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Stem cell transplants stalled blindness in rats

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Stem cell transplants stalled blindness in rats

Nerve stem cell transplants may help slow the progression of macular degeneration, the most common cause of blindness in the developed world, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

They said putting nerve stem cells from StemCells Inc near the retinas of rats with a form of macular degeneration helped keep the disease from advancing to blindness for several months.

“These cells improve the chemical environment in the back of the eye,” said Ray Lund of the Casey Eye Institute at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, whose findings were presented at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Chicago.

Lund said the mechanism is not clear, but he suspects that when immature nerve cells are placed near the retina, they produce growth factors that protect the cells from damage by the disease.

“It’s basically a chemical pump that is sitting in the right place and producing the right things,” Lund said in a telephone interview.

Where normally animals with eye disease lost their vision by three months old, rats that got the transplants kept their vision for at least seven months, he said.

“There is no evidence that they (the transplanted cells) do any damage,” Lund said, adding that the animals do not develop tumors, a key worry for stem cell transplants.

The findings raise hope for use of the treatment in humans with a range of diseases in which the retina become damaged, including age-related macular degeneration or AMD, which affects nearly 30 million people worldwide, including 15 million Americans.

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Healthier U.S. school meals boost costs: study

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Healthier U.S. school meals boost costs: study

Improving nutritional value of U.S. school food programs by increasing servings of fruits, vegetables and whole grains could increase the cost of breakfast by as much as 25 percent and lunch by 9 percent, according to a report released on Tuesday.

A report from the Institute of Medicine, an arm of the National Academies, proposed updating school meal programs to meet nutritional needs and foster better eating habits, but recognized healthier, fresher ingredients would boost costs, especially at breakfast where fruit servings would increase.

“It will cost a little more,” Virginia Stallings, a professor at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and chair of the group that conducted the study, said in an interview.

“But this will be a very wise investment in children’s health,” she added.

Most school food providers would need more government money to help pay for food, training and equipment, the report said.

The Institute of Medicine conducted the review of the country’s school breakfast and lunch programs at the request of the U.S. Agriculture Department, which oversees them. School meal programs provide 40 million meals daily and more than half of students’ food and nutrient intake during the school day.

Child nutrition programs, which cost about $21 billion a year, are due for reauthorization this year but Congress is not expected to approve an overhaul for some time.

Officials at the USDA are updating the nutrition and meal requirements used for school breakfast and lunch programs, and looked for recommendations from the Institute of Medicine. The framework, last updated in 1995, sets food and nutrient standards that must be met by school programs to qualify for cash reimbursements and food from the government.

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Bowel disease drugs increase cancer risk: study

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Bowel disease drugs increase cancer risk: study

Some treatments for inflammatory bowel disease increase the risk of infection-related cancers, French scientists said on Monday, but the benefits of the drugs still outweigh the risks.

Thiopurine drugs — immunosuppressive medicines that inhibit the body’s immune system — are regularly used to treat inflammatory bowel disease, the researchers said, but can increase the risk of cancers linked to viral infections.

Laurent Beaugerie and colleagues at the Saint-Antoine hospital in Paris looked at more than 19,000 patients with inflammatory bowel disease. Around 30 percent of the patients were taking thiopurines, 14 percent had stopped taking them and 56 percent had never taken them.

Following up after almost 3 years, the researchers found 23 new cases of cancers — one of Hodgkin’s lymphoma and 22 of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Statistical analysis showed that patients receiving thiopurines — like azathioprine produced by several generic drugmakers and by GlaxoSmithKline as Imuran — had a more than five-fold increased risk of lymphoma compared with those who had never received the drugs, the researchers said in a study published in The Lancet journal.

Older male patients with a longer history of inflammatory bowel disease also had increased lymphoma cancer risk.

“The absolute cumulative risk…in young patients receiving a 10-year course of thiopurines remains low — (less than 1 percent) — and does not undermine the positive risk-benefit ratio of these drugs,” the researchers wrote.

But for elderly patients and for unlimited treatment periods, more studies were needed to assess the risk, they said.

Commenting on the study, Geert D’Haens of the Imelda GI Clinical Research Center and Paul Rutgeerts University Hospital Gasthuisberg, both in Belgium, said doctors should be cautious in prescribing thiopurines for prolonged periods.

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