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Gene Theory For Depression Is Now Discredited
A study that attempted to replicate the "seminal" study that laid the

South African Health Minister To Launch PMTCT Plan
South African Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi within the next two weeks is expected to launch a plan to address mother-to-child HIV transmission in an effort to reduce infant mortality in the country, The Times reports. The MTCT plan is part of a new health program adopted by President Jacob Zuma"s administration, according to The Times."This is one of the most urgent things I want to (deal with) as the new minister," Motsoaledi said. According to Motsoaledi, a child dies every eight minutes in South Africa, and about 40% of child deaths are related to HIV/AIDS. The plan was developed by the Development Bank of Southern Africa at a July meeting of government and health sector stakeholders. Participants at the meeting also examined maternal deaths and the decrease in life expectancy among young adults because of HIV/AIDS. According to Motsoaledi, these and other issues have been identified as priorities for the Zuma administration if South Africa is to meet targets in the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. They also have been consolidated into a 10-point plan to help the Department of Health focus on urgent issues through 2015."Health and education are the biggest challenges for (the government) and we ought to be doing something drastic," Motsoaledi said, adding, "These are very serious issues in society." The health department"s plan also calls for the revival of the National AIDS Council and says that the government should improve regulation of the private health sector. It also calls for the establishment of a national tuberculosis reference laboratory, a focus on infection rates among women ages 17 to 21 and the improvement of HIV prevention among commercial sex workers (Molele, The Times, 5/25).
News of the day
New Jersey Senate, Assembly Panels Advance Autism Coverage Bill
Committees in the New Jersey Senate and Assembly on Monday unanimously approved a bill that would provide insurance benefits of up to $36,000 annually for autism treatments, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. The funding, provided to developmentally disabled individuals younger than age 21, would go toward diagnostic services and early behavioral intervention, as well as occupational, physical and speech therapies. The Assembly could vote on the bill as early as Thursday, while the Senate bill is being considered by the state Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee.Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D), who sponsored the Senate bill, said, "I don"t know of any parent who wouldn"t do everything in their power to give their autistic or developmentally disabled child every chance to excel. However, the enormous cost of behavior intervention ... makes it out of the realm of possibility for many families." Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts (D), who sponsored the Assembly bill, said, "In this economy, every New Jersey resident is struggling, but families with kids with special needs are struggling even more," adding, "They"re maxing out their credit cards and taking out second mortgages" to cover gaps in health insurance benefits.Citing cost issues, the New Jersey Business and Industry Association and the New Jersey Association of Health Plans were among those opposed to the bill. Christine Stearns, NJBIA vice president for health and legal affairs, said that the bill would make employer-sponsored insurance more costly and cause firms to drop such coverage, adding, "How, who and what is part of a basic health plan is all part of that." Stearns added that the bill is preferable to previous versions because it mandates that covered services be medically necessary and prescribed, places a reasonable cap on prices and ensures that the cost of educational services provided by schools is not shifted to insurers. Roberts said the bill would save money by delivering earlier treatment that could prevent more costly problems in the future (Henry, Philadelphia Inquirer, 5/19).
Medical Devices

First Human Receives Cardiac Stem Cells In Clinical Trial To Heal Damage Caused By Heart Attacks

Doctors at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute announced today the completion of the first procedure in which a patient"s own heart tissue was used to grow specialized heart stem cells that were then injected back into the patient"s heart in an effort to repair and re-grow healthy muscle in a heart that had been injured by a heart attack. The minimally-invasive procedure was completed on the first patient on Friday, June 26. The procedure is part of a Phase I investigative study approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and supported by the Specialized Centers for Cell-based Therapies at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation. It is the first to use adult cells from a patient"s own heart to attempt to heal injured heart muscle. "This procedure signals a new and exciting era in the understanding and treatment of heart disease," said Eduardo Marbç¡n, MD PhD, director of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, who developed the technique and is leading the clinical trial. "Five years ago, we didn"t even know the heart had its own distinct type of stem cells. Now we are exploring how to harness such stem cells to help patients heal their own damaged hearts." The study is directed by the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, with the collaboration of the Johns Hopkins University, where Dr. Marbç¡n worked prior to joining Cedars-Sinai in 2007. The 24 patients participating in the study have hearts that were damaged and scarred by heart attacks. Once enrolled in the study, patients go through a three-step procedure. After undergoing extensive imaging so doctors can pinpoint the exact location and severity of the scars wrought by the heart attack, the patient undergoes a minimally-invasive biopsy, with local anesthesia. Using a catheter inserted through a vein in the patient"s neck, doctors remove a small piece of heart tissue, about half the size of a raisin. The heart tissue is then taken to a specialized lab at Cedars-Sinai, where heart stem cells are cultured using methods invented by Marbç¡n and his team. It takes about four weeks for the cells to multiply to numbers sufficient for therapeutic use, approximately 10 to 25 million. In the third and final step, the now-multiplied stem cells are re-introduced into the patient"s coronary arteries during a second catheter procedure. All patients in the study had to have experienced heart attacks within four weeks prior to enrolling in the research project. Four patients will receive 12.5 million stem cells and two patients will serve as controls. Later this summer, it is anticipated that 12 more patients will undergo procedures to receive 25 million stem cells, while six additional patients will be monitored as controls. The first patient, Kenneth Milles, a 39-year-old controller for a small construction company in the San Fernando Valley, experienced a heart attack on May 10 due to a 99 percent blockage in the left anterior descending artery, a major artery of the heart. Milles" heart attack left 21 percent of his heart muscle infarcted, or scarred. He underwent his biopsy May 24 and received his infusion of stem cells on June 29. The patients will be monitored for six months. Complete results are scheduled to be available in late-2010. Marbç¡n, who holds the Mark Siegel Family Foundation Chair at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute and directs Cedars-Sinai"s Board of Governors Heart Stem Cell Center, also said the cardiac stem cell procedure is a logical step forward from recent studies in which cardiac patients have been treated with stem cells derived from bone marrow. Studies over the past eight years have shown that more than 500 cardiac patients have experienced modest improvement when treated with bone marrow stem cells. However, bone marrow stem cells are not predestined to regenerate heart muscle. When cardiac stem cells were discovered five years ago by various teams worldwide, Marbç¡n began developing a method for isolating heart stem cells from minimally-invasive biopsies and then multiplying the cells. Unlike bone marrow cells, heart stem cells are naturally programmed to regrow heart tissue, so they could prove more effective in healing the injury caused by heart attacks. "If successful, we hope the procedure could be widely available in a few years and could be more broadly applied to cardiac patients," Marbç¡n said. For example, if patients are able to re-grow damaged heart muscle via stem cell therapy, there could be lesser demand for expensive and risky treatments such as heart transplants. The process to grow the cardiac-derived stem cells involved in the study was developed by Marbç¡n when he was on the faculty of Johns Hopkins University. The university has filed for a patent on that intellectual property, and has licensed it to a company in which Dr. Marbç¡n has a financial interest. No funds from that company were used to support the clinical study. All funding was derived from the National Institutes of Health, the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Cedars-Sinai Medical Center


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