruff. Simply increasing shampooing will remove flakes.[9] However, elimination of the fungus results in dramatic improvement. Regular shampooing with an anti-fungal product can reduce recurrence.
Active ingredient Example of product
Sodium Bicarbonate Baking Soda
Zinc pyrithione[10] Head & Shoulders, Johnson and Johnson ZP-11, Clinic All Clear, Pantene Pro V,Sikkai Powder
Ketoconazole[11] Nizoral, or Fungoral
Selenium sulfide Selsun Blue, Vichy Dercos Anti-Dandruff shampoo, other varieties of Head & Shoulders
Tea tree oil[12] Himalaya Anti-dandruff shampoo
Tar[13] Neutrogena T/Gel Polytar
Piroctone olamine (INCI)[14] Octopirox
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