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Thursday, October 31, 2013

Risk of osteoporosis drug's side effects not significant, Loyola researchers find

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

30-Oct-2013

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Contact: Nora Dudley
nodudley@lumc.edu
708-216-6268
Loyola University Health System

The risks of developing kidney failure and a calcium deficiency from the popular osteoporosis drug zoledronic acid are extremely rare, according to researchers at Loyola University Health System (LUHS). These findings were presented earlier this month at the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research's annual meeting.

"Osteoporosis is a growing problem in this country," said Laurae Hicks, first author and Stritch School of Medicine medical student. "These findings are valuable for the millions of Americans who suffer from osteoporosis and are considering their treatment options."

Zoledronic acid is commonly used to treat osteoporosis. The treatment strengthens bones by increasing the process by which bone is broken down and replaced with new bone tissue. While this medication is effective at preventing and treating osteoporosis, potential side effects include kidney failure and hypocalcemia.

Kidney failure occurs when the kidneys fail to adequately filter waste products from the blood while hypocalcemia is characterized by low calcium levels in the blood. This condition can lead to a variety of symptoms, including weakness, muscle cramps, excessive nervousness, headaches or uncontrollable twitching and cramping in certain muscles.

"This study helped us determine the severity and prevalence of these side effects," said Pauline Camacho, MD, study investigator and director of the Loyola University Osteoporosis and Metabolic Bone Disease Center. "This will help us assess which patients are good candidates for this treatment."

Researchers studied 237 patients before and after they received injections of zoledronic acid. They found that a slight and clinically insignificant decline in calcium levels may be seen after the first infusion, but these effects appear to be transient. The findings apply only to individuals with normal vitamin D levels and kidney function prior to infusion and cannot be generalized to those with renal insufficiency and existing calcium and vitamin D deficiencies.

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Risk of osteoporosis drug's side effects not significant, Loyola researchers find

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

30-Oct-2013

[

| E-mail

]

Share
Contact: Nora Dudley
nodudley@lumc.edu
708-216-6268
Loyola University Health System

The risks of developing kidney failure and a calcium deficiency from the popular osteoporosis drug zoledronic acid are extremely rare, according to researchers at Loyola University Health System (LUHS). These findings were presented earlier this month at the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research's annual meeting.

"Osteoporosis is a growing problem in this country," said Laurae Hicks, first author and Stritch School of Medicine medical student. "These findings are valuable for the millions of Americans who suffer from osteoporosis and are considering their treatment options."

Zoledronic acid is commonly used to treat osteoporosis. The treatment strengthens bones by increasing the process by which bone is broken down and replaced with new bone tissue. While this medication is effective at preventing and treating osteoporosis, potential side effects include kidney failure and hypocalcemia.

Kidney failure occurs when the kidneys fail to adequately filter waste products from the blood while hypocalcemia is characterized by low calcium levels in the blood. This condition can lead to a variety of symptoms, including weakness, muscle cramps, excessive nervousness, headaches or uncontrollable twitching and cramping in certain muscles.

"This study helped us determine the severity and prevalence of these side effects," said Pauline Camacho, MD, study investigator and director of the Loyola University Osteoporosis and Metabolic Bone Disease Center. "This will help us assess which patients are good candidates for this treatment."

Researchers studied 237 patients before and after they received injections of zoledronic acid. They found that a slight and clinically insignificant decline in calcium levels may be seen after the first infusion, but these effects appear to be transient. The findings apply only to individuals with normal vitamin D levels and kidney function prior to infusion and cannot be generalized to those with renal insufficiency and existing calcium and vitamin D deficiencies.

###

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| E-mail

Share

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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-10/luhs-roo103013.php
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Thousands protest in Greece over planned new tax

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Thousands of anti-austerity protesters clogged the Greek capital's streets to demonstrate against government plans to introduce a new property tax as bailout lenders prepare to conduct another inspection next week.

