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A sugar solution appears to help babies tolerate immunizations and get through the pain, researchers have found.

The approach works so well that a new report is recommending that doctors and nurses consider giving a sweet solution to babies before immunization in children 1 month to 1 year old.

Previous research has shown that a small amount of sucrose or glucose — a few drops to half a teaspoon — in a solution can reduce pain.

In the new report, released online May 12 in Archives of Disease in Childhood, researchers from Canada, Australia and Brazil reviewed findings from 14 studies that examined 1,674 injections given to children 1 year or younger.

In 13 of the studies, babies who were given a bit of sugary solution — compared with those given water or nothing — were found to cry less after immunization. Babies given 30 percent glucose in the solution were about half as likely to cry, the study found.

“Health-care professionals responsible for administering immunizations should consider using sucrose or glucose during painful procedures,” study author Denise Harrison, of the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, and her colleagues concluded. “This information is important for health-care professionals working with infants in both inpatient and outpatient settings, as sweet solutions are readily available, have a very short onset of time to analgesia, are inexpensive and are easy to administer.”

SOURCE: BMJ, news release.

A large study of European populations has uncovered seven new clusters of defective genes which may be responsible for rheumatoid arthritis, a painful and disabling disease that affects mainly the joints.

The paper was published in Nature Genetics on Monday together with findings of a separate study in Japan, which identified one of the seven genetic clusters as possibly causing the chronic inflammatory disease among Japanese.

“The findings leverage us to better understand the basic biology of rheumatoid arthritis (RA), with the goals of developing new targets for therapy and new biomarkers for diagnosis and prognosis,” wrote research scientist Eli Ayumi Stahl at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston in the United States, who led the study on European populations.

The study was also intended “to develop better genetic tests for RA risk, especially in people already at risk (such as arthritis patients or relatives of patients with autoimmune disorders),” Stahl told Reuters.

RA affects about 1 percent of the world’s population. Apart from the joints, it may affect the skin, heart, lungs, kidneys and blood vessels. Many end up with deformed hands and feet, resulting in loss of functions and movement.

In the European study, Stahl and colleagues repeated six previous studies involving 5,539 patients, analyzing their genes using the latest technology. They shortlisted 34 genetic variants which they considered most suspect in causing RA.

They then checked if those genetic defects were found in another batch of 6,768 RA patients in Canada, North America, the Netherlands and Britain. Ten of the 34 variants figured most prominently in this replication phase.

“Ten of the 34 variants tested were validated in the replication phase of our study. Three were previously implicated in RA, leaving the 7 new ones mentioned above,” Stahl wrote.

“This is more RA risk variants discovered in a single study than any other study to date, underscoring the importance of large-scale studies and the collaborations that enable them in order to make progress in unraveling common, complex diseases.”

“Our results further suggest that many more RA risk variants remain to be definitively identified,” Stahl added.

In the Japanese study, researchers led by Yuta Kochi at the RIKEN Center for Genomic Medicine in Yokohama, Japan, analyzed genes of 7,039 RA patients and identified a common genetic mutant near the CCR6 gene.

The CCR6 gene was also identified in the European study.

A widely used class of prostate cancer drugs called gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonists increases the risk of diabetes, heart attack, stroke and sudden death in men, a U.S. Food and Drug Administration review has found.

Based on initial findings from a preliminary and ongoing analysis of several studies, the FDA says doctors should be aware of the potential risks of GnRH agonists, and carefully consider the benefits and risks of these drugs when deciding on treatment for prostate cancer patients.

The agency also recommended that:
Patients taking GnRH agonists should be checked regularly for signs of the development of diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
Management of cardiovascular risk factors — including smoking, as well as increases in blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar and weight — should be stressed.
Those taking GnRH agonists should not stop the therapy unless instructed by their health-care provider.

Drugs in the GnRH agonist class include Eligard, Lupron, Synarel, Trelstar, Vantas, Viadur, Zoladex and several generic products. These drugs suppress production of testosterone, a hormone involved in the growth of prostate cancer.

“While our review of these prostate cancer treatments is ongoing and there are some limitations to the data, FDA believes it is important to tell patients and health-care professionals that there may be an increased risk of serious side effects,” Dr. Robert Justice, director of the drug oncology products division at FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in a news release.

Some GnRH agonists are also used to treat conditions in women and children.

SOURCE: U.S. Food and Drug Administration, news release.