Day: September 19, 2024

Categories : Medical IndustryTags : Leave a comment

Adcock Ingram Critical Care Partners with Global MedTech Giant Medline

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Photo by Sora Shimazaki

Adcock Ingram Critical Care, a leading manufacturer and supplier of hospital and critical care products in Southern Africa, is taking another step towards improving patient care in the region through a strategic alliance with Medline.

Medline is one of the world’s largest manufacturers and distributors of medical supplies and services, with annual global sales in excess of US$23 billion. The partnership solidifies Adcock Ingram Critical Care as the exclusive distributor of Medline’s products in Southern Africa and is a testament to its commitment to provide quality products that improve the health and lives of people in the markets they serve.

Ranked as one of Forbes largest private companies, Medline delivers world-class products, robust supply chain resources and clinical practice expertise to clients in more than 125 countries. Medline’s innovative and cutting-edge MedTech portfolio includes more than 550 000 products, serving the entire continuum of care. Its extensive reach and product range have transformed healthcare delivery worldwide, making it a key player in driving efficiency and improving patient outcomes.

By partnering with Adcock Ingram Critical Care, Medline is bringing its global expertise to South Africa, strengthening the country’s healthcare infrastructure at a time when it is most needed.

“This is another milestone in our commitment to ensure that every South African can access the care they deserve. Together with Medline, we can help to build a stronger, healthier South Africa,” says Colin Sheen, Managing Director, Adcock Ingram Critical Care.

A Strategic Alliance with National Impact

For decades, Adcock Ingram Critical Care has been delivering essential medical solutions to the nation, from Medicine Delivery in Hospital Care to Renal Care, Transfusion Therapies, Infusion Systems and most recently Wound & Stoma Care. The strategic alliance with Medline will ensure expanded and continued medical access and support healthcare providers and patients across South Africa and Southern Africa.

“The Strategic Alliance with Medline is a significant milestone for us,” says Sheen. “This partnership will provide medical professionals across the country with access to world-class medical supplies and technology, empowering them to deliver better care and improved patient outcomes.”

Beyond its business scope and as part of its larger mission, Adcock Ingram Critical Care is connecting global medical innovations with local requirements, ensuring that hospitals, clinics, and healthcare providers – even in the most remote areas – have access to the essential tools needed to save lives.

“Adcock Ingram Critical Care’s knowledge of the South African medical sector, combined with Medline’s world-class products, creates a powerful synergy,” says Salam Hadla, Medline’s Vice President for the Middle East & Africa Region. “We are excited to partner with Adcock Ingram Critical Care to help advance care standards across Southern Africa. Our shared mission is to offer healthcare providers the highest quality products, ensuring better clinical outcomes and contributing to a stronger medical care system.”

Improving Healthcare for a Stronger Nation

South Africa is one of the largest medical technology markets in Africa and the Middle East, valued at over R21 billion in 2021 and projected to grow to R29.6 billion by 2025. As the demand for access to quality healthcare services increases, strategic alliances like Adcock Ingram Critical Care and Medline are vital in ensuring that healthcare providers are equipped at providing medical services and improving access in both urban and rural clinical settings.

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Backward Hopping may be a Better Indicator for Recovery from ACL Reconstruction

On By ModernMedia
Photo by Nino Liverani on Unsplash

Sometimes you have to take a step backward to move forward. Or, in the case of patients recovering from ACL reconstruction, a hop backward may help them know if they are ready to return to the field of play.

A University of Kansas researcher is leading studies examining how single leg backward hopping can help determine recovery progress of patients who have had the anterior cruciate ligament of the knee reconstructed. Initial studies have shown backward hopping distance can tell practitioners, therapists and researchers about strength, force and recovery in the affected joint.

Research so far has shown that backwards hopping it is an effective way of measuring the strength of a person’s knee function and quadriceps strength. And unlike some commonly used measures like vertical jump, it does not take additional equipment to measure – simply a floor and tape measure.

“The goal is to help practitioners have an easy way to measure where people are after an ACL injury and during recovery,” said Yu Song, assistant professor of health, sport & exercise sciences at KU and lead author of the study. “One of the most common ways to measure recovery now is forward hopping distance. However, studies reported that the forward hopping distance masked the real knee recovery status. We want to be able to evaluate more closely with more exact measures.”