The anger is being felt across Greek society, with retirees, disabled groups, shipyard workers and high school teachers among those expected to take part in Thursday's protests.

Parliament is due to vote next week on proposals to replace an emergency property tax included on electricity bills with a permanent levy, breaking a pledge made last year by the conservative-led coalition government. More than 50 conservative lawmakers are demanding changes to proposals, arguing they unfairly burden their rural constituents.

The government is also planning new cuts to state benefits and the public workforce.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/thousands-protest-greece-over-planned-tax-133322018--finance.html
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McIlroy leads by two after Mickelson woe in Shanghai

Shanghai (AFP) - Rory McIlroy found himself leading a golf tournament for the first time since May as he took control of the World Golf Championships HSBC Champions with a superbly crafted seven-under par round of 65 in Shanghai Thursday.

The 24-year-old was helped by world number three Phil Mickelson blowing up in disastrous fashion on the long eighth hole, the 17th of his round, as the American found the Sheshan Golf Club water twice en route to a quadruple-bogey nine.

Moments earlier McIlroy had carded his eighth birdie of the day on the same hole to move to seven under. Mickelson then bogeyed his last hole, the ninth, to drop five shots in two holes and plummet from outright second to tied 28th in the 78-man field with a 71.

On Wednesday McIlroy had said he was capable of winning the tournament with the way the course was set up.

On Thursday he proved it was no idle boast as his swagger and, more importantly, his short game returned to leave a field containing 40 of the world's top 50 in his wake.

The last time McIlroy had even held a share of the lead was after the first round of the Wells Fargo Open at Quail Hollow on May 2.

He leads by two from Spain's Gonzalo Fernandez-Castano, who carried on his fine form from last week when he won the BMW Masters across the city, by carding a five-under round of 67.

Also on 67 was Jamie Donaldson of Wales.

Back on four-under are the English pair Justin Rose and Tommy Fleetwood. They were joined on that mark by two Americans, Bubba Watson and US PGA Tour Rookie of the Year Jordan Spieth.

But it was McIlroy's day. The revival he had threatened, with a second place in the Korea Open a fortnight ago and a solid performance -- tee to green at least -- last week at Lake Malaren, at last materialised.

His confidence buoyed by an exhibition match victory over Tiger Woods on Monday in Hainan, McIlroy got off to the best possible start on his opening hole, the 10th.

Having just seen playing partner and US PGA champion Jason Dufner hole his second shot with a sand wedge for an outrageous eagle two, McIlroy almost matched it with a lob wedge of his own -- leaving a tap-in for the first of seven birdies in his opening 11 holes.

His only blemish of a near flawless card -- McIlroy afterwards modestly gave his own ball striking just seven out of 10 -- came at the 11th when the Northern Irishman was plugged after driving into a fairway bunker.

He was forced to advance the ball just 20 yards but still almost saved par with a seven-iron to 15 feet. However, the putt just slipped by.

He got the shot back straightaway at the 225-yard par three 12th when he rolled in a 20-footer for birdie and never looked back.

Birdies followed at 14, 16 and 18 to get to four-under at the turn, and then McIlroy hit what he described as one of his "shots of the day" on the first.

A rare errant drive found deep rough on the right but he struck a nine-iron imperiously from 160 yards to 12 feet and holed the putt.

Another birdie on the long par-five next hole, where he was just short of the green after a driver and a three-iron, took him to six under, until a final birdie at the eighth gave him daylight on the field.

"It was very good," a smiling McIlroy told AFP straight after his round. "And it was needed."

McIlroy this time last year was world and European number one.

He now lies 62nd in the Race to Dubai standings and must record a good finish this week to guarantee being among the top 60 who qualify for the season-ending DP World Tour Championship in Dubai in two weeks' time. McIlroy is defending champion there.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/mickelson-heads-star-cast-asias-major-005447937--golf.html
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Campaigning Dems careful not to overplay shutdown

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) — Outside a state-of-the-art grain elevator, Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley talks of how Republicans and Democrats in Congress need to overcome differences that scuttled farm legislation last summer. A day later, he tells veterans at a rec center in his blue-collar, northern Iowa district that both parties should work together to help them.

