The nonprofit, federally-designated California Transplant Donor Network completed its fourth year as a tissue recovery agency with a new high mark of 2,006 eye and tissue donors in 2013, helping to save and improve an estimated 83,000 lives.
Established for more than a quarter century as an organ recovery organization in Northern and Central California and Northern Nevada, the California Transplant Donor Network also successfully worked with 281 organ donors and their families in 2013, saving lives with 920 organs transplanted.
CTDN continued its robust program of aiding researchers focused on projects to improve public health and the transplantation process.
In 2013, through the compassion of donor families, about 250 additional organs were made available for medical education research. About three-quarters of families asked agreed to participate in research.
“Our work is only possible with the cooperation of the more than 170 hospitals, dozens of coroners’ offices and hundreds of funeral homes as well four transplant centers which partner with us to refer possible donors. Because of them, and a CTDN staff committed to maximize every donation opportunity, we can offer hope to those waiting for a transplant,” Cindy Siljestrom, chief executive officer for the California Transplant Donor Network.
The CTDN Operations Center – where calls to refer potential organ and tissue donors are first received – logged more than 500,000 calls in 2013, reaching a milestone only a year after it became fully operational.
Working in two states and serving 13 million people, CTDN pursues a mandate to educate the public about organ and tissue donation, in addition to supporting donor families and arranging for the recovery and placement of organs and tissues. CTDN is the third largest organ procurement organization in the country based on population in its service area.
CTDN set a goal to increase the number of people registered as donors in that area by 5 percent in 2013. Instead, the numbers of people who have said “Yes” to donation at the DMV in the CTDN service area increased by 13 percent in 2013, meaning 3.9 million people have now registered as donors.
CTDN’s effort continue to focus on the needs of those who are waiting for an organ transplant --more than 23,000 in California and Nevada – as well as those whose lives will be improved with a tissue donation, such as corneas to restore someone’s sight.
Each of the nearly 300 people at CTDN work daily to provide expertise and exceptional service to the hospitals, coroners, funeral homes and transplant centers in support of families. Their work honors the gifts donors and their families place in our care.
The California Transplant Donor Network is federally designated as the region’s organ recovery organization. For information, call 888-570-9400 or visit www.ctdn.org .
Survivors of traumatic brain injuries are three times more likely to die prematurely than the general population, often from suicide or fatal injuries, finds an Oxford University-led study
Survivors of traumatic brain injuries (TBI) are three times more likely to die prematurely than the general population, often from suicide or fatal injuries, finds an Oxford University-led study.
A TBI is a blow to the head that leads to a skull fracture, internal bleeding, loss of consciousness for longer than an hour or a combination of these symptoms. Michael Schumacher's recent skiing injury is an example of a TBI.
Concussions, sometimes called mild TBIs, do not present with these symptoms and were analyzed separately in this study.
Researchers examined Swedish medical records going back 41 years covering 218,300 TBI survivors, 150,513 siblings of TBI survivors and over two million control cases matched by sex and age from the general population.
The work was carried out by researchers at Oxford University and the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.
“We found that people who survive six months after TBI remain three times more likely to die prematurely than the control population and 2.6 times more likely to die than unaffected siblings,” said study leader Dr. Seena Fazel, a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow in Oxford University's Department of Psychiatry. “Looking at siblings who did not suffer TBIs allows us to control for genetic factors and early upbringing, so it is striking to see that the effect remains strong even after controlling for these.”
The results, published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, show that TBI survivors who also have a history of substance abuse or psychiatric disorders are at highest risk of premature death.
Premature deaths were defined as before age 56. The main causes of premature death in TBI survivors are suicide and fatal injuries such as car accidents and falls.
“TBI survivors are more than twice as likely to kill themselves as unaffected siblings, many of whom were diagnosed with psychiatric disorders after their TBI,” said Dr. Fazel. “Current guidelines do not recommend assessments of mental health or suicide risk in TBI patients, instead focusing on short-term survival. Looking at these findings, it may make more sense to treat some TBI patients as suffering from a chronic problem requiring longer term management just like epilepsy or diabetes. TBI survivors should be monitored carefully for signs of depression, substance abuse and other psychiatric disorders, which are all treatable conditions.”
The exact reasons for the increased risk of premature death are unknown but may involve damage to the parts of the brain responsible for judgment, decision-making and risk taking.
TBI survivors are three times more likely to die from fatal injuries which may be a result of impaired judgment or reactions.
“This study highlights the important and as-yet unanswered question of why TBI survivors are more likely to die young, but it may be that serious brain trauma has lasting effects on people's judgment,” suggested Dr. Fazel. “People who have survived the acute effects of TBI should be more informed about these risks and how to reduce their impact.”
“When treating traumatic brain injuries focus is placed on immediate treatment and recovery of patients,” said Dr John Williams, Head of Neuroscience and Mental Health at the Wellcome Trust. “This new finding offers important insight into the longer-term impact of TBIs on the brain and their effect on survival later in life. We hope that further research into understanding which parts of the brain are responsible will help improve future management programs and reduce the potential for premature death.”
