Peripheral arterial disease is a common circulatory problem in which narrowed arteries reduce blood flow to the limbs – usually the legs. This causes symptoms including leg pain when walking.
In the Mayo study, published online Thursday in the journal Atherosclerosis, researchers found hypertension during pregnancy is an independent risk factor for peripheral arterial disease. The study adjusted for such variables as age, race, height, heart rate, smoking history, body mass index and diabetes.
More study is needed to determine whether peripheral arterial disease screening of women who had hypertension in pregnancy could identify those at greatest risk for heart disease, the researchers say.
Dual energy computed tomography (DECT) is an effective method in evaluating patients who end up in the emergency department for possible anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tears, one of the most common ligamentous knee injury, Mayo Clinic finds. The injury often goes undiagnosed, as it does not show on plain X-rays exam requested by the ED.
“We felt CT was being underutilized for evaluation of knee injuries. The utility of CT has been well documented in the assessment of fractures, but little attention has been made on soft tissue evaluation,” says Katrina Glazebrook, M.D., a lead author of the study.
Her team at Mayo Clinic in Rochester reviewed images of the knees of 27 patients obtained by using dual energy CT and confirmed that 16 of the patients suffered ACL tears with clinical assessment and MRI as the reference standard. The images were reviewed by a musculoskeletal subspecialty trained radiologist and one radiology resident. The subspecialty trained radiologist was 94 percent accurate in identifying the ACL tears on dual energy CT, while the resident had an 87 percent accuracy rate. “What surprised us was that the resident was highly capable of detecting ACL injury with DECT. The accuracy was just slightly lower than that of the experienced radiologist,” says Dr Glazebrook.
The standard imaging for knee injuries in the emergency department is radiography. If a displaced or suspected fracture is noted, then CT is performed, while MRI — considered the gold standard in evaluating internal derangement of the knee — is not routinely used in the acute setting due to cost, exam time, and availability.
“Using dual energy CT to identify significant internal derangement of the knee early can facilitate treatment planning for patients with knee trauma,” Dr. Glazebrook concludes.
Francis Collins, M.D., Ph.D., now director of the NIH (right) stands next to then-President Bill Clinton (J. Craig Ventner, Ph.D., left) at the announcement that an international consortuim had completed the first “working draft” of the human genome on June 26, 2000. Three years later, Dr. Collins and others would announce the completion of the Human Genome Project. The White House, at that time, characterized the scientific achievement as akin to splitting the atom and landing on the moon.
This week marks the 10th anniversary of the completion of the Human Genome Project, a roughly 10-year, $3-billion, international effort to determine all 6 billion letters (3 billion base pairs) of human DNA.
It was a major scientific achievement funded by the National Institutes of Health, Department of Energy, several international governments, private capital, dozens of academic and research medical centers, and it included participation and collaboration from thousands of public and private scientists around the world.
In a recent Q&A with the New York Times, Dr. Eric Green, M.D., Ph.D, director of the NIH’s National Human Genome Research Institute, discusses just how far we’ve come — It’s a really long way. And what he sees for the application of this work — which Dr. Green plans to share here at Mayo Clinic as the keynote speaker at the Individualizing Medicine 2013 Conference.
Dr. Green will be the keynote speaker at Individualizing Medicine 2013: From Promise to Practice. This conference focuses on how to translate the promise of genomic medicine to your practice. Expert speakers, focused breakout sessions, case studies, and a poster session provide opportunities to discover and discuss emerging topics in applied genomics. Category 1 CME is available.
The first human genome bluebrint consisted of bits of DNA from several blood donors interested in scientific advancement. It showed the world that it could be done, and the work signified the starting of a race to reshape the ways to diagnose, treat and prevent disease in the individual patient.
In any case, it was 13 years ago, at the presidential briefing pictured above, that Clinton forecast four transformation changes to the way we practice medicine:
Alert patients that they are at risk for certain diseases
Reliably predict the course of disease
Precisely diagnose disease and ensure the most effective treatment is used
Developing new treatments at the molecular level
Here we are, 13 years later, and 10 years after the Human Genome Project was complete. Here’s what Dr. Green told the NY Times, when asked about the naysayers who have been critical of a perceived lack of progress.
