Number of entries: 261 Number of pages: 27
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| Name: Joane D From: Battle Creek MI E-mail: Contact |
Beyond the Breathalyzer: Seeking Telltale Signs of Disease By ANNE EISENBERG Published: July 2, 2011 PEOPLE who are worried about bad breath often reach for a toothbrush, a Tic Tac or an Altoid. Jim Lang/Cleveland Clinic “My sense is that breath analysis is the future of medical testing,” says Dr. Raed Dweik, holding a breath sensor he is developing. Enlarge This Image Menssana Research Anirudh Chaturvedi of Menssana Research demonstrated its BreathLink system. But in the future, personal breath monitoring may include far more than breath fresheners. Scientists are building sophisticated electronic and chemical sniffers that examine the puffs of exhaled air for telltale signs of cancer, tuberculosis, asthma and other maladies, as well as for radiation exposure. “There are clear signatures in the breath for liver disease, kidney disease, heart disease” and diseases of the lungs, said Dr. Raed Dweik, director of the pulmonary vascular program at the Cleveland Clinic, who studies breath analysis. “My sense is that breath analysis is the future of medical testing, complementing many of the blood and imaging steps we do today. “Breath is a rich matrix that can reflect our state of health or disease,” Dr. Dweik said. In fact, he observed, breath is so rich in chemical compounds that fully understanding it has proved challenging. Each exhalation contains gases like carbon dioxide, of course, but also the volatile remains of recent snacks, medicines and even compounds inhaled from things like carpeting, upholstery or various kinds of air pollution. But monitors can sort out these exhaled substances with increasing sensitivity, bringing breath analysis closer to widespread use as a noninvasive tool in medical diagnosis and treatment. Menssana Research, a biotechnology company in Fort Lee, N.J., is testing a desktop system called BreathLink for use in rapid identification of active pulmonary tuberculosis and other diseases, said Dr. Michael Phillips, the company’s chief executive and a professor of clinical medicine at New York Medical College in Valhalla, N.Y. The system is designed to work wherever there is an Internet connection. Its analyzers can detect compounds in the breath in concentrations of parts per trillion — a billion times more sensitive than breath analyzers used by the police to detect blood-alcohol concentrations, Dr. Phillips said. To use Breathlink, a person breathes into a long tube, and a breath sample is collected and analyzed within the apparatus. The device can then detail chemical concentrations of the breath in graphics. “Then we can send that information to our lab in New Jersey from anywhere in the world” for further analysis, he said. BreathLink grows out of the company’s earlier work on Heartsbreath, a procedure that monitors exhalations of patients with heart transplants for signs of rejection. Heartsbreath, approved by the Food and Drug Administration as a humanitarian device, has not yet been widely adopted, Dr. Phillips said, in part because Medicare has declined to cover the test until further clinical studies demonstrate its efficacy. Those studies are continuing, Dr. Phillips said. The detection of one compound in the breath, nitric oxide, is already used widely in treatment of asthma, said Dr. Marielle W. H. Pijnenburg, who specializes in pediatric respiratory medicine at Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. “It’s a very small molecule,” she said, “but if you look at patients of asthma, they have higher levels of it in their exhaled air. It reflects their allergic inflammation in the lungs.” Dr. Pijnenburg said that the breath analyzers used to detect nitric oxide are expensive, however — and that the results, while useful, are not applicable to all asthma patients. “Nitric oxide alone is too simple to reflect the complex processes going on in the lungs for asthma,” she said. Future devices will measure many other molecules that may be related to the disease. One of these devices may be a portable breath analyzer for pediatric asthma that will look for five common inflammatory markers of the disease, said Frederick A. Dombrose, president of the Hartwell Foundation in Memphis. The foundation, which supports research in children’s health, has awarded a grant to Cristina E. Davis, an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at the University of California, Davis, to develop the analyzer. “We want a hand-held device that is convenient for children to hold and use, so that they can monitor their condition,” Mr. Dombrose said. AT the Cleveland Clinic, Dr. Peter Mazzone is analyzing the breath of patients to determine whether they have lung cancer. In his test, breath is drawn across sensors that change color and are then captured on digital cameras. The patterns are then compared with those of people without the disease. His tests have reached 85 percent accuracy so far in spotting people with the illness, he said. But some trained dogs, he pointed out, can sniff out cancer with 99 percent accuracy — although without, for example, the ability to identify particular compounds the way some analyzers can. “We are getting better and better,” he said. “But whether we will ever approach the accuracy of the dog — we don’t know.” E-mail: novelties@nytimes.com. A version of this article appeared in print on July 3, 2011, on page BU3 of the New York edition with the headline: Beyond the Breathalyzer:
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| Name: Karl From: Brooklyn E-mail: Contact |
New York police dept has set up a system to combat Ticket fixing with a Computerized System, Preventing the Police From Fixing Traffic Tickets To prevent police officers from fixing traffic tickets, the Police Department has come up with a system that would be familiar to any grocery store checkout clerk doing inventory. A parking ticket with the new bar code that can be read by the department's scanning system. New tickets are electronically scanned at each stage of their journey — once, twice, three times, and then once more.
