Health News from Medical News Today
|
|
05/18/2012 The Influence Of Genes On Psychological Well-Being Genes play a greater role in forming character traits - such as self-control, decision making or sociability - than was previously thought, new research suggests. A study of more than 800 sets of twins found that genetics were more influential in shaping key traits than a person's home environment and surroundings. Psychologists at the University of Edinburgh who carried out the study, say that genetically influenced characteristics could well be the key to how successful a person is in life... Read more at this website... 05/18/2012 Women At Risk Of Post Natal Depression May Be Identified By Blood Test Researchers at Warwick Medical School have discovered a way of identifying which women are most at risk of postnatal depression (PND) by checking for specific genetic variants. The findings could lead to the development of a simple, accurate blood test which checks for the likelihood of developing the condition... Read more at this website... 05/18/2012 Animal Sampling For Ebola Should Focus On Carcasses Response efforts to outbreaks of Ebola hemorrhagic fever in Africa can benefit from a standardized sampling strategy that focuses on the carcasses of gorillas, chimpanzees and other species known to succumb to the virus, according to a consortium of wildlife health experts. In a recently published study of 14 previous human Ebola outbreaks and the responses of wildlife teams collecting animal samples, the authors of the new study conclude that most efforts to collect samples from live animals (i.e. rodents, bats, primates, birds) failed to isolate Ebola virus or antibodies... Read more at this website... 05/18/2012 Gene Therapy Helps Children With Rare, Incurable Brain Disease Using gene transfer techniques pioneered by University of Florida faculty, Taiwanese doctors have restored some movement in four children bedridden with a rare, life-threatening neurological disease. The first-in-humans achievement may also be helpful for more common diseases such as Parkinson's that involve nerve cell damage caused by lack of a crucial molecule in brain tissue. The results are reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine... Read more at this website... 05/18/2012 Surgical Vs. Nonsurgical Treatment For Cervical Spine Fracture For older adults with "C2" fractures of the upper (cervical) spine, surgery and nonsurgical treatment provide similar short- and long-term outcomes, reports a study in the May issue of Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. Although the patients were at significant risk of complications and death in the year or two after C2 fracture, these risks are similar with surgical and nonsurgical treatment... Read more at this website... 05/18/2012 Glioblastoma Classification Revision Should Improve Patient Care Radiation oncology researchers have revised the system used by doctors since the 1990s to determine the prognosis of people with glioblastoma, which is the most devastating of malignant brain tumors. The outdated system was devised for glioblastoma and related brain tumors that were treated by radiation therapy only, and it relied on clinical signs and symptoms. It divided patients into six prognostic groups... Read more at this website... 05/18/2012 Older People With Chronic Leukemia May Benefit From Experimental Agent The experimental drug ibrutinib (PCI-32765) shows great promise for the treatment of elderly patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), according to interim findings from a clinical trial. The phase I/II trial, co-led by researchers at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center - Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC - James) and MD Anderson Cancer Center, indicates that the oral agent has few side effects and a high one-year survival rate in older patients... Read more at this website... 05/18/2012 Molecule That Prevents Heart Damage is Also Proving Its Worth In Diabetic Patients ACE2, a molecule that has been shown to prevent damage in the heart, is now proving to be protective of the major organs that are often damaged in diabetic patients. Gavin Oudit, a researcher with the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry, and his colleagues at the University of Florida, found that lab models that lacked ACE2 had worse cardiovascular complications related to diabetes. "We show that if you take ACE2 away, they [lab models of diabetes] do very poorly," said Oudit. "It worsened their heart function and their vascular function... Read more at this website... 05/18/2012 Trial Of ALK Inhibitor In Neuroblastoma, Lymphoma A pill designed to zero in on abnormal genes that drive specific cancers has produced encouraging early results in children with an uncommon but aggressive type of lymphoma, as well as in children with a rare form of neuroblastoma. A phase 1 clinical trial of the drug crizotinib achieved remissions, with minimal side effects, for 10 of the children participating in a clinical study carried out by the multicenter Children's Oncology Group (COG). The results were "an exciting proof-of-principle" for the targeted treatment, said the study leader, Yaël P. Mossé, M.D... Read more at this website... 