For the study, researchers recruited participants who have not suffered ACL injuries in order to initiate the first step of using backward hopping to measure the knee function and quadriceps strength deficits. To simulate a reconstructed ACL, participants performed single leg backwards hops both before and after their quadriceps muscle were fatigued through exercise on one leg. Those in the study stood on a force plate, a device that can measure the amount of force exerted, when performing the hops.

Hip, knee and ankle mechanics were measured in all three movements. Knee mechanics showed significant decrease in all three after fatigue, only in the fatigued leg. Backward hopping distances showed the most significant change, as participants were only able to hop at about 84% of their pre-fatigue force and distance. Subjects were able to perform at more than 90% of their pre-fatigue measures in other hops.

“The knee contribution is very small, especially compared to the hip in forward hops,” Song said. “That is not the case in backward hopping, the knee work is significantly greater (two times) in that motion.”

Single leg backward hopping recorded the greatest peak knee torque, peak knee power and knee work compared to forward and vertical hopping. The fact that backward hopping showed such stark difference in the knee indicates that it could likely be at least an equal, if not superior, method of measuring quadriceps strength deficiency in people recovering from ACL reconstruction, Song said.

The study was published in the Journal of Sport and Health Science.

The results warrant further study with individuals who are recovering from ACL construction. Work is underway to recruit patients doing rehabilitation from the injury to take part in further studies. That research could help further validate single leg backward hopping as a measure of where they are at in recovery and ultimately, help patients and medical practitioners partner for better recovery and a quicker, safe return to the field of play. 

And while hopping from one leg backward may not sound intuitive, it could indeed be the key to a step forward.

“People may not think of knee function or hopping backward as a natural part of movement, but people do use backward direction, such as walking backwards regularly in rehab,” Song said. “Single-leg hopping is something we want to better understand and have found it can significantly and accurately tell us about knee strength.”

Source: The University of Kansas

Categories : NeurologyTags : Leave a comment

Stroke Associated with a Change in Sleep Length

On By ModernMedia
Ischaemic and haemorrhagic stroke. Credit: Scientific Animations CC4.0

People who have had a stroke may be more likely to sleep too much or too little compared to those without prior stroke, according to a study published in Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study does not prove that stroke causes abnormal sleep; it only shows an association.

“Sleeping the right amount is considered essential for ideal brain and heart health,” said study author Sara Hassani, MD, of Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, North Carolina, and member of the American Academy of Neurology. “We know that abnormally long or short sleep after stroke can affect recovery and deteriorate quality of life, so these results should prompt us to screen for these issues and look at how we can help people improve their sleep habits.”

The study involved 39 559 participants, of whom 1572 had a stroke and 37 987 without stroke history. Every two years, participants were asked how much sleep they usually get at night on weekdays or workdays. Sleep duration was divided into three categories: short, less than six hours; normal, six to eight hours; and long, eight or more hours of sleep.

Researchers looked at how often participants had normal sleep, defined as six to eight hours. Normal sleep duration was less common for people who had a stroke than for those with no prior stroke for all age groups with 32% vs 54% for people age 18-44; 47% vs 55% for people age 45-64; and 45% vs. 54% for people over age 65.

After adjusting for factors that could affect sleep such as age, weight and high blood pressure, researchers found people who had a stroke were 54% more likely to report more than eight hours of sleep per night compared to those without stroke. Those with stroke were 50% more likely to get less than six hours of sleep per night when compared to those without stroke.

“In previous research, stroke has been linked to abnormal sleep, in particular sleep apnea,” said Hassani. “Conditions like insomnia and excessive sleepiness are common in stroke patients and may occur as a direct or indirect consequence of stroke itself. Future research should explore the links between stroke and duration of sleep and determine the effect of sleep duration on outcomes after stroke.”

One limitation of the study was that hours of sleep were self-reported, so participants may not have remembered accurately how much they slept.

Source: American Academy of Neurology

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The Colours of the Sunset Reset Circadian Clocks

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Photo by Matteo Vistocco on Unsplash

Those mesmerising blue and orange hues in the sky at the start and end of a sunny day might have an essential role in setting humans’ internal clocks. In new research from the University of Washington in Seattle, a novel LED light that emits alternating wavelengths of orange and blue outpaced two other light devices in advancing melatonin levels in a small group of study participants. 