"The issues surrounding our veterans should be issues that bring us together, not issues that drive us apart," Braley says in a bipartisan pitch that lacks direct criticism of Republicans over the 16-day partial government shutdown.

In this district dotted with farming towns, as well as in districts around the country, the political environment is toxic for lawmakers running for re-election or seeking higher office. Polls show voters of all political stripes are down on Washington, especially after the shutdown. While people blame Republicans more, Democrats are hardly immune to criticism and easily could be fired next year. Besides, a second-term president's party typically suffers losses in midterm elections.

Braley and many other Democrats are treading carefully. They are avoiding the partisan slashing that marked the shutdown crisis, delicately presenting their party as the better bet to break the gridlock, and seeking to take advantage of a possible political opening.

A CBS News poll taken immediately after the shutdown showed more Americans see more Democrats as pursuing the right level of compromise than Republicans, 35 percent to 24 percent.

Still, Democrats are mindful of the risks of overplaying their hand. Gloating over the GOP's public squabbles probably wouldn't go over well with a public angry and hungering for Washington to work together. Assailing Republicans as ideological obstructionists also could give voters reason to view all politicians as the same. And acting overconfident could invite criticism that Democrats are out of touch with a public made bitter not just by the shutdown, but by weeks of problems with a health care law enacted solely by their party.

Braley has extra incentive to play nice. He is running for the Senate next year.

He also may have a case to make about bipartisanship. During the shutdown, he was among a handful of Democratic House members to vote with Republicans in favor of the 35 bills that would have at least partially reopened government. But he also opposed four of five resolutions that would have avoided the interruption in government services in the first place, leaving him open to Republican criticism.

A National Republican Congressional Committee spokeswoman called Braley's position a "convenient display of bipartisanship."

Braley also took heat during the shutdown for a comment he made on a radio show about the House gym's closure. "There's no towel service. We're doing our own laundry down there," he said, providing comedic fodder for TV hosts Jimmy Kimmel and Jon Stewart.

Lost in the laughter, Braley says, was the point he was trying to make about lawmakers' checking politics at the gym door.

"It's a place where members come together," he later explained. "That's something we need more of, not less of."

That was precisely his message on a quick visit home this month.

In Cedar Falls, Braley told farmers he was trying to rally rural Democrats and Republicans to reach out to urban Democrats facing pressure to oppose the farm bill's cuts in food-stamp spending. He said he's reminding all lawmakers that without a farm bill, food prices could spike and prompt voters to fault lawmakers next fall.

His message: "Let's try to work together to address all of these issues, realizing there's going to have to be give-and-take."

Jon Mixdorf, an independent voter from Cedar Falls, was among the skeptics in the crowd. He said the congressman has to do more to make the case to angry Iowans that he's above the partisan fray.

"I don't think people can see it, at least not yet," Mixdorf said. "He's just one man and there's so much noise out there."

In Cedar Rapids, veteran Randy Dunn pressed Braley to prove his commitment to legislation that would ensure that veterans get all their benefits if another shutdown occurs by working to get it passed before Veterans' Day, Nov. 11.

"I just want you to stand up and do the right thing, because it is the right thing," Dunn said.

Today, only health care benefits — they constitute 85 percent of veterans benefits — are budgeted a year in advance. The bill would put all other benefits, such as housing and vocational training, under the same protection. It has bipartisan support in both the House and Senate. The White House has been ambivalent.

Braley said he was optimistic it could pass. "This is one of those issues that can bring us together and get us focused on what the right thing is to do," he said, "not what the politically expedient thing is to do."

For all the talk of finding common ground, some constituents remained skeptical — underscoring the challenge for Braley and other politicians.

