JHM HEALTH NEWS
An e-news service from Johns Hopkins Medicine
March 2007
NOTE TO EDITORS/REPORTERS: Welcome to the March 2007 edition of JHM Health News. Hopkins welcomes comments and suggestions for improving this means of sending you monthly health and medicine story ideas for your direct use or follow up. Contact John Lazarou at mednews@jhmi.edu to set up interviews, to localize a story with patients in your area, and to arrange for photographs or other services.
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IN THIS ISSUE:
- JOHNS HOPKINS HOUSING AND TESTING ONLY 256-SLICE CT SCANNER IN NORTH AMERICA(Note to media only: mock demonstration and tour, 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., Friday, March 30, 2007)
- WHO GETS HEART FAILURE? RACE TAKES BACK SEAT TO DIABETES AND HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE
- KIDNEY DISEASE IN CHILDREN: COMMON BUT TREATABLE
- WIDELY USED HEPATITIS B DRUG SPURS HIV DRUG RESISTANCE
JOHNS HOPKINS HOUSING AND TESTING ONLY 256-SLICE CT SCANNER IN NORTH AMERICA
Johns Hopkins Medicine is conducting three months of initial safety and clinical testing of a 256-slice computed tomography (CT) scanner, a device that can image whole hearts or brains, and tiny vessels safely. The scanner is believed to be the world's most advanced CT imaging software and machinery. The 2-metric-ton device - the first of its kind in North America and only the second outside of Japan, where its manufacturer is based - has four times the detector coverage of its immediate predecessor, the 64-CT. It can measure subtle changes in blood flow or minute blockages forming in blood vessels no bigger than the average width of a toothpick (1.5 millimeters) in the heart and brain.WHO GETS HEART FAILURE? RACE TAKES BACK SEAT TO DIABETES AND HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE
Diabetes and high blood pressure, two conditions rooted in genetics and environmental surroundings, play a much greater role than race alone in determining who is mostly likely to develop heart failure, according to the latest study from cardiologists at Johns Hopkins. Each year, nearly 300,000 Americans die from heart failure. Experts say that racial disparities have long been known to exist in who actually develops risk factors for the condition, with African Americans nearly twice as likely to be diagnosed with diabetes and more than a third as likely to have high blood pressure than Caucasian Americans.KIDNEY DISEASE IN CHILDREN: COMMON BUT TREATABLE
Kidney disease develops silently and all too often manifests its presence only when it's far too late to stop the progressive loss in kidney function that will require dialysis or transplantation. More than one-third of kidney transplant patients in 2001 were between the ages of 20 and 44. Many of them likely developed renal disease in childhood, say doctors from the Children's Center. "Kidney disease occurs more often than we think, but it is also more treatable than we used to think, especially when caught early," says Barbara Fivush, M.D., director of nephrology at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center. "Children and adolescents should be monitored carefully because kidney disease that seems to suddenly strike young adults often has its roots in childhood."
WIDELY USED HEPATITIS B DRUG SPURS HIV DRUG RESISTANCE
A Johns Hopkins study has proven false established medical practice that an antiretroviral drug widely used to treat hepatitis B liver infections was safe to use on its own in patients co-infected with HIV. Their findings demonstrate that treatment with entecavir leads to cross-resistance to other antiviral drugs used to treat the AIDS virus.For previous issues of JHM Health News go to
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/mediaII/MNU/index.html
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