Health Headlines - July 4

New Guide May Help Lower Blood Pressure

There are 65 million American adults with high blood pressure. If you're one of them, you can lower your blood pressure by following the step-by-step dietary and physical activity advice offered in an updated guide from the U.S. National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI).

The updated version of the DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) eating plan recommends limiting salt (sodium), saturated fat, trans fat, and cholesterol. It also urges people to increase their consumption of fruits, vegetables, fat-free or low-fat milk products, whole grain products, fish, poultry, and nuts.

It offers new information on potassium, weight loss, and physical activity, and includes a week's worth of menus, easy-to-prepare recipes and a diary to record what you eat and your exercise. There are also tips about heart-healthy food choices and ways to be more physically active.

"NHLBI studies have shown that the DASH eating plan can significantly lower high blood pressure, even within the first few weeks," Dr. Elizabeth G. Nabel, NHLBI director, said in a prepared statement. "They demonstrate that be making healthy choices in diet and physical activity, you can get on track to a healthier life," she said.

Here are some examples of the advice and suggestions contained in the guide:

If you eat only one or two servings of vegetables a day, try adding one serving at lunch and another at dinner.
Gradually switch to fat-free or low-fat milk and reduce your intake of soda or other sweetened beverages.
Choose whole grain foods, such as whole wheat bread or whole grain cereals. This will provide with added nutrients and fiber.
Select food items with the lowest levels of salt or sodium.
Start exercising by taking a 15-minute walk each day and slowly build from there.

Doctors Probe 'Miracle' Rebirth of a Long-Dormant Mind

Almost 20 years after suffering a severe brain injury in a truck accident, Terry Wallis uttered an astounding word.

"Mom."

It was the first word Wallis, of Mountain View, Ark., had been able to speak since sinking into a "minimally conscious state" (MCS) after the pick-up he and friends were riding in went over a cliff.

And while there have been sporadic reports of other "miracle" recoveries following years of a vegetative state, few, if any, of those have lasted more than a day or so. Wallis's recovery, widely reported in the media when it happened, has gone on for almost three years now.

"This is the only patient who was known to emerge after such a long time from such a state," said Dr. Nicholas Schiff, associate professor of neurology and neuroscience at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City. "This particular story of a man 20 years out recovering and sustaining the recovery and moving on is certainly, to my knowledge, unique and never studied."

Schiff, senior author of a study on Wallis and his brain in the July issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, first saw Wallis eight months after he started speaking. That was in April 2004.

"We saw a man with very severe brain injury with a lot of motor impairment. He had a very inarticulate speech pattern but was fluent in language and had recovered a good deal of what appeared to be his baseline personality," Schiff recalled. "We were told that prior to that event he could look at you, follow you around room, nod his head or grunt inconsistently but not communicate."

More than two years after that breakthrough, Wallis has become more alert, recovered more speech and motor control and, most remarkably, has recovered motor function in his lower extremities.

"That was surprising to us, because we had definitely predicted that he wouldn't recover any function in his limb movements and strengths," Schiff said.

"He still can't walk, but he can move his legs and a little bit also his hands, and he can talk," explained Henning Voss, lead author of the study and assistant professor of physics and radiology at Weill Cornell Medical College. "You can't understand him very well, but he is able to reliably communicate."

The question now is, "What went right?"

In an effort to find the answer, Schiff and his colleagues used state-of-the-art structural and functional neuroimaging techniques to examine Wallis' brain as well as those of 20 healthy individuals and another patient who had been in an MCS for six years with no sign of recovery.

Imaging revealed that neuronal cells in the relatively undamaged areas of Wallis' brain have grown new, significant connections over years. The process is called "axonal re-growth."

"We think that there was some axon reorganization," Voss said. "I think that it was just a very, very slow remodeling of the brain, which takes years."

"The data is compelling to us to consider the hypothesis that what we're looking at here is some form of reconnection among existing neurons," Schiff added.

And medications may have played a role. About two years before he emerged from his minimally conscious state, Wallis started taking the anti-depressant Paxil.

"I have become more willing to believe over time that that might have played a role," Schiff said. "I kind of doubt that axonal regrowth is the whole story."

Whatever happened to Wallis could be of huge import to other patients in similar situations, another expert said.

"Are there ways in which we can use this information to help us find therapies for those who don't recover? The brain has its own mechanisms of self repair," said Paul Sanberg, director of the University of South Florida Center for Aging and Brain Repair, in Tampa.

"This is an important finding," he added.

Voss agreed: "The first thing is that we have to better understand the self-healing processes and, once we know more about it, then we can think about how to support this process."

Many more patients need to be studied in order to validate the hypothesis, Schiff said.

But, he added, medicine needs to accept that what happened to Wallis is real.

"This happened, and we should adapt to that as a medical reality and rethink the way we are tracking patients and what kind of access patients with severe brain injury have to basic clinical follow up," Schiff said.

Scientists Turn Stem Cells Into Disease-Fighting T-Cells

U.S. researchers have found a way to genetically manipulate human embryonic stem cells so they grow into mature disease-fighting T-cells -- a discovery they say might help in the development of gene therapy against AIDS.

T-cells are one the of the body's main defenses against disease. In this study, researchers demonstrated that it is possible to convert embryonic stem cells into blood-forming stem cells that, in turn, can turn into the helper T-cells. These are the T-cells that are specifically targeted by HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

The study was conducted by a team from the University of California, Los Angeles, AIDS Institute and the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Medicine.

The findings, published this week in the online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, mark the first time scientists have been able to derive T-cells out of human embryonic stem cells.

"This tells you that you may be able to use human embryonic stem cells to treat T-cell and other blood diseases," lead researcher Zoran Galic, an assistant research biologist, said in a prepared statement. "This could be a very important weapon in the fight against AIDS."

The human embryonic stem cells were incubated on mouse bone marrow support cells, which converted the embryonic stem cells into blood-forming cells. These blood-forming cells were then injected into a human thymus gland that had been implanted in a mouse. The thymus gland converted the blood-forming cells into T-cells.

The thymus, located just above the heart in humans, is where T-cells develop.

The study results suggest it's possible to decipher the signals that control the development of embryonic stem cells into T-cells, noted study co-author Jerome Zack, associate director of the UCLA AIDS Institute.

"That way we can eventually repopulate the immune system in patients needing T-cells," Zack said in a prepared statement.