Published in the Journal of Biological Rhythms, the finding appears to establish a new benchmark in humans’ ability to influence their circadian rhythms, and reflects an effective new approach to counteract seasonal affective disorder (SAD). 

A raft of health and mood problems have been attributed to out-of-sync circadian rhythms. Such asynchrony is encouraged by seasonal changes, a lack of exposure to natural light, graveyard-shift jobs and flights across multiple time zones.  

“Our internal clock tells us how our body’s supposed to act during different times of day, but the clock has to be set, and if our brain is not synced to the time of day, then it’s not going to work right,” said Jay Neitz, a coauthor on the paper and a professor of ophthalmology at the UW School of Medicine. 

Circadian rhythms are trained and reset every day by the 24-hour solar cycles of light and dark, which stimulate circuits in the eyes that communicate to the brain. With that information, the brain produces melatonin, a hormone that helps organisms become sleepy in sync with the solar night. 

People who spend many daily hours in artificial light often have circadian rhythms whose melatonin production lags that of people more exposed to natural light. Many commercial lighting products are designed to offset or counteract these lags. 

Most of these products, Neitz said, emphasise blue wavelength because it is known to affect melanopsin, a photopigment in the eyes that communicates with the brain and is most sensitive to blue. 

By contrast, “the light we developed does not involve the melanopsin photopigment,” Neitz explained. “It has alternating blue and orange wavelengths that stimulate a blue-yellow opponent circuit that operates through the cone photoreceptors in the retina. This circuit is much more sensitive than melanopsin, and it is what our brains use to reset our internal clocks.”

The paper’s lead author was James Kuchenbecker, a research assistant professor of ophthalmology at the UW School of Medicine. He sought to compare different artificial lights’ effects on the production of melatonin.  

He and colleagues devised and conducted a test of three devices:

  • a white light of 500 lux (a brightness appropriate for general office spaces)
  • a short-wavelength blue LED designed to trigger melanopsin
  • the newly developed LED of blue and orange wavelengths, which alternate 19 times a second to generate a soft white glow

The goal was to see what lighting approach was most effective at advancing the phase of melatonin production among six study participants. All participants underwent the following regimen with exposure to each of the three test lights:

The first evening, multiple saliva samples were taken to discern the baseline onset and peak of the participants’ melatonin production. For each subject, the onset of this phase dictated when they were exposed to the test light for two hours in the morning. That evening, saliva samples were again taken to see whether subjects’ melatonin phase had started earlier relative to their individual baselines.

During each test, exposure to other light sources was controlled. The three test spans were spaced such that subjects could return to their normal baseline phases before starting a new device.

In terms of shifting the melatonin-production phase, the alternating blue-orange LED device worked best, with a phase advance of 1 hour, 20 minutes. The blue light produced a phase advance of 40 minutes. The white, 500-lux light elicited an advance of just 2.8 minutes. 

Gesturing toward the light that his team developed, Neitz explained. 

“Even though our light looks like white to the naked eye, we think your brain recognizes the alternating blue and orange wavelengths as the colours in the sky. The circuit that produced the biggest shift in melatonin wants to see orange and blue.” 

Source: UW Medicine

Categories : Cardiovascular DiseaseTags : Leave a comment

Moderate Coffee and Caffeine Link to Lower Risk for Cardiometabolic Diseases

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Photo by Mike Kenneally on Unsplash

Consuming moderate amounts of coffee and caffeine regularly may offer a protective effect against developing multiple cardiometabolic diseases, including type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease and stroke, according to new research published in the Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.

Researchers found that regular coffee or caffeine intake, especially at moderate levels, was associated with a lower risk of new-onset cardiometabolic multimorbidity (CM), which refers to the coexistence of at least two cardiometabolic diseases.

The prevalence of individuals with multiple cardiometabolic diseases, or CM, is becoming an increasing public health concern as populations age around the world, notes the study.

Coffee and caffeine consumption could play an important protective role in almost all phases of CM development, researchers found.

“Consuming three cups of coffee, or 200-300 mg caffeine, per day might help to reduce the risk of developing cardiometabolic multimorbidity in individuals without any cardiometabolic disease,” said lead author Chaofu Ke, MD, PhD, at Suzhou Medical College of Soochow University, in Suzhou, China.

The study found that compared with non-consumers or consumers of less than 100mg caffeine per day, consumers of moderate amount of coffee (3 drinks per day) or caffeine (200-300 mg per day) had a 48.1% or 40.7% reduced risk for new-onset CM.