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| Name: Tracy From: NJ E-mail: Contact |
Judge: Alcohol-related traffic stops should get state trooper suspended An administrative law judge has recommended a seven month suspension for state trooper Shela McKAIG,who was caught DWI THREE TIMES WITHOUT RECEIVING A SINGLE TICKET. lOCAL POLICE REPEATEDLY DECLINED TO TICKET HER.
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| Name: Tracy From: DC 3/31/11 E-mail: Contact |
A year after the city of DC acknowledged that errors in breath test analyzers had overstated drivers results Police still do not have a DWI program because the city cannot decide who should run it.Police chief ordered officers to take Urine samples instead .Urine tests cost police $75 apiece compared to $10 for each breath test.
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| Name: Dawn From: DC 3/31/11 E-mail: Contact |
US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was given a traffic ticket after a four-car road crash in Washington DC.
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| Name: Carol From: Red Bank nj 3/3/2011 E-mail: Contact |
Court Upholds Burping Judge's DWI An appeals court upheld the DWI conviction of a former Municipal Judge who was also convicted of Burping to avoid a breath test.The decision upheld the verdict on George Korpita a former judge in Dover NJ who was convicted of his second DWI offense ,refusing to take a breath test and careless driving. During the trial a police officer testified that he audibly burped 78 times as the Alcotest was to be administered to him. A DWI suspect who burps just before a breath test has to wait 20 minutes before blowing into the device because a belch can skew results.
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| Name: karla From: mississippi E-mail: Contact |
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) says red-light cameras reduced the rate of fatal red-light running by 24% from 2004 to 2008. Had the cameras been installed in all U.S. cities with populations above 200,000, 815 deaths would have been prevented, says the Insurance Institute, a group funded by auto insurers that aims to reduce deaths, injuries and property damage caused by crashes on the nation's roads. "The cities that have the courage to use red-light cameras despite the political backlash are saving lives," IIHS President Adrian Lund says. The research was immediately challenged by camera opponents. Gary Biller, executive director of the National Motorists Association, a drivers' rights group, says cameras increase crashes in some areas and that other strategies are more effective in making intersections safer. "Lengthening the duration of the yellow cycle can reduce red-light running by 50% or more," Biller says, citing a 2005 study by the Texas Transportation Institute, a research arm of Texas A&M University. "Doing nothing is better than putting up cameras," says Greg Mauz, a researcher for the Best Highway Safety Practices Institute, which studies traffic-safety laws. "There are about 700 additional deaths since cameras have proliferated, from 2001 on. The whole idea that cameras can prevent fatalities and crashes is total nonsense."
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| Name: Ollie From: Ceder Rapids 10/21/10 E-mail: Contact |
Drivers caught speeding or running red lights on traffic cameras who dont pay the fines could face a black mark on their credit rating.City Finance Director says the city is willing to send unpaid bills to collection agencies, but so far has stopped short of that approach 
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| Name: Carmine From: Great kills E-mail: Contact |
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- A Staten Island assistant district attorney who often prosecutes defendants for drunk driving is now facing those charges himself. Richmond County Assistant District Attorney Craig Trainor was charged with operating a vehicle while intoxicated in Midtown Manhattan early this morning. Police said the 33-year-old Castleton Corners resident was speeding and changing lanes without using a signal before he was pulled over on the corner of West 44th Street and 12th Avenue at around 3:15 a.m. Assistant District Attorney Craig Trainor was arrested this morning for allegedly driving drunk. Trainor was also charged with refusing to take a Breathalyzer test at the scene and after he was arrested and taken to the 7th Precinct stationhouse. He is expected to be arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court today. Beside facing significant fines, jail time and the loss of his driver's license for at least a year, Trainor may also lose his job. District Attorney Daniel Donovan suspended Trainor without pay immediately, pending the outcome of the case. "Obviously, these are very serious allegations. Due to the prosecution being conducted by the Manhattan D.A., we cannot comment further at this time," William J. Smith, a spokesman for the prosecutor, wrote in a statement. Trainor, a graduate of Moore Catholic High School in Graniteville and the Columbus School of Law at the Catholic University of America, Washington D.C., joined Donovan's staff last August. He was assigned to Criminal Court in Stapleton, handling misdemeanor cases, which include drunk driving charges. Before working for the D.A.'s office, Trainor was a law clerk to Chief Judge Frederick J. Scullin, Jr. of the U.S. District Court in upstate New York; and was an associate at the Manhattan law firm of DeFeis, O'Connell & Rose for three years. His arrest is no doubt an embarrassment for Donovan, who has gained a reputation as one of the toughest prosecutors of drunk-drivers in the state. During his tenure, the Island not only has led the city in drunk driving convictions, but has had the highest percentage of those convicted receive jail sentences.
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| Name: Mary From: Smithfield E-mail: Contact |
A Judge ruled that proscuters cannot revive charges against 30 people whose DUI charges were dismissed as part of a ticket-fixing case in which four defense attorneys and a prosecuter pleaded guilty. Johnston County officials argued that the cases were improperly dismissed with the signature of an assistant prosecutor who had resigned.
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