StemCell Therapy

Sketchy stem cell "cures" infiltrate trial database

Stem cell clinics offering unapproved treatments for ailments from hip pains to erectile dysfunction increasingly use a federal clinical-trials database as a marketing tool a strategy that confuses patients and exposes them to "unjustifiable" safety risks and costs, according to a new study.

At least 18 purported clinical trials all of which involve unregulated therapies and require patients to pay to enroll are listed on ClinicalTrials.gov, the comprehensive registry for public and private clinical trials that is run by the National Institutes of Health, according to the journal Regenerative Medicine.

Leigh Turner, who authored the study and is an associate professor at the University of Minnesota's Center for Bioethics and School of Public Health, said NIH should use much tougher screening tools to exclude from its database unapproved treatments.

"Do we really want ClinicalTrials.gov to be 'caveat emptor,' where no one is paying attention to the substance of studies being listed?" said Turner. "A lot of these studies are just marketing pitches designed to appeal to people with COPD, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's disease."

Most legitimate trials do not charge patients, though they might face incidental costs such as travel.

Laurie Mcginley, The Washington Post

Canadian study find a sugar spike after NAFTA

The North American Free Trade Agreement may have dramatically changed the Canadian diet by boosting consumption of high-fructose corn syrup, a new study suggests.

That boost arrested a years-long decline in total sugar consumption. And it shifted Canadians away from liquid sweeteners such as maltose and molasses toward high-fructose corn syrup, a sweetener that has been linked to the obesity epidemic.

The peer-reviewed study, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, found that as tariffs on high-fructose corn syrup dropped over a four-year period, consumption grew: from 21.2 calories of corn syrup per day in 1994, to 62.9 calories per day by 1998.

NAFTA may thus have contributed to growing obesity and diabetes rates over that time, its authors say.

"There are free-trade deals being negotiated all over the world, and NAFTA has been used as a blueprint for many of them," said Pepita Barlow, a doctoral student at Oxford University and the lead researcher on the paper. "In some ways, this is an opportunity to think about who benefits from these deals, and who loses and how we can craft them to better promote health and wellness."

Caitlin Dewey, The Washington Post

The smarter the kid, the longer the life?

Intelligent children tend to live longer than their less gifted peers, a new study suggests.

Scottish researchers began their study with 75,252 men and women born in 1936 94 percent of the Scottish population born that year who had taken standardized intelligence tests in 1947. By 2015, they were able to confirm a cause of death for 25,979 of them; 30,464 were still living in Britain.

After controlling for many health, socioeconomic and behavioral characteristics, they found that lower scores on the childhood intelligence test were associated with death from heart disease, stroke, respiratory disease, lung cancer and stomach cancer. All of these diseases are highly associated with smoking, and smoking did partially explain the association with mortality. But even after controlling for smoking, the link to lower scores on the intelligence test did not disappear.

The study, in BMJ, found no association of lower intelligence with cancers not related to smoking or with suicide, but there was a strong association with death by accidental injury.

The reasons for the link are far from clear. We dont know yet why intelligence from childhood and longevity are related, and we are keeping an open mind, said the senior author, Ian J. Deary, a professor of differential psychology at the University of Edinburgh. Lifestyles, education, deprivation and genetics may all play a part.

Nicholas Bakalar, The New York Times

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Health Shorts: Stem cell 'cures,' Sugar spike, Longevity - Sarasota Herald-Tribune

This entry was posted on July 30, 2017 at 7:42 pm and is filed under Longevity Genetics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. |