News In Brief 10 March 2009

8,000 Patients Malnourished After Staying In NHS Hospitals

More than 8,000 patients left hospital last year after becoming malnourished while under NHS care.

Despite ministers’ promises, this total was a 16.5 per cent increase on the previous year and more than double the number when Labour came to power.

Last year 148,946 patients were admitted to hospital suffering from malnutrition or another severe nutritional deficiency, but 157, 175 were discharged with the same condition this year.

New Academic Centres Named

Oxford and Birmingham yesterday were the loser and London the winner in a drive to put the UK’s clinical research, teaching and patient care back at the top of the world league tables.

Three groupings of universities and teaching hospitals in London, and one each in Manchester and Cambridge, were given the right by the Department of Health to call themselves academic health science centres (AHSCs). 

The other London winners were Imperial College with its teaching hospitals,  St Mary’s, Charing Cross and the Hammersmith; and a partnership that included University College London’s Hospital, University College, Moorfields, Great Ormond Street and the Royal Free.

People Power Saves Epsom NHS Units

Epsom General Hospital is to stay open after 10 years of uncertainty over its future.

The hospital, part of the Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust, will also get a £100 million investment to revamp services.

Merck Agrees To Pay $41 Billion For Rival Schering

Merck yesterday announced an agreed $41billion takeover of its New Jersey rival, Schering-Plough, in the second big deal in the global pharmaceuticals industry within six weeks.

The deal, which will create one of the world’s largest drug makers with combined sales of nearly $50 billion, will be done via a complex reverse takeover in which the much smaller Schering-Plough will technically acquire Merck.

The Merck/Schering-Plough tie-up would give the group 5.6 per cent of the world’s pharmaceutical market, pushing GlaxoSmithKline into third place in the global league, with a 5.4 per cent share, according to Datamonitor/IMS Health.

Merck said that 16,000 jobs, 15 per cent of the enlarged group’s workforce, would go as it tried to cut $3.5 billion costs annually.

US Scientists Relieved As Obama Lifts Ban On Stem Cell Research

Scientists have welcomed a new executive order signed by President Barack Obama ending the ban on federal funding for the majority of stem cell research.

Harvard University’ stem cell institute co-director, Doug Melton, said in a statement that it was a relief to know that he and colleagues could now collaborate openly and freely with other scientists in their own university and elsewhere, without restrictions on what equipment, data or ideas could be shared.

Since the ban, US research has been sustained by private funds that have declined with the economic downturn.  The fiscal stimulus bill passed by Congress last month included $8.2 bn for the National Institutes of Health research centres.

Freezing Prostate Tumours Works As Well As Surgery

Researchers have discovered that a treatment that freezes and destroys prostate tumours is as effective as surgery, but avoids life-changing side –effects. Focal cryoblation destroys cancerous tissue with cold gas fired through needle probes.

The treatment, disclosed at the meeting of the Society of Interventional Radiology in San Diego, California, targets the tumour without damaging surrounding tissue.  Because nerves and blood vessels are preserved, it does not cause the side effects of impotence and poor bladder control associated with surgery and radiotherapy.

Angry People Risk Heart Attack

Researchers suggest angry and hostile behaviour could be an early warning of a greater risk of heart disease.

A review of studies found that anger and hostility predicted heart attacks in healthy people and in those already showing signs of coronary disease.

Scientists said that healthy people who lose their temper are 19 per cent more likely to die of a heart attack than those who keep their emotions under control.  And in those, who already have heart disease, the risk of dying from their condition rises to 24 per cent.

Study leader, Dr Chida, of the University College of London’s public health department, said there was a harmful association of anger and hostility with coronary problems.

Weather Changes Can Cause Headaches

A rise in temperature or a fall in barometric pressure, which often accompanies a thunderstorm, may trigger a headache or a migraine.

After a cold spell last week, the temperature rose to 13.8C in London on Saturday, more than 5C warmer than on Thursday, explaining why some people found themselves in pain.

Research by scientists at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical centre in Boston, in the United States, who monitored  7,000 patients with headaches serious enough to make them seek treatment at a hospital A&E department, found the main trigger was a rise in temperature in the previous 24 hours.  The risk of a severe headache rose by 7.5 per cent for every 5C rise in temperature.

Margaret Edwards Leaves Yorkshire Humber Strategic Health Authority

Margaret Edwards, the Chief Executive of Yorkshire and Humber Strategic Health Authority is to leave her post and to lead a new Department of Health Productivity Unit,

Ms Edwards was formerly Department of Health Director of Access and Choice between 2001 and 2006.  Before that she rose through NHS managerial ranks to become Chief Executive of Heatherwood and Wexham Park Hospital Trust.

Organs For NHS

This week will see the launch of a crackdown from British donors going to foreign patients.

U-Turn On Cervical Cancer Test For Young Women

Cancer tests that could save the lives of scores of young women are set to return, five years after they were cut amid controversy, health managers confirmed last week.

Ministers are considering the return of cervical cancer screening for women under 25, after having restricted the tests to older women.

The government raised the age for routine smear tests from 20 to 25 in 2004, after a study by Cancer Research UK, Britain’s largest cancer charity, found that the incidence of the disease in teenage girls was very rare.

Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Linked To Vaccine Programme

Vaccination for children is to be place in the control of a group containing members with links to vaccine manufacturers.

Next months rules will come into force which will mean that the Secretary of State for Health, who has been in charge of a vaccine policy, will be legally bound to accept the recommendations of the Joint Committee.

Press inquiries have revealed that at least two members received grants or travel feels from Wyeth and Merck, two vaccine manufacturers.  Another carries out research funded by Sanofi Pasteur, while several have paid consultancy posts from pharmaceutical companies such as Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, Roche and Novartis.

Meat Eaters Face Ban On ‘Clean’ Transfusions Amid New Fears

Patients who eat meat could be banned from receiving the safest blood supplies to halt the spread of the human form of mad cow disease.

Only vegetarians and children under the age of 16, who need transfusions, would get imported blood, which is thought to be free of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, under proposals by government advisers.

New Transplant Offers Breast Cancer Hope

A remarkable reconstruction technique is being trialled by British surgeons, who are harvesting stem-cell enriched fat from women’s bodies to plug the dip often left by breast cancer operations.

The procedure appears to restore the softness and suppleness of breast tissues, undoing the damage frequently caused by lumpectomy and radiotherapy.

Early signs indicate that it also eases the considerable pain with which patients are often left after treatment.

Statins Are The New Wonder Drug For Cutting Cholesterol But What About Side-Effects

New research challenges the medical convention that lowering cholesterol is always a good thing – indeed, they suggest statins may affect intelligence, cause depression and even raise the risk of suicide.

A study by Iowa State University suggests that statins inhibit a vital process in which cholesterol is produced by the brain, where it is used to release vital chemicals called neurotransmitters that carry messages between brain cells. When brain cells are deprived of cholesterol, they are five times less effective at releasing chemical messengers, according the research published in the highly respected journal, Proceedings Of The National Academy of Sciences.