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March 28, 2012 (Washington, DC) — Discontinuing risperidone ( Risperdal , Janssen Pharmaceuticals) in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) who have psychosis or agitation/aggression significantly increases the risk for relapse in these behavioral symptoms, new research shows. In a study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) of patients with AD who were treated for 4 months previously with risperidone, there was a significantly greater rate of relapse in psychosis and agitation symptoms in patients who were switched to placebo compared with those who continued receiving the active drug. The placebo-treated group also had a shorter time to relapse. Treatment-related adverse events did not differ significantly between the 2 groups up to 32 weeks later. Presented here at the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry (AAGP) 2012 Annual Meeting, the findings appear to be contrary to current guidelines, which recommend that clinicians try to ease AD patient...

March 28, 2012 (Washington, DC) — Discontinuing risperidone ( Risperdal , Janssen Pharmaceuticals) in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) who have psychosis or agitation/aggression significantly increases the risk for relapse in these behavioral symptoms, new research shows. In a study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) of patients with AD who were treated for 4 months previously with risperidone, there was a significantly greater rate of relapse in psychosis and agitation symptoms in patients who were switched to placebo compared with those who continued receiving the active drug. The placebo-treated group also had a shorter time to relapse. Treatment-related adverse events did not differ significantly between the 2 groups up to 32 weeks later. Presented here at the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry (AAGP) 2012 Annual Meeting, the findings appear to be contrary to current guidelines, which recommend that clinicians try to ease AD patient...

March 28, 2012 — This morning's oral arguments in the Supreme Court case on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) revolved around a seemingly hypothetical question: If the high court were to invalidate the law's requirement for individuals to obtain health insurance, what happens to the rest of the law? Should it, too, be struck down? The question seems less hypothetical, however, after yesterday's 2-hour hearing on the individual mandate. The proceedings led some legal experts to say that the court's 5-member conservative majority, based on the skepticism it exhibited, could very well void the mandate as a Congressional infringement on individual liberty. Attorney Paul Clement, representing the 26 state officials and the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) in their challenge of the law, told the justices that if the individual mandate is deemed unconstitutional, "the rest of the act cannot stand." Paul Clement "What you would end up wit...

March 27, 2012 — Men who drink 2 glasses of alcohol a day after surviving a heart attack are less likely to die from heart disease or other causes than either nondrinkers or those who drink more, according to a study of nearly 2000 health professionals published online March 28 in the European Heart Journal . Jennifer K. Pai, ScD, assistant professor of medicine and associate epidemiologist, Channing Laboratory, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, and colleagues used data from the Health Professionals Follow-up Study to track the survival of 1818 men who suffered a heart attack between 1986 and 2006, following-up some participants for as long as 20 years. During the follow-up, some 468 men died. Although moderate alcohol consumption (between 10.0 and 29.9 g/day) is associated with a lower risk for heart disease and reduced mortality from all causes in healthy populations, the data on post–myocardial infarction ...

March 27, 2012 — Human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination substantially reduced the risk for subsequent HPV disease in women who already had 1 bout of HPV-related disease, according to a study published online today in BMJ . "These are, to our knowledge, the first results in vaccinated women who have undergone treatment for HPV-related disease," write the authors, headed by Elmar Joura, MD, from the Medical University of Vienna in Austria. The data come from a subgroup of women who participated in trials of the quadrivalent HPV vaccine Gardasil (Merck & Co). Women who had HPV infection at the time of vaccination and who developed cervical, vulvar, or vaginal HPV disease had a substantially reduced risk of developing subsequent HPV-related disease after the first definitive treatment. HPV vaccination substantially reduced the risk for subsequent HPV disease — not only that caused by the 4 viral strains in the quadrivalent vaccine (HPV subtypes 6, 11, 16, and 18), but...

March 27, 2012 — Light to moderate alcohol consumption is associated with a lower risk for both ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke in women, new research suggests. "Alcohol consumption in moderation has been consistently associated with lower risk of heart disease, but the data for stroke, especially with regard to stroke type, has been a matter of debate," lead author Monik Jimenez, ScD, from Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, told Medscape Medical News . The study is published online March 8 in Stroke . The investigators examined data on 83,578 women in the Nurses' Health Study who were free of diagnosed cardiovascular disease and cancer at baseline. The participants were followed from 1980 to 2006. Participants provided information about their use of alcohol at baseline and then every 4 years thereafter. They also provided information about lifestyle factors and stroke events every 2 years. Strokes were classified according to the ...

March 28, 2012 — Levels of non–high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (non-HDL-C) among users of statins is linked to the risk for a major cardiovascular event, such as a heart attack or stroke, more strongly than are levels of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) and apolipoprotein B (apoB). The finding, from a meta-analysis of data from 8 trials comprising a total of 62,154 patients, is published in the March 28 issue of JAMA . Statins are a lynchpin of therapy for primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease, and LDL-C has long been the target used to determine when to start and when to adjust lipid-lowering therapy. But research is beginning to question whether LDL-C is the best lipid measure for predicting cardiovascular risk or to measure the atheroprotective effect of statin therapy, the study authors, led by S. Matthijs Boekholdt, MD, PhD, from the Academic Medical Center, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, write. In the current study, Dr. Boekholdt and h...