Minnesota - April 2014 Archives

ROCHESTER, Minn. ― In a crowded health and wellness marketplace, knowing what’s fact versus myth and effective versus ineffective can be a challenge. It also may be an obstacle for some people to find a sound and practical lifestyle program that they can maintain over time. To provide a comprehensive wellness program based on research, not the trend of the day, Mayo Clinic will launch the Mayo Clinic Healthy Living Program in summer of 2014 to help people adopt healthy behavioral changes in diet, exercise and stress management and improve their overall quality of life. Journalists: Sound bites with Dr. Hensrud discussing the Healthy Living Plan are available in the downloads.  This new program will be located within the Mayo Clinic Dan Abraham Healthy Living Center in Rochester. To achieve its vision, the Mayo Clinic Healthy Living Program is designed to help people break down barriers, dispel myths and give participants a comprehensive wellness experience tailored to their individual goals. What makes this program unique is that it doesn’t end once the person leaves the campus; it offers ongoing support long after the person returns home. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_732QomrHk4 “Mayo has been dedicated to the health and wellness of individuals for 150 years, and this program continues that tradition by offering life-changing experiences to people seeking whole-person wellness who want to maximize their health,” says Donald Hensrud, M.D., medical director, Mayo Clinic Healthy Living Program.

ROCHESTER, Minn. — Mayo Clinic research into whether ultrasounds to detect breast cancer in underarm lymph nodes are less effective in obese women has produced a surprising finding. Fat didn’t obscure the images — and ultrasounds showing no suspicious lymph nodes actually proved more accurate in overweight and obese patients than in women with a normal body mass index, the study found. The research is among several Mayo studies presented at the American Society of Breast Surgeons annual meeting April 30-May 4 in Las Vegas. Researchers studied 1,331 breast cancer patients who received ultrasounds of their axillary lymph nodes, the lymph nodes in the armpits, to check for cancer before surgery. Of those patients, 36 percent were considered obese, with a body mass index of 30 or more. Body mass index is a formula that uses weight and height to estimate body fat. Of the other women studied, 33 percent were of normal weight and 31 percent were overweight but not obese.

ROCHESTER, Minn. — Mayo Clinic will open its state-of-the-art Mayo Clinic Sports Medicine Center expansion at the Dan Abraham Healthy Living Center on May 5. The new space includes multiple playing surfaces, such as hardwood for basketball and volleyball, artificial grass for turf sports, artificial ice for hockey, and specialized lifting platforms. “Whether you are an elite, professional athlete or a ‘weekend warrior,’ we are able to develop programs to fit all athletes’ needs,” says Edward Laskowski, M.D., co-director, Mayo Clinic Sports Medicine Center. “We have long had world-renowned experts in all areas of sports medicine, but through our expansion here in Rochester and our new facility being developed in downtown Minneapolis, we have the increased resources to meet growing demand.” The new space offers performance solution programs, including hockey, golf, running, baseball/softball, anterior cruciate ligament injury prevention and return-to-sport. The programs begin with individualized assessment and are then tailored to meet individual needs, regardless of age or level of athletic achievement. “Active children become active adults, so we take great pride in serving people of all ages to achieve their sports performance and fitness needs,” says Michael Stuart, M.D., co-director, Mayo Clinic Sports Medicine Center. “Our team of physicians, athletic trainers, physical therapists, and strength and conditioning specialists will help prevent injury, refine skills and speed recovery so people can spend more time doing what they love at the highest level possible.”

ROCHESTER, Minn. — Mayo Clinic earned No. 8 on the 2014 DiversityInc Top 10 Hospitals and Health Systems list for its continued commitment to diversity and inclusion. This is the third year that Mayo has earned a spot on the list. This year's rankings were announced at the annual DiversityInc Top 50 event in New York on April 22. Companies named to the DiversityInc Top 10 Hospital and Health Systems are measured in four key areas: CEO/Leadership Commitment Talent Pipeline Equitable Talent Development Supplier Diversity Of particular note, Mayo Clinic stood out in the rankings for its leadership involvement, specifically its CEO chairing Mayo Clinic’s diversity council, its strategic positioning of its employee resource groups to develop staff and improve patient care, as well as its national outreach to diverse communities and organizations.

ROCHESTER, Minn. — April 24, 2014 — Mayo Clinic researchers have uncovered a novel tumor suppressive role for p53, a cancer-critical gene that is mutated in more than half of all cancers found in humans. The researchers found that loss of p53 function caused overproduction of the kinase Aurora A, an enzyme involved in the process of cell division. That overproduction leads to mitotic spindle malformation and aberrant separation of duplicated chromosomes over daughter cells, a phenomenon that predicts tumor metastasis and poor patient outcomes. The findings appear in the journal Nature Cell Biology. Normal human cells have 46 chromosomes. It has long been recognized that developing cancer cells reshuffle their chromosomes and, more recently, that chromosome-number abnormalities help transform normal cells into cancerous cells that metastasize and resist treatment.