"I'm not so sure he's any different than the rest," said Larry Van Lincker, a retired veteran from Cedar Rapids. "I think they ought to throw them all out."

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-10-31-Shutdown%20Politics/id-8bdbade9844445dfad7b6b7da245c99d
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US jobless claims fall for 3rd straight week

Washington (AFP) - US jobless claims fell for the third week in a row, as the impact of the government shutdown earlier in the month appeared to ease, Labor Department data showed Thursday.

Initial claims for unemployment benefits fell to 340,000 in the week ending October 26, a decrease of 10,000 from the prior week.

The figure was higher than expected as the labor market works through the disruption of the October 1-16 partial government shutdown that furloughed hundreds of thousands of federal workers, as well as technical problems that skewed the weekly data from some states.

Analysts on average had forecast new claims, a sign of the pace of layoffs, would fall to 335,000 last week.

"Claims are settling back down now that the federal government shutdown has passed and a bottleneck caused by a computer system upgrade in California delayed the processing of thousands of claims several weeks ago," said Marisa Di Natale of Moody's Analytics.

The four-week moving average, which helps to smooth week-over-week volatility, rose by 8,000 to 356,250. The average has moved higher for four weeks in a row.

According to data for the week ending October 19, claims from federal employees fell by 29,700 from the previous week.

"Though the federal government is open, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has delayed its planned release of the October jobs numbers by one week, until November 8. It is difficult to judge what that number might be from claims since they were distorted during October," Di Natale said.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/us-jobless-claims-fall-3rd-straight-week-133459637.html
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NYC moves closer to tobacco-buying age of 21

NEW YORK (AP) — Young New Yorkers who want to light up will soon have to wait for their 21st birthdays before they can buy a pack of smokes after lawmakers in the nation's most populous city voted overwhelmingly to raise the tobacco-purchasing age from 18 to 21.

The City Council's vote Wednesday makes New York the biggest city to bar cigarette sales to 19- and 20-year-olds, and one of only a few places throughout the United States that have tried to stymie smoking among young people by raising the purchasing age. The council also approved a bill that sets a minimum $10.50-a-pack price for tobacco cigarettes and steps up law enforcement on illegal tobacco sales.

"We know that tobacco dependence can begin very soon after a young person first tries smoking so it's critical that we stop young people from smoking before they ever start," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a statement after the council's vote.

Bloomberg, a strong supporter of tough smoking restrictions, has 30 days to sign the bills into law. The minimum age bill will take effect 180 days after enactment.

The city's current age limit is 18, a federal minimum that's standard in many places. Smoking in city parks and beaches already is prohibited as it is in restaurants.

Advocates say higher age limits help prevent, or at least delay, young people from taking up a habit that remains the leading cause of preventable deaths nationwide.

But cigarette manufacturers have suggested young adult smokers may just turn to black-market merchants. And some smokers say it's unfair and patronizing to tell people considered mature enough to vote and serve in the military that they're not old enough to decide whether to smoke.

"New York City already has the highest cigarette tax rate and the highest cigarette smuggling rate in the country," said Bryan D. Hatchell , a spokesman for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, which makes Camel and other brands. "Those go hand in hand and this new law will only make the problem worse."

Another anti-smoking initiative pushed by the Bloomberg administration was previously shelved ahead of Wednesday's vote: forcing stores to keep cigarettes out of public view until a customer asks for them.

Newsstand clerk Ali Hassen, who sells cigarettes daily to a steady stream of customers from nearby office buildings, said he didn't know if the new age restrictions would do any good.

While he wouldn't stop vigilantly checking identification to verify customers' age, Hassen doubted the new rules would thwart determined smokers.

"If somebody wants to smoke, they're going to smoke," he said.

