Philips Respironics and ResMed Inc. are joined by Cephalon Inc. to fund second year of Continuing Medical Education program

SleepApneaDisorder/[Press Release]/Murrysville, Pa., San Diego, Ca., and Frazer, Pa. USA – Philips Respironics, a unit of Royal Philips Electronics (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHI), ResMed Inc. (NYSE: RMD and ASX: RMD.AX), and biopharmaceutical company, Cephalon Inc. (NASDAQ: CEPH), are supporting efforts  to bring untreated sleep apnea to the forefront of discussion among primary care physicians (PCP). As the program enters its second year, Cephalon joins the device makers in responding to educational grant requests to fund a series of independent continuing medical education (CME) activities on this important topic.
 
“We are committed to lending our support to the sleep community to further awareness and physician understanding of the medical consequences of untreated sleep apnea,” explains Eoghan O’Lionaird, General Manager-Sleep for Philips Respironics. “CME programs are a critical component in bridging the gap for this growing public health issue.” Read the rest of this entry

SleepApneaDisorder/[Press Release]/- BOCA RATON, Fla., Sept. 15 / — Watermark Medical, Inc., a privately-held, medical products and services company servicing the sleep-disordered breathing market, has expanded the market reach of its Web-enabled in-home sleep apnea testing device through strategic alliances with three leading sleep solution providers in the U.S. and Canada.

The new partners are SleepQuest, a national provider of comprehensive sleep apnea services; Sleep Optima, which provides sleep apnea services through a growing network of dentists; and The Snore Shop, which offers sleep apnea services. Based on Watermark Medical’s expertise and credibility in the in-home testing market, these companies chose to use the Watermark ARES™ in three distinct types of practice settings, demonstrating the versatility of the Watermark device. Read the rest of this entry

According to a research study results that appeared in the September issue of the journal Pediatrics, in the last 30 years, the prevalence of obesity in children has tripled, leading to children developing adult medical problems, such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes and sleep apnea.

“The California study gives us hope that while the childhood obesity epidemic is severe, we are seeing a decline in certain populations,” said Dr. Ashley Weedn, an OU researcher and clinical assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma’s Health Sciences Center. “It gives us hope that we can make a difference in Oklahoma too.”. Read the rest of this entry

ResMed Inc recorded record revenue and income for the quarter ended June 30, 2010, driven by strong sales of the S9 AutoSet and Elite products, and robust mask sales.

“In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2010, we continued to show strong growth year-over-year in the Americas, as well as in international markets,” said Kieran T. Gallahue, president and CEO. “Our favorable mix of product sales and market share gains led to a 20% revenue increase in the Americas over the prior year’s quarter, resulting in $160.9 million in sales. Read the rest of this entry

The prevalence of obesity,sleep apnea, and the metabolic syndrome is rapidly increasing in India and other south Asian countries, leading to increased morbidity and mortality due to type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and cardiovascular disease (CVD). 

The literature search has been carried out using the key words “insulin resistance, the metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular risk, diabetes, obesity, Asian Indians, and South Asians” in the medical search engine Pubmed (National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD) from 1966 to September 2009. Read the rest of this entry

Sleep problems in children can be one of parenting’s biggest challenges. In the U.S., approximately two million children suffer from sleep disorders. Children who suffer from disruptive sleep patterns often fall victim to other problems associated with a lack of sleep such as daytime sleepiness, which affects 10 percent of all school aged children.

According to Sagarika Nallu, M.D., a pediatric neurologist and specialist in pediatric sleep medicine at NYM, sleep problems in children can be divided into behavioral issues and medical issues.

Behavioral issues involve problems like a child awakening and then needing to complete the night’s sleep in the parents’ bed. “Medical issues,” said Dr. Nallu, “can range from sleep apnea to restless leg syndrome, and may also result from medication used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or, occasionally from psychiatric conditions.” Read the rest of this entry

The information gap and general lack of understanding of obesity’s unique and disproportionate impact on women contributes to the challenges of the 65 million American women who are considered overweight or obese, said the Strategies to Overcome and Prevent (STOP) Obesity Alliance Task Force on Women at a meeting on Capitol Hill today. Through discussions with health experts and an extensive review of obesity prevalence research, the Task Force found women to be hit hardest by obesity – confounding efforts to turn the tide on the nation’s obesity problem, especially in children.

