Sjogren's Syndrome Awareness

Please watch this video about Sjogren's Syndrome.  If you have this autoimmune disease or you know of someone who has it.  I have Sjogren's Syndrome Secondary.  I have dry eyes and mouth but it's more than that.  It affects so many organs that it is hard to diagnosis.

http://youtu.be/BzY98DJ4Cvc

Please share this link with everyone you know, it's important for people to understand what it is and how it can affect your life.  There are more people with Sjogren's Syndrome then with breast cancer.

Biomarker may signal whether common back pain treatment will work, doctor finds

Roughly a quarter of all people with back pain have a herniated disc, and approximately 90 percent of herniated discs occur in the lower back. Steroid injections generally cost a few thousand dollars each, and patients often receive a series of three or more of them, said Gaetano Scuderi, MD, a clinical assistant professor of orthopaedic surgery who is the senior author of the study to be published in the Aug. 15 edition of Spine. The lead author, S. Raymond Golish, MD, PhD, was recently a fellow in spine surgery at Stanford.

“There’s about a 50-50 chance that the epidural steroid will work, so most people figure, ‘Hey, I have nothing to lose,’” Scuderi said. “However, there is a significant expense, not to mention the procedural risks and lost productivity.”

Scuderi cited a 2008 study showing that Americans spend $90 billion every year on treatments for lower-back pain, and said the findings in his new study provide the basis for a test that might someday lead to substantial savings for the health-care system.

A herniated disc is a problem with one of the small, spongy cushions that sit between the vertebrae of the spine. The hernia occurs when the inside portion of the disc ruptures and bulges out from between the vertebrae. If it’s in the lumbar, or lower spine, region, it may lead to pain, numbness and tingling in the legs and buttocks, not to mention a backache.

Most people with herniated discs get better within one to six months, but the symptoms can be hard to live with, so physicians often prescribe muscle relaxants, painkillers or a series of steroid injections, which have been shown to provide moderate, short-term relief. Many patients also undergo a physical-therapy regimen. In a small number of cases, surgery is needed.

But if patients with lower-back pain could be screened to determine whether they would respond to the injections, they could be spared the discomfort and cost of a futile procedure, Scuderi said, as well as its potential complications, such as bleeding, infection and thinning and even death of bone tissue. 

Addiction a brain disorder, not just bad behavior


Addiction isn't just about willpower. It's a chronic brain disease, says a new definition aimed at helping families and their doctors better understand the challenges of treating it.

How Excess Alcohol Depresses Immune Function

Alcoholism suppresses the immune system, resulting in a high risk of serious, and even life-threatening infections. A new study shows that this effect stems largely from alcohol’s toxicity to immune system cells called dendritic cells. These cells play a critical role in immune function, responding to danger signals by searching for unfamiliar antigens within the body that would be coming from invading microbes, and presenting such antigens to T cells, thus activating them to seek and destroy cells containing these antigens. The research is published in the July 2011 issue of the journal Clinical and Vaccine Immunology.

Earlier studies in mice had shown that excessive drinking of alcohol impaired T cell function, and subsequently that this impairment could be reversed by exposure to dendritic cells (so named for their shape) from non-alcoholic mice, and that poor function in CD4 and CD8 T cells could be improved through exposure to cytokines produced by non-alcoholic dendritic cells. (Cytokines are immune regulatory cells.) In this study, Jack R. Wands and colleagues of Brown University, Providence, RI, compared dendritic cells produced by alcoholic and non-alcoholic mice, which they first removed from the mice.  

The result: dendritic cells from the alcoholic mice had a poor ability to activate T cells, while the dendritic cells from mice on isocaloric diets containing no alcohol functioned normally. The researchers found further that the dendritic cells from alcohol-fed mice showed reduced antigen presentation compared to those from control mice, as well as less production of the regulatory cytokines. This research also confirmed earlier results showing that alcohol inhibits cytokine secretion by dendritic cells.

“This research helps us understand why alcoholics are predisposed to bacterial and viral infections, and why they do not respond well to vaccines,” says Wands. Understanding this, he says, will help in the development of ways to improve dendritic cell function in people with alcohol syndromes. 

More information: A. Eden, et al., 2011. Ethanol inhibits antigen presentation by dendritic cells. Clin. Vaccine Immunol. 18:1157-1166.)

Provided by American Society for Microbiology

Tattoos linked to rare skin infection in US

One 44-year-old man was confirmed to have a case of Mycobacterium haemophilum after getting a tattoo on his arm in the western US city in August 2009, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

The infection, which showed up as a bumpy red rash and a pus infection on the skin's surface, resisted treatment with several antibiotics but eventually disappeared after nine months.

A second suspected case was reported in a 35-year-old man who got a tattoo at the same place two months later, but tests were inconclusive. The CDC said it considered it a "suspected" instance of infection.

The source of the bacteria remains a mystery. Authorities said the tattoo parlor was in compliance with safety regulations but told the owner to use sterilized water for rinsing skin and diluting ink instead of tap water.

(c) 2011 AFP