Similar legislation to raise the purchasing age is expected to come to a vote in Hawaii this December. The tobacco-buying age is 21 in Needham, Mass., and is poised to rise to 21 in January in nearby Canton, Mass. The state of New Jersey also is considering a similar proposal.

"It just makes it harder for young people to smoke," said smoker Stephen McGorry, 25, who started lighting up at 19. He added that had the age been 21 when he took up the habit, "I guarantee I wouldn't be smoking today."

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-10-31-Smoking-Minimum%20Age/id-6c75d162a37a44718e978da7abb001e6
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Search for dark matter comes up empty so far

LEAD, S.D. (AP) — Nearly a mile underground in an abandoned gold mine, one of the most important quests in physics has so far come up empty in the search for the elusive substance known as dark matter, scientists announced Wednesday.

But physicists on the project were upbeat, saying they had developed a new, more sensitive method of searching for the mysterious material that has mass but cannot be seen. They planned to keep looking.

"This is just the opening salvo," said Richard Gaitskell of Brown University, a scientist working on the Large Underground Xenon experiment, or LUX, the most advanced Earth-based search for dark matter. A detector attached to the International Space Station has so far failed to find any dark matter either.

The researchers released their initial findings Wednesday after the experiment's first few months at the Sanford Underground Research Facility, which was built in the former Homestake gold mine in South Dakota's Black Hills.

With more than 4,800 feet of earth helping screen out background radiation, scientists tried to trap dark matter, which they hoped would be revealed in the form of weakly interacting massive particles, nicknamed WIMPS. The search, using the most sensitive equipment in the world, is looking for the light fingerprint of a WIMP bouncing off an atomic nucleus of xenon cooled to minus 150 degrees.

But nothing has been found. The team will continue looking for another year and plans to build a more sensitive experiment on the site, using a bigger tank of xenon. Scientists involved in the experiment said it had eliminated some theoretical candidates for dark matter, and there are many more theoretical models to search for.

"The short story is that we didn't see dark matter interacting, but we had the most sensitive search for dark matter ever performed in the world," said Daniel McKinsey, a physicist at Yale University.

The LUX experiment was 20 times more sensitive than any previous experiments, scientists said. The proposed next experiment would be 1,000 times more sensitive still.

The lab, in a bright, clean space at the end of an old mining tunnel filled with pipes and electric cables, is reached by a 10-minute ride in an elevator that once carried miners. Gaitskell and McKinsey said the experiment has far less radiation interference from cosmic rays than any other dark-matter lab.

Essentially, scientists are searching for something they are fairly sure exists and is crucial to the entire universe. But they do not know what it looks like or where to find it. And they are not sure if it is a bunch of light particles that weakly interact or if it is more like a black hole.

"It's ghost-like matter," McKinsey said.

Researchers "are really searching in the dark in a way," said Harvard University physicist Avi Loeb, who is not part of the LUX team. "We have no clue. We don't know what this matter is."

Even more so than the recently discovered Higgs boson, dark matter is central to the universe.

About one-quarter of the cosmos is comprised of dark matter — five times that of the ordinary matter that makes up everything we see. Dark matter is often defined by what it isn't: something that can be seen and something that is energy.

Scientists are pretty sure dark matter exists, but they are not certain what it is made of or how it interacts with ordinary matter. It is considered vital to all the scientific theories explaining how the universe is expanding and how galaxies move and interact.

"We know there's stuff out there that is something else, and that makes these searches hugely important because we know we are missing most of the universe," said Neal Weiner, director of the Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics at New York University, who was not part of the search.

The lack of success could mean the instruments are inadequate, Gaitskell and McKinsey said.

Or, considering the lack of knowledge about what dark matter really is, "perhaps we're going in the wrong direction," Loeb said.

___

Borenstein reported from Washington. He can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears .

Chet Brokaw can be followed at http://twitter.com/ChetBrokaw .

___

Online:

Sanford lab: http://sanfordlab.org

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/search-dark-matter-comes-empty-far-162116126.html
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