05/18/2012 Potential New Drugs For Fox Tapeworm Infection In Humans Scientists are reporting development and testing of a new series of drugs that could finally stop the fox tapeworm - which causes a rare but life-threatening disease in humans - dead in its tracks. The report, which appears in ACS' Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, shows that specific organometallic substances that help combat cancer are also the surprising best new hope for a treatment against tapeworm infection. Carsten Vock, Andrew Hemphill and colleagues explain that alveolar echinococcosis (AE) is a parasitic disease caused by the fox tapeworm Echinococcus multilocularis... Read more at this website... 05/18/2012 Cheap New Paper-Based Diagnostic Test For Diabetes With epidemics of Type 2 diabetes looming in rural India, China and other areas of the world where poverty limits the availability of health care, scientists are reporting development of an inexpensive and easy-to-use urine test ideally suited for such areas. The report describing the paper-based device, which also could be adapted for the diagnosis and monitoring of other conditions and the environment, appears in ACS' journal Analytical Chemistry. Jan Lankelma and colleagues point out that monitoring glucose levels is important... Read more at this website... 05/18/2012 Herbal Extract May Curb Binge Drinking An extract of the Chinese herb kudzu dramatically reduces drinking and may be useful in the treatment of alcoholism and curbing binge drinking, according to a new study by McLean Hospital and Harvard Medical School researchers. "Our study is further evidence that components found in kudzu root can reduce alcohol consumption and do so without adverse side effects," said David Penetar, PhD, of the Behavioral Psychopharmacology Research Laboratory at McLean Hospital, and the lead author of the study... Read more at this website... 05/18/2012 Personalized Treatment Advances: Testing For Mutations Identified In Squamous Cell Lung Cancer Tumors Screening lung cancer tumor samples for cancer-causing, or "driver," genetic mutations can help physicians tailor patients' treatments to target those specific mutations. While scientists have identified cancer-causing mutations for the majority of lung adenocarcinomas - the most common type of non-small cell lung cancer - and have developed drugs that can successfully address them, scientists have not yet identified targeted therapies for another type of non-small cell lung cancer known as squamous cell carcinoma... Read more at this website... 05/18/2012 Patients With Muscle-Invasive Bladder Cancer Benefit From Accelerated Chemotherapy Given Before Surgery For some patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer, treatment may begin before they undergo cystectomy, or surgical removal of the bladder. They may be advised by oncologists to receive chemotherapy before surgery. A large randomized clinical trial published in 2003 demonstrated a survival benefit for neoadjuvant, or pre-surgical, MVAC (methotrexate, vinblastine, doxorubicin and cisplatin) using a standard dose and schedule. However, in an effort to improve toxicity, standard MVAC has been essentially abandoned in favor of other regimens... Read more at this website... 05/18/2012 Famous 1848 Case Of A Man Who Survived A Terrible Brain Injury Has Modern Parallel Poor Phineas Gage. In 1848, the supervisor for the Rutland and Burlington Railroad in Vermont was using a 13-pound, 3-foot-7-inch rod to pack blasting powder into a rock when he triggered an explosion that drove the rod through his left cheek and out of the top of his head. As reported at the time, the rod was later found, "smeared with blood and brains... Read more at this website... 05/18/2012 For Medication Disposal, New Advice Is Trash Beats Take-Back Returning extra medicine to the pharmacy for disposal might not be worth the extra time, money or greenhouse gas emissions, according to a University of Michigan study that is the first to look at the net effects of so-called take-back programs. The new evidence suggests that discarding unused drugs in the trash is a better option to limit the risk of poisoning and at the same time curb pollution of both water and air. To arrive at this conclusion, the researchers compared the total emissions created by take-back, trash and toilet disposal methods... Read more at this website... 05/18/2012 Smartphones A Big Help To Visually Impaired iPhones and other smartphones can be a huge help to the visually impaired, but few vision doctors are recommending them to patients, according to a study co-authored by a Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine ophthalmologist. Researchers surveyed 46 low-vision adults from The Chicago Lighthouse and the Spectrios Institute for Low Vision in Wheaton, Ill. Participants' best-corrected vision ranged from 20/70 to complete blindness... Read more at this website... 05/18/2012 Simple Task For 6-Month-Olds May Predict Risk Of Autism A new prospective study of six-month-old infants at high genetic risk for autism identified weak head and neck control as a red flag for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and language and/or social developmental delays. Researchers at the Kennedy Krieger Institute concluded that a simple "pull-to-sit" task could be added to existing developmental screenings at pediatric well visits to improve early detection of developmental delays. "Research aimed at improving early detection of autism has largely focused on measurement of social and communication development," said Dr... Read more at this website... 