Month: September 2010

Race affects which drug combinations will control high blood pressure best for each person, new research finds. And a hormone called renin may help to guide decisions about the best drugs for each patient. These are among the results of new studies in the American Journal of Hypertension. Renin levels help determine whether high blood pressure is caused mainly by squeezing of blood vessel walls or by too much fluid. One study of 954 people focused on renin. People with low levels responded well to diuretics. These drugs remove extra fluid in the blood. But people with high renin levels did better with ACE inhibitors. These drugs relax blood vessels. Another study found that blacks had low renin levels and did better with diuretics. South Asians had good results with an ACE inhibitor and a drug called a calcium channel blocker. Blacks did worse with this combination.

A new, faster test can reveal if a person has tuberculosis (TB). It also can tell if the disease is resistant to antibiotics. The new test takes less than two hours. The old one could take up to a week. The old test also misses cases of TB, so sick people are mistakenly told they are healthy. In a study of 1,730 people, the new test identified 98% of TB cases. It also identified 98% of the cases that were resistant to rifampin, a common drug used to treat TB. Tuberculosis is a bacterial infection. It causes more than 1.8 million deaths each year. The new test is not the same as the skin test. The skin test is done to see if someone has ever been exposed to TB. The new test would be done in people who have TB symptoms. The study about the test appeared in the September 1 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. The Associated Press wrote about it the same day.

Women with BRCA gene mutations can benefit from having healthy ovaries removed. So says the largest study of its kind, published September 1 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Women with these gene mutations have 10 times the risk of ovarian cancer, compared with the general population. The study included about 2,500 women. About 4 in 10 had their ovaries removed. Over the next four years, these women had lower risks of ovarian and breast cancer, compared with similar women who did not have the surgery. They also had a lower risk of dying. The Associated Press wrote about the study September 1.