“I became director of this institute three and a half years ago, and I remember when I first started going around and giving talks. Routinely I would hear: ‘You are seven years into this. Where are the wins? Where are the successes?’
“I don’t hear that as much anymore. I think what’s happening, and it has happened in the last three years in particular, is just the sheer aggregate number of the success stories. The drumbeat of these successes is finally winning people over.”
Gianrico Farrugia, M.D., director of the Center for Individualized Medicine at Mayo Clinic, is available for interviews and commentary. Please contact Sam Smith or call 507-284-5005 (days), 507-284-2511 (evenings) to schedule.
Now, we’re taking these technologies into patient care with programs like the Individualized Medicine Clinic, which brings genomics into care of patients with advanced cancers and difficult diagnoses.
In the video below, Dr. Farrugia reflects on the human genome project and what lies ahead.
Time health writer Alice Park will moderate the chat.
Tuesday April 16, Mayo Clinic is teaming up with Alice Park from Time for a Twitter chat on Parkinson’s disease. April is Parkinson’s disease awareness month. The movement disorder, which usually strikes between the ages of 50 and 65, is diagnosed in about 50,000 people in the United States each year. And that number is expected to surge in coming years as the U.S. population continues to age.
We’ll be exploring topics such as: prevention including biomarkers and early identification; challenges for caregivers; treatments and therapies showing the most promise; and how to get involved in clinical trials.
The chat is from 1-2 p.m. ET. To follow, simply use the hashtag #parkinsonschat. We also recommend using logging into tweetchat.com to more easily follow the flow of the conversation.
Researchers at Mayo Clinic in Florida participated in a nationwide study that found minor differences between genes that contribute to late-onset Alzheimer’s disease in African-Americans and in Caucasians. The study, published April 10 in The Journal of the American Medical Association, was the first to look at the genetics of a large number of African-Americans diagnosed with this common form of Alzheimer’s disease (1,968 patients) compared to 3,928 normal elderly African-American control participants.
Launched on April 11, 2013, this is the first video in a new video series, Saving Lives With Gus, which is designed to educate, entertain and deliver life-saving tips with high-tech mannequins. Share this video with your networks using #SavingLivesWithGus on Twitter and Google+. You never know…you too could save a life.
Mayo Clinic is launching a new video series, Saving Lives With Gus, which is designed to educate, entertain and deliver life-saving tips with high-tech mannequins. The series will be made available to media outlets as well as the public through social media channels.
David Farley, M.D., who oversees training at the Multidisciplinary Simulation Center in Minnesota, was touched a few years ago by the tragic story of a high school athlete who died after making the winning shot in a basketball game. It was determined later that he suffered from underlying cardiomyopathy. An Automated External Defibrillator, AED, was used to save the boy’s life but there were reports that the batteries may have been dead. Dr. Farley credits his three teenagers for showing him the educational power of social media. “Through them, I saw an opportunity to reach a new generation and deliver a succinct health care message to thousands of people through platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.”
First-in-humans study introduces next generation cell therapy
Translating a Mayo Clinic stem-cell discovery, an international team has demonstrated that therapy with cardiopoietic (cardiogenically-instructed) or “smart” stem cells can improve heart health for people suffering from heart failure. This is the first application in patients of lineage-guided stem cells for targeted regeneration of a failing organ, paving the way to development of next generation regenerative medicine solutions.
Seemingly benign differences in genetic code from one person to the next could influence who develops side effects to chemotherapy. A Mayo Clinic study identified gene variations that can predispose people to chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy, a condition that is hard to predict and often debilitating enough to cause cancer patients to stop their treatment early.
Oncologist at Mayo Clinic Cancer Center and senior author of the study, Andreas Beutler, M.D., says, “Our study creates a path for how to approach the whole genome in order to tailor cancer treatments. That is important because we not only want to cure people’s cancer or help them live longer, but we also want to provide them with the best quality of life.” Results are being presented at the American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting in Washington, D.C.