05/18/2012 Using Brain Computer Interface, Paralysed Patients Control Robotic Arms To Reach And Grasp On April 12, 2011, nearly fifteen years after she became paralyzed and unable to speak, a woman controlled a robotic arm by thinking about moving her arm and hand to lift a bottle of coffee to her mouth and take a drink. That achievement is one of the advances in brain-computer interfaces restorative neurotechnology and assistive robot technology described in the journal Nature by the BrainGate2 collaboration of researchers at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Brown University, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School., and the German Aerospace Center (DLR)... Read more at this website... 05/18/2012 First Case Of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy In Blast-Exposed Military Personnel Investigators from Boston University (BU) and the Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System have shown evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in brain tissue from blast-exposed military service personnel. Laboratory experiments conducted by the investigators demonstrated that exposure to a single blast equivalent to a typical improvised explosive device (IED) results in CTE and long-term brain impairments that accompany the disease... Read more at this website... 05/18/2012 The Risks Of Running Marathons Even though hundreds of thousands more people finished grueling 26.2 mile marathons in the United States in 2009 compared to a decade earlier, a runner's risk of dying during or soon after the race has remained very low - about .75 per 100,000, new Johns Hopkins research suggests. Men, however, were twice as likely to die as women. "It's very dramatic when someone dies on the course, but it's not common," says Julius Cuong Pham, M.D., Ph.D... Read more at this website... 05/18/2012 Dialysis Patients Benefit From 5-Minute Chat The constant health education that dialysis patients receive can lead to boredom and noncompliance. But a Loyola University Medical Center study has found that brief, casual chats can be a significant benefit to patients. The technique is called "talking control support therapy." As patients were undergoing dialysis, researchers stopped by for informal chats. A typical conversation began with small talk, before moving on to general conversation about healthy dialysis lifestyles. Unlike conventional dialysis education, no specific education goals were set... Read more at this website... 05/18/2012 US FDA Ahead Of Canada, Europe In Drug-Approval Race The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) generally approves drug therapies faster and earlier than its counterparts in Canada and Europe, according to a new study by Yale School of Medicine researchers. The study counters perceptions that the drug approval process in the United States is especially slow. Led by second-year medical student Nicholas Downing and senior author Joseph S. Ross, M.D., assistant professor of internal medicine at Yale School of Medicine, the study was published online by the New England Journal of Medicine... Read more at this website... 05/18/2012 In-Patient Suicides Reduced In Psychiatric Units Suicides by psychiatric in-patients have fallen to a new low, research just published has found. The study by the University of Manchester's National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Homicide by People with Mental Illness, one of very few to look at trends over time, shows the rate of suicide among psychiatric in-patients fell by between 29% and 31% between 1997 and 2008 with nearly 100 fewer deaths per year. The falls were seen across most groups of patients with the biggest falls in young patients and those with schizophrenia. On wards, deaths by hanging fell by nearly 60%... Read more at this website... 05/18/2012 Improving Palliative Care For Heart Failure Patients Palliative care for cancer patients in the UK is well established - but the situation is starkly different for those suffering from heart failure. A recent service evaluation led by the University of Hull and Hull York Medical School (HYMS) shows this doesn't have to be the case - particularly if clinicians have the courage to talk about death with their patients. The study - published in the British Journal of Cardiology - describes data from two areas in Yorkshire where palliative care and heart failure services are fully integrated - Bradford & Airedale and Scarborough... Read more at this website... 05/18/2012 The Cause Identified Of LGL Leukemia LGL leukemia is a relatively rare, malignant blood disease of the mature T-cells and, in many cases, it is related to autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis. The pathogenetic mechanism of the disease has been unknown and it has previously been unclear if the disease is an overreaction of the normal defense system or a malignant hematological disease. One of the key symptoms of LGL disease is a low count of white blood cells (neutrophils), which may predispose