ROCHESTER, Minn. — Mayo Clinic research studying the relationship between death and the two types of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) suggests that people who have these conditions die at a higher rate than people without MCI. The research was released today and will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 66th Annual Meeting  in Philadelphia, April 26 to May 3, 2014. For the study, 862 people with thinking problems and 1,292 with no thinking problems between the ages of 70 and 89 were followed for nearly six years. Over the course of the study, 331 of the group with MCI and 224 of the group without MCI died. Those who had either type of MCI had an 80 percent higher death rate during the study than those without MCI.  People with MCI with no memory loss had more than twice the death rate during the study than those without MCI, while people with MCI with memory loss had a 68 percent higher death rate during the study than those without MCI.

ROCHESTER, Minn. — Here are highlights from the April issue of Mayo Clinic Health Letter. You may cite this publication as often as you wish. Reprinting is allowed for a fee. Mayo Clinic Health Letter attribution is required. Include the following subscription information as your editorial policies permit: Visit www.HealthLetter.MayoClinic.com or call toll-free for subscription information, 1-800-333-9037, extension 9771. Full newsletter text: Mayo Clinic Health Letter April 2014 (for journalists only). How the placebo effect enhances healing Researchers are working to better understand the placebo effect, how it works and how it can be harnessed to improve therapies. The April issue of Mayo Clinic Health Letter covers what’s known about this phenomenon and how it may work to improve health. The placebo effect is most evident in medical research. It’s a person’s belief that an inactive treatment is working just as well as the presumed active therapy being studied. Well-intentioned medical advances, when compared to the placebo treatment, sometimes derive most of their benefit from positive expectations rather than the therapy itself.

Presentations at Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology ROCHESTER, Minn. — April 23, 2014 — Mayo Clinic ophthalmology researchers have found a likely indicator of Fuchs endothelial corneal dystrophy. Following up on a genome-wide association study, Keith Baratz, M.D., and others discovered no single genomic variant that caused Fuchs, but found that a repeated noncoding trinucleotide sequence correlated with the condition in patients 68 percent of the time. The findings will be presented on the afternoon of May 4 at the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology annual conference in Orlando, Fla. (Poster 1003-A0392)

In recognition of National Child Abuse Prevention Month and to celebrate the recent accreditation by the National Children’s Alliance, the new Mayo Clinic Child and ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. — Acute respiratory distress syndrome is a leading cause of respiratory failure after surgery. Patients who develop the lung disorder postoperatively are at higher risk of dying in the hospital, and those who survive the syndrome may still bear its physical effects  years later.  A Mayo Clinic-led study is helping physicians better identify patients most at risk, the first step toward preventing this dangerous and costly surgical complication.  They found nine independent risk factors, including sepsis, high-risk aortic vascular surgery, high-risk cardiac surgery, emergency surgery, cirrhosis of the liver, and admission to the hospital from a location other than home, such as a nursing home. The findings are published in the journal Anesthesiology. “This is a very common reason for needing an extended course of breathing support after surgery, and approximately 20 to 25 percent of patients who develop the syndrome will die from it,” says first author Daryl Kor, M.D., a Mayo Clinic anesthesiologist.  “It’s well-documented that those who develop this syndrome stay in intensive care longer and in the hospital longer, and the impact of the syndrome can persist for many years.”

ROCHESTER, Minn. — The Destination Medical Center Economic Development Agency (EDA) has selected the subconsultant team which will assist with the planning of the DMC Development Plan. The team includes: Master Planner – EE&K, a Perkins Eastman Company Infrastructure Planner – Kimley-Horn & Associates, Inc. Transportation Planner – NelsonNygaard Consulting Associates Market Analysis and Economic-Fiscal Consultant – AECOM “This world-class team of planners brings a broad base of experience with projects globally, nationally and throughout the state of Minnesota,” says Lisa Clarke, interim executive director, Destination Medical Center Economic Development Agency. The subconsultants were evaluated based on the selection process approved by the Destination Medical Center Corporation (DMCC). Selections were made based on the experience of the firm, capabilities of the team proposed, knowledge of the market, and strength of their response to the request for proposal among other factors.

ROCHESTER, Minn. — Friday, April 25, is National DNA Day, the date which commemorates completion of the Human Genome Project, the national effort to identify and decode all 6 billion letters in human DNA. Since that time, medical researchers and practitioners have found new ways to apply genomics for everyone who needs healing, and thanks to staggering technological advancements and next-generation sequencing, the cost to sequence a patient’s genome has decreased from $3 billion for the first human genome in 2003 to approximately $1,500. MEDIA: Gianrico Farrugia, M.D., director of the Mayo Clinic Center for Individualized Medicine, is available for interviews and background about the future of genomic medicine, as well as information about the latest practices and transformative clinical trials. To interview Dr. Farrugia contact Sam Smith, Mayo Clinic Public Affairs, 507-284-5005, newsbureau@mayo.edu Watch video on genome sequencing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JUu1WqidC4&feature=youtu.be