Even relatively minor brain injuries, concussions, had a significant impact on early mortality. People with concussion were found to be twice as likely to die prematurely as the control population, with suicide and fatal injuries as the main causes of death. This raises issues surrounding concussions in a wide range of sports, from American football, rugby and soccer to baseball and cricket.
There were 196,766 head injuries requiring hospital visits in 2012-13 in England alone, of which 125,822 led to TBIs.
Approximately 1.7 million people in the United States and one million people in Europe are hospitalized after TBIs each year. Typical causes include vehicle accidents, falls and sporting injuries.
Traditional Chinese herbal medicines hold promise for slowing the progression from prediabetes to an official diabetes diagnosis, according to new research accepted for publication in the Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM).
Prediabetes is diagnosed an individual has developed elevated blood sugar levels, but glucose levels have not yet risen to the point of developing type 2 diabetes.
People who are prediabetic face a heightened risk of developing type 2 diabetes as well as heart disease and stroke.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 79 million American adults age 20 years or older have prediabetes.
“With diabetes evolving into a serious public health burden worldwide, it is crucial to take steps to stem the flood of cases,” said one of the study's authors, Chun-Su Yuan, MD, PhD, of the University of Chicago. “Patients often struggle to make the necessary lifestyle changes to control blood sugar levels, and current medications have limitations and can have adverse gastrointestinal side effects. Traditional Chinese herbs may offer a new option for managing blood sugar levels, either alone or in combination with other treatments.”
During the double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial, 389 participants at 11 research sites in China were randomly assigned to take either a capsule containing a mixture of 10 Chinese herbal medicines or a placebo.
For a year, subjects took capsules of either the Chinese herb mixture, called Tianqi, or the placebo three times a day before meals.
All participants received a month of lifestyle education at the outset of the trial and met with nutritionists several times during the course of the study. Subjects' glucose tolerance was measured on a quarterly basis.
At the end of the trial, 36 participants in the Tianqi group and 56 in the placebo group had developed diabetes. The analysis found taking Tianqi reduced the risk of diabetes by 32.1 percent compared with the placebo, after adjusting for age and gender.
The overall reduction in risk was comparable to that found in studies of diabetes medications acarbose and metformin, and study participants reported few side effects from the Tianqi herbs. Tianqi includes several herbs that have been shown to lower blood glucose levels and improve control of blood glucose levels after meals.
“Few controlled clinical trials have examined traditional Chinese medicine's impact on diabetes, and the findings from our study showed this approach can be very useful in slowing the disease's progression,” said one of the study's lead authors, Xiaolin Tong, MD, PhD, of Guang'anmen Hospital in Beijing, China, said. “More research is needed to evaluate the role Chinese herbal medicine can play in preventing and controlling diabetes.”
Christopher Parsons, MD, Director of the HIV Malignancies Program at LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans, is the senior author of a paper that is the first to report that specialized fat (lipid) molecules, called sphingolipids, play a key role in the survival of aggressive lymphomas caused by viruses.
The paper also reveals a new therapy for preventing production of sphingolipids by lymphoma cells, thereby killing these cells, which are often resistant to standard therapies.
The study is published in the January 2014 issue of Molecular Cancer Therapeutics, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.
The research team focuses on primary effusion lymphoma (PEL), an aggressive and deadly variant of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma that frequently occurs in people infected with HIV.
Though scientists have known that the Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV) causes PEL, development of effective therapies has proven difficult. PEL tumors arise within body cavities and progress rapidly with an average survival of around 6 months.
Combination chemotherapy represents the current standard of care for PEL, but side effects (including bone marrow suppression) and drug resistance (generated through virus-associated mechanisms) continue to limit the effectiveness of standard therapy.
After documenting the role of an enzyme called sphingosine kinase (SK), in the generation of biologically active sphingolipids in PEL tumors that keep the tumor cells alive, the researchers tested a novel clinical-grade small molecule that selectively targets SK.
The molecule, called ABC294640, was developed by Apogee Biotechnology Corporation. Previous studies found antitumor effects for ABC294640 with kidney, prostate, and breast cancer cell lines.
In the current study, ABC294640 not only inhibited SK function and induced PEL cell death, it worked selectively for virus-infected cells while sparing uninfected cells.
“It is still early in our understanding of how these special lipids contribute to viral cancers, but this is a major potential advance. There are no therapies available to fight viral tumors by selectively blocking these pathways, all while not harming normal, uninfected cells,” noted Dr. Parsons, who is also a member of the LSUHSC Stanley S. Scott Cancer Center.
Dr. Parsons' research group partnered with Apogee several years ago to develop and test new small molecules targeting lipid synthesis pathways, especially those in viral lymphomas, which have high rates of relapse or failure with standard therapies and higher mortality than non-viral lymphomas.
“Our research thus far indicates that this molecule is safe, with the potential to stand alone as a single, orally administered drug with no need to combine it with other toxic drugs now routinely used but which fail to work for many patients,” concluded Dr. Parsons.