April 20, 2012

Mayo Clinic in the News is a weekly highlights summary of major media coverage. If you would like to be added to the weekly distribution list, send a note to Emily Blahnik with this subject line: SUBSCRIBE to Mayo Clinic in the News.

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Karl Oestreich, manager enterprise media relations
oestreich.karl@mayo.edu

Star Tribune
Mayo Clinic team to explore body's limits in lab on Mount Everest
by Maura Lerner

Bruce Johnson is a soft-spoken man who's drawn to extremes. He once camped on the edge of a soaring cliff in Argentina, with 40-mile-per-hour winds threatening to blow his tent away. "Like sitting behind a jet plane," he says. As a scientist at the Mayo Clinic,
Johnson has gone to some of the most forbidding places on the planet (including the South Pole) to explore one question: "What are the extremes that the human body can endure?" Monday, he takes his quest to Mount Everest. Johnson, 54, is leading a team of scientists to "the promised land," as one colleague calls it, to study the extraordinary ways the body can change on the highest mountain on Earth.

Circulation: The Star Tribune Sunday circulation is 496,039 copies and weekday circulation is 296,605. The Star Tribune is the state’s largest newspaper and ranks 16^th nationally in circulation.

Context: This front page story in the Sunday, April 15 Star Tribune spawned coverage this week by more than 100 media outlets. Mayo Clinic physiologists are on Mount Everest where they will conduct research and collect data on extreme athletes making an ascent on the peak via two routes. The Mayo group will monitor up to nine climbers from base camp for the duration of the climb, which will run to mid-May. Their
studies will provide knowledge that will help heart patients, as well as extreme athletes. More information on the trek can be found here in our March 21 news release. The climbing expedition is funded by National Geographic and The North Face, with support from Montana State University. For background on the medical expedition and ongoing reports on its progress, the public may visit http://MayoCliniconEverest.com and follow on Twitter at #MayoClinic #onEverest.

Other prominent "On Everest" coverage is highlighted below:

Discover Magazine (blog)
Climbing Everest is So Much Like Aging That the Mayo Clinic is Headed There To Do Research

Mount Everest is often the site of impressive physical feats, as climbers brave brutal
conditions to scale the tallest peak in the world…Scientists from the Mayo Clinic are making their way from Minnesota to Everest base camp, where they’ll set up an ersatz lab to monitor the vital signs of nine climbers making the ascent (the scientists’ 1,300 pounds of equipment will be carried to camp by yaks). The team will gather data on the mountaineers’ heart rate, oxygen levels, and sleep quality, as well as taking samples of their blood and urine.

Circulation: DISCOVER reaches paid circulation and an audience of almost 6.7
million readers. More than 100,000 copies are sold on the newsstand every month.

FOX News (AP)
US scientists head to Mount Everest for research

A team of American scientists and researchers flew to the Mount Everest region on Friday to set up a laboratory at the base of the world's highest mountain to study the effects of high altitude on humans. "We are interested in some of the parallels between high altitude physiology and heart failure physiology," Dr. Bruce Johnson, who is
heading the team, told The Associated Press before leaving Nepal's capital, Katmandu, for the mountain. “What we are doing here will help us with our work that we have been doing in the (Mayo Clinic) laboratory.”

Reach: FoxNews.com has more than 13 million unique visitors each month.

Reuters
Everest climbers in test for keys to heart treatment

Everest climbers in test for keys to heart treatment by Gopal Sharma, team of U.S. scientists departed on Friday to conduct research on Mount Everest climbers in an effort to further knowledge of the cardiovascular system at extreme altitudes and help improve treatment for heart and lung patients. Bruce Johnson, a consultant on cardiovascular diseases at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota and leader of the group, said the study subjects will be a U.S. team that plans to replicate the first 1963 ascent of the mountain by a U.S. team.

Reach: Thomson Reuters is the world’s largest international multimedia news agency, providing investing news, world news, business news, technology news, headline news, small business news, news alerts, personal finance, stock market, and mutual funds information available on Reuters.com, video, mobile, and interactive television platforms.