“We rely on women to serve as the ‘Chief Health Officer’ for the family, but with more than a third being obese themselves, we’re unlikely to break the cycle with children without finding ways for moms to overcome their weight problems as well,” said Christine Ferguson, professor at The George Washington University and Director of the STOP Obesity Alliance. “What’s more, achieving healthier weights for women, whether they are mothers or not, will mean a healthier society overall. Unfortunately, significant barriers stand in the way.” Read the rest of this entry

Department of Surgical Gastroenterology at Manipal Hospital, Bangalore inaugurated Bariatric Surgery Services, a comprehensive programme for bariatric surgery. This distinctive programme offers pre-operative education, state of the art surgical facility and post operative support.

The benefits of bariatric surgery have been carefully studied and it is recommended for patients with a body mass index of 37.5 Kg/m2 or those with a BMI above 32.5 Kg/m2 with co-morbidities. Bariatric surgery not only causes a significant and sustained weight loss but a significant improvement of co-morbidities. Almost 70 per cent of patients with morbidity hypertension and Type 2 diabetes can be expected to get off medications in about three months time. Read the rest of this entry

A recently concluded  research study established that the patients denied bariatric surgery by their insurer developed a host of new obesity-related diseases and conditions including Type 2 diabetes, hypertension and obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) , within three years. 

Another study on insurers, showed that patients on insurance-mandated diet programs for six months before bariatric surgery did no better than patients with no such insurance requirement. However, patients on these programs had to wait, on average, about four months longer for surgery. 

Findings of this new research study were presented at the 27th annual scientific meeting of the American Society for Metabolic & Bariatric Surgery (ASMBS) recently.

If you have the disorder, you’re not breathing properly while you sleep because your airflow is blocked repeatedly throughout the night. Nearly one in four men and one in ten women suffer from it. (There are a couple of other varieties, but OSA is the most common.) And it goes hand-in-hand with type 2 diabetes. In a survey on the subject, Gary D. Foster, PhD, wrote that, “among all of the sleep disorders, OSA has the strongest association with type 2 diabetes.”  That’s even taking into account other risk factors, such as weight, sex and age.

The main risk factor for OSA is obesity. “Excess weight deposits extra fat around the thorax, reducing chest compliance and functional capacity, while increasing oxygen demand,” wrote Foster, a professor of medicine and public health and the Director of the Center for Obesity Research and Education at Temple University. Read the rest of this entry

Migraine sufferers who experienced abuse and neglect as children have a greater risk of cardiovascular (CV) disease including stroke and myocardial infarction (MI) among others, say scientists presenting data at the American Headache Society’s 52nd Annual Scientific Meeting in Los Angeles this week. 

In a multi-center, cross-sectional study of more than 1,300 headache clinic patients diagnosed with migraine, investigators found a linear relationship between the risk of stroke, transient ischemic attack (TIA), MI, or all of these adverse outcomes and the total number of abuse types they experienced as children (physical, emotional or sexual abuse, or physical or emotional neglect.) 

Patients in the study completed a self-administered electronic questionnaire which collected information on age, gender, race, highest educational level attained, body mass index, smoking status, history of childhood maltreatment, as well as self-reported physician-diagnosed CV conditions and risk factors such as hypertension, diabetes, obesity, and obstructive sleep apnea. The Childhood Trauma Questionnaire was used to assess physical, sexual, emotional abuse and physical, emotional neglect. 

“It is clear from this work that early adverse experiences influence a migraine sufferers’ cardiovascular health in adulthood,” said Gretchen E. Tietjen, MD, of the University of Toledo College Of Medicine, who led the team from 11 neurology centers in the U.S. and Canada. “Other work has shown a link between childhood maltreatment and migraine and now we know that early abuse puts these adults at a greater risk of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease. 

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Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is hypothesized to be influenced by genes within pathways involved with obesity, craniofacial development, inflammation and ventilatory control. We conducted the first candidate gene study of OSA using family data from European-Americans and African-Americans, selecting biologically plausible genes from within these pathways.

Methods

1080 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were genotyped in 729 African-Americans and 505 SNPs were genotyped in 694 European-Americans. Coding for SNPs additively, association testing on the apnea hypopnea index (AHI) as a continuous trait and OSA as a dichotomous trait (AHI 15) was conducted using methods that account for familial correlations in models adjusted for age, age-squared, and sex, with and without body mass index. Read the rest of this entry