30 October, 2015

IT-Gandhinagar develops an eye for stroke

Stroke has left heart attack behind in terms of morbidity . Every three seconds, somebody suffers a stroke worldwide. India has a major contribution to the high number of stroke cases, with 3,800 patients every day. 

In such a scenario, IIT-Gandhinagar has developed a technique that not only provides an eye-gaze based diagnostic and prognostic tool but also operant conditioning for post-stroke therapy.

Funded by the Indian and French governments, the invention, called SmartEye, relates to a system for diagnosis and therapy of a person suffering from psychomotor symptoms. As participants look into visual simulations, an eye tracker detects anomalies in fixation and blinking patterns. Special gaze features convey abnormalities in graphical displays.

"Visual problems due to brain injury are often overlooked during initial treatment, lengthening rehabilitation period. Our cost-effective system uses quantitative interpretation from images of the eye to identify gaze-related indices as biomarkers of stroke. A patient is asked to look towards a slowly moving visual stimulus on the computer screen, and an integrated web-camera looks in the patient's eyes to capture gaze-related indices as biomarkers of stroke condition," said IIT-Gn assistant professor Uttama Lahiri, who worked with Dr Anirban Dutta (from INRIA, France) and Dr Abhijit Das (Institute of Neurosciences.

Source: www.timesofindia.com

30.10.2015

Common heartburn drugs may damage your kidney

Increased use of certain medications commonly used to treat heartburn and acid reflux may have damaging effects on the kidneys, say researchers, including one of Indian-origin. 

The researchers looked at the effects of the drugs called proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) on chronic kidney disease (CKD). 

In one study, Pradeep Arora from State University of New York and his team found that among 24,149 patients who developed CKD between 2001 and 2008 (out of a total of 71,516 patients), 25.7 percent were treated with PPIs. 

PPI use was linked with a 10 percent increased risk of CKD and a 76 percent increased risk of dying prematurely. 

"As a large number of patients are being treated with PPIs, health care providers need to be better educated about the potential side effects of these drugs, such as CKD," Arora pointed out. 

In another study, Benjamin Lazarus from Johns Hopkins University and his colleagues followed 10,482 adults with normal kidney function from 1996 to 2011. 

They found that PPI users were between 20 percent and 50 percent more likely to develop CKD than non-PPI users, even after accounting for baseline differences between users and non-users. 

This discovery was replicated in a second study, in which over 240,000 patients were followed from 1997 to 2014. 

"In both studies, people who used a different class of medications to suppress stomach acid, known as H2-blockers, did not have a higher risk of developing kidney disease," Lazarus pointed out. 

"If we know the potential adverse effects of PPI medications we can design better interventions to reduce overuse," Lazarus noted. 

The findings will be presented at ASN (American Society of Nephrology) Kidney Week 2015 to be held at San Diego Convention Centre from November 3-8.

Source: www.timesofindia.com

30.10.2015

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence then success is sure

Mark Twain