Additional “On Everest” coverage:  WCCO, KTTC, St. Cloud Times,
Post-Bulletin, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, Huffington Post, News24, World Bulletin, Baltimore Sun, Economic Times, St. Louis Today, WHTC (Mich), WGME (Maine),  Houston County News, Huffington Post, Post-Bulletin, EmaxHealth, KAAL, KSTP, MPR, Pioneer Press, KIMT, WKBT La Crosse, Grand Forks Herald, KTTC, KAAL, Discovery News.

Public Affairs Contact: nellis.robert@mayo.edu

Wall Street Journal
The Guide to Beating a Heart Attack
by Ron Winslow

Here's the good news: Heart disease and its consequences are largely preventable. The bad news is that nearly one million Americans will suffer a heart attack this year. Guidelines urge three hours a week of brisk exercise to maintain heart health, but many people who can't find the time to work up a sweat for 30 minutes most days don't bother. “It's the all or nothing phenomenon,” says Martha Grogan, a cardiologist at Mayo Clinic.

Circulation: The Wall Street Journal, a US-based newspaper published by Dow Jones & Company, is tops in newspaper circulation in America with an average circulation of 2 million copies on weekdays.

Context:  It’s not often that Mayo Clinic gets three of its physicians included on one story, but that is the case here. Martha Grogan, M.D., Sharonne Hayes, M.D., and Tom Allison, M.D., all Mayo Clinic cardiologists, are featured in the story. What’s more, Mayo Clinic was also mentioned in two other stories in The Wall Street Journal on the same day: Melinda Beck’s Health Journal column and  Laura Lando’s  The Informed Patient column.

Public Affairs Contact: klein.traci@mayo.edu

Florida Times Union
New device at Mayo Clinic 'a game changer' for acid reflux
by Charlie Patton

Gastrointestinal reflux disease, commonly referred to as GERD, was making Sandy Deakins miserable…"I expect this device to be a game changer for the treatment of GERD in select patients who have failed management with drugs," said C. Daniel Smith, the Mayo Clinic surgeon who implanted Deakins' device.

Circulation: The Florida Times-Union reaches more than 120,000 daily and 173,000 readers Sunday.

Context: The LINX GERD story appeared on the front page above the fold in the Times-Union. Mayo Clinic in Florida issued a news release about the procedure April 11.

Public Affairs Contact: punsky.kevin@mayo.edu

Florida Times Union
First Coast experts hail breast cancer study; but sound cautious note
by Charlie Patton

Two of Jacksonville's leading experts on the treatment of breast cancer, Edith Perez of the Mayo Clinic and Shahla Masood of Shands Jacksonville, hailed the study on classifying tumors as an important next step in research on breast cancer… "This is very fascinating work," said Perez, deputy director of the Mayo Clinic Cancer Center and director of its Breast Program in Jacksonville.

Context: Mayo Clinic in Florida issued a news release April 16. Mayo Clinic researchers have discovered a new class of molecular mutation in various forms of breast cancer, a finding that may shed new light on development and growth of different types of breast tumors. Called fusion transcripts, the mutated forms of RNA may also provide a way to
identify tumor subtypes and offer new strategies to treat them, investigators say. Their study, published in the April 15 issue of Cancer Research, is the first to systematically search for fusion genes and fusion transcripts linked to different types of breast tumors. Senior investigator Edith Perez, M.D., deputy director of the Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center in Florida and director of the Breast Cancer Translational Genomics Program, is frequently sought out by journalists for her expertise.

Circulation: The Florida Times-Union reaches more than 120,000 daily and 173,000 readers Sunday.

Public Affairs Contact: scotti.paul@mayo.edu

For more coverage of Mayo Clinic in the News, please link to our news clip blog here. 

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Tags: Breast Cancer, Cardiology, Dr. Bruce Johnson, Dr. C. Daniel Smith, Dr. Edith Perez, Dr. Martha Grogan, Dr. Sharonne Hayes, Dr. Tom Allison, Facilities, Florida Times-Union, Fox News, gastrointestinal reflux, GI, Mayo Clinic Cancer Center, Mayo Clinic in the News, Mayo Clinic Jacksonville, Mayo Clinic Rochester, Mount Everest, Reuters, Shahla Masood, Star Tribune, Technology, Wall Street Journal, Wellness