CHECKUP DRUG OFFERS HOPE FOR AUTISTIC KIDS.

Byline: - Staff and Wire Reports

The anti-psychotic medication risperidone shows promise in treating severe tantrums and aggression in children with autism, according to a study by the National Institute of Mental Health. The UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute was one of five research sites to participate in the study.

Researchers randomly assigned 101 children between the ages of 5 and 17 to receive either a placebo or risperidone. The eight-week study found risperidone to be significantly more effective than the placebo in improving behavior. Sixty-nine percent of the children assigned to risperidone showed significant improvement, compared with only 12 percent in the placebo group.

Other medications have been used to treat autism with limited success. Autism, a chronic condition that appears in early childhood, affects the brain's development of social and communications skills.

In addition to the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute, study sites included Yale University, Ohio State University, Indiana University and Kennedy Krieger Institute/Johns Hopkins University.

SMOKERS WANTED: City of Hope Cancer Center in Duarte is currently testing a lung cancer screening method that could become a routine test in the future.

The screening technique uses a low-dose CT scan, according to Drs. Fred Grannis, head of the Section of Thoracic Surgery, and Arnold Rotter, chief of Computed Tomography, who are conducting the trial. If a tumor or lung abnormality is found, a higher-resolution standard CT scan will be obtained, they said.

City of Hope is seeking for the trial men and women ages 40 to 75, in good health, who either currently smoke cigarettes or who have smoked in the past. They must have a total smoking experience of at least 10 pack-years (the equivalent of one pack a day for 10 years).

Those interested in participating need a referral from a doctor involved in their care. Participants should be prepared to pay a $300 fee for the CT scan that insurance does not cover.

Those found to have a pulmonary nodule or other abnormalities will be referred back to their personal doctors with recommendations for further testing and/or treatment per study guidelines. Trial participants found to be free of lung cancer will be asked to return for a screening CT annually for three years.

Individuals interested in participating may call [phone] or send an e-mail to lungscreen(at)coh.org.

LETHAL COMBINATION: As if having a stroke weren't bad enough, researchers have found, the mental disability known as dementia can be a strong predictor of death if it accompanies a stroke.

People with symptoms of dementia before or after a stroke have a much greater risk of dying within the next two years, according to a study reported in the August issue of Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association. In fact, dementia turns out to be one of the most important predictors of death in people who had had strokes.

Individuals who developed dementia after their stroke had a more than eightfold increase in their risk of dying within two years, while those who had symptoms of dementia before the stroke had a risk of death twice as high as those with no dementia before or after. When the dementia was related to the stroke, the risk for death increased more than six times. This was true even after adjusting for other risk factors such as age, gender and heart disease.

The authors of the study speculate that this may be because stroke survivors with no dementia receive better care than those who do suffer from dementia. The study found that patients with dementia were less likely to receive oral anticoagulants, for example.

People with dementia have declining mental abilities, including memory loss, some motor-skill degradation, confusion and, often, the inability to find the right words to express a thought or idea.