Ke and his colleagues based their findings on data from the UK Biobank, a large and detailed longitudinal dietary study with over 500 000 participants aged 37-73 years. The study excluded individuals who had ambiguous information on caffeine intake. The resulting pool of participants included a total of 172 315 individuals who were free of any cardiometabolic diseases at baseline for the analyses of caffeine, and a corresponding 188 091 individuals for the analyses of coffee and tea consumption.

The participants’ cardiometabolic diseases outcomes were identified from self-reported medical conditions, primary care data, linked inpatient hospital data and death registry records linked to the UK Biobank.

Coffee and caffeine intake at all levels were inversely associated with the risk of new-onset CM in participants without cardiometabolic diseases. Those who reported moderate coffee or caffeine intake had the lowest risk, the study found. Moderate coffee or caffeine intake was inversely associated with almost all developmental stages of CM.

“The findings highlight that promoting moderate amounts of coffee or caffeine intake as a dietary habit to healthy people might have far-reaching benefits for the prevention of CM,” Ke said.

Addressing a research gap

Numerous epidemiological studies have revealed the protective effects of coffee, tea and caffeine consumption on morbidity of single cardiometabolic diseases. However, the potential effects of these beverages on the development of CM were largely unknown.

The authors reviewed the available research on this topic and found people with single cardiometabolic disease may have a two-fold higher all-cause mortality risk than those free of any cardiometabolic diseases. By contrast, the researchers found individuals with CM may have an almost 4 to 7 times higher risk of all-cause mortality. The researchers also noted that CM may present higher risks of loss of physical function and mental stress than those with single diseases.

Source: Endocrine Society

Categories : Neurodegenerative DiseasesTags : Leave a comment

SGLT-2 Inhibitors may Lower Risk of Dementia and Parkinson’s Disease

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A class of drugs for diabetes may be associated with a lower risk of dementia and Parkinson’s disease, according to a study published in Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study looked at sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 (SGLT2) inhibitors, which are also known as gliflozins. They lower blood sugar by causing the kidneys to remove sugar from the body through urine.

“We know that these neurodegenerative diseases like dementia and Parkinson’s disease are common and the number of cases is growing as the population ages, and people with diabetes are at increased risk of cognitive impairment, so it’s encouraging to see that this class of drugs may provide some protection against dementia and Parkinson’s disease,” said study author Minyoung Lee, MD, PhD, of Yonsei University College of Medicine in Seoul, South Korea.

The retrospective study looked at people with type 2 diabetes who started diabetes medication from 2014 to 2019 in South Korea. People taking SGLT2 inhibitors were matched with people taking other oral diabetes drugs, so the two groups had people with similar ages, other health conditions and complications from diabetes.

Then researchers followed the participants to see whether they developed dementia or Parkinson’s disease. Those taking the SGLT2 inhibitors were followed for an average of two years and those taking the other drugs were followed for an average of four years.

Among the 358 862 participants with an average age of 58, a total of 6837 people developed dementia or Parkinson’s disease during the study. For Alzheimer’s disease, the incidence rate for people taking SGLT2 inhibitors was 39.7 cases per 10 000 person-years, compared to 63.7 cases for those taking other diabetes drugs. Person-years represent both the number of people in the study and the amount of time each person spends in the study.

For vascular dementia, which is dementia caused by vascular disease, the incidence rate for people taking the SGLT2 drugs was 10.6 cases per 10 000, compared to 18.7 for those taking the other drugs. For Parkinson’s disease, the incidence rate for those taking the SGLT2 drugs was 9.3 cases per 10 000, compared to 13.7 for those taking the other drugs.

After researchers adjusted for other factors that could affect the risk of dementia or Parkinson’s disease, such as complications from diabetes and medications, they found that SGLT2 inhibitor use was associated with a 20% reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease and a 20% reduced risk of Parkinson’s disease. Those taking the drugs had a 30% reduced risk of developing vascular dementia.

“The results are generally consistent even after adjusting for factors like blood pressure, glucose, cholesterol and kidney function,” Lee said. “More research is needed to validate the long-term validity of these findings.” Lee said that since participants were followed for less than five years at the most, it’s possible that some participants would later develop dementia or Parkinson’s disease.

Source: American Academy of Neurology