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Cameras-in-a-pill can capture views deep within the small intestine, but the doctors who read the results may often fail to spot abnormalities, a small study suggests. Researchers found that when they had 17 doctors view images taken during what's known as capsule endoscopy, the doctors caught fewer than half of the small intestine abnormalities on display. The researchers say the findings send a message to doctors reading images from the capsule cameras: Slow down.
Medline Plus (Gastroenterologia) - Mar, 24 Gennaio 2012
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus
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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued draft guidance designed to help investigators and manufacturers as they develop and seek approval for artificial pancreas device systems to treat type 1 diabetes. To facilitate development of this novel product in an evolving area, the draft guidance provides flexible recommendations for design and testing that meet statutory requirements for safety and effectiveness. For example, the draft guidance provides for flexibility in choice of study endpoints, number of patients to be studied and the length of the clinical trial.
Food and Drug Administration (Gastroenterologia) - Mar, 6 Dicembre 2011
http://www.fda.gov
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Researchers reported that Helicobacter pylori, a human stomach-colonizing bacterium responsible for severe gastric inflammatory diseases and gastric cancers, downregulates an embryonic stem cell microRNA cluster in proliferating gastric epithelial cells to achieve cell cycle arrest.
Silence Journal (Gastroenterologia) - Mar, 25 Ottobre 2011
http://www.silencejournal.com
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An international team of scientists have identified several rare gene variants that predispose to IBD (Inflammatory Bowel Disease). The study provides new insights into disease pathogenesis, and suggests next-generation sequencing may speed hoped-for personalized treatment of common complex disorders.
Karolinska Institutet (Gastroenterologia) - Mar, 11 Ottobre 2011
http://ki.se/ki/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=130&l=en
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In a randomized trial performed in 2009, some asymptomatic volunteers have developed dyspeptic symptoms after being treated for 8 weeks with esomeprazole. Now, some Swedish researchers have examined the rebound phenomenon after the interruption of a therapy based on protonic pump inhibitors. 48 healthy and asymptomatic volunteers have been randomized to receive 40 mg of pantoprazole or placebo daily for 4 weeks; then, they have been followed for 6 further weeks.
MedNews (Gastroenterologia) - Lun, 3 Ottobre 2011
http://mn.medsurfnews.com/
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Gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST) are the most common mesenchymal tumors of the gastrointestinal tract. Most GIST harbor a mutation affecting either the KIT or PDGFRA genes, whereas a small subgroup of tumors is wild type for mutations. Mutation of tyrosine kinase receptors is a mechanism of drug resistance that can occur either at the beginning of treatment (primary resistance) or during the course of therapy (secondary resistance). A paper reviews the clinical significance of tyrosine kinase mutational status.
Journal of Translational Medicine (Gastroenterologia) - Mar, 24 Maggio 2011
http://www.translational-medicine.com
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Patients hospitalized for treatment of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) have a six-fold increased risk of death if they become infected with Clostridium difficile bacteria, a new study finds. IBD includes Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. When people with IBD experience severe symptoms, they often require hospitalization, note the researchers at Imperial College London and St. George's Healthcare NHS Trust in the United Kingdom. They examined data on IBD patients hospitalized between 2002 and 2008 and found that those infected with C. difficile in the hospital were six times more likely to die in the hospital than those not infected with the bacteria. The death rate at 30 days was 25 percent for those with C. difficile and 3 percent for those who were free of the bacteria. The researchers also found that IBD patients with C. difficile stayed in the hospital longer (a median stay of 26 days vs. five days) and were nearly twice as likely to require gastrointestinal surgery.
Medline Plus (Gastroenterologia) - Mar, 26 Aprile 2011
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus
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The presence of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) is an increased risk for venous thromboses; in fact, patients hospitalized for this disease are often put under preventive therapy with anti-thrombotics. In order to quantify this risk, some English researchers have used their database to identify 14,000 patients with IBS and about 72,000 equal controls, following them for about 4 years. Among controls, the incidence of venous thromboembolism has been of 13.9 episodes/1000 people/year during hospitalizations and of 0.4 episodes/1000 people/year during outpatient periods.
MedNews (Gastroenterologia) - Mar, 22 Febbraio 2011
http://mn.medsurfnews.com/
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The irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is one of the most common conditions seen in clinical practice. The number of effective pharmacologic agents for IBS is limited, and therapeutic innovation is hampered by a lack of complete understanding of the pathophysiology of the syndrome, which is probably heterogeneous. Pimentel et al. report the results of two identically designed, large, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials (TARGET 1 and TARGET 2) of rifaximin, a poorly absorbed antibiotic, in patients with IBS without constipation. Results confirm that, as a group, patients who have IBS without constipation have a significantly better response to rifaximin than to placebo.
New England Journal of Medicine (Gastroenterologia) - Mar, 1 Febbraio 2011
http://www.nejm.org
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Patients presenting bleedings of the upper gastrointestinal tract not due to esophageal varices are treated according to international guidelines, which have been recently updated according to the available scientific evidence.
MedNews (Gastroenterologia) - Mar, 25 Gennaio 2011
http://mn.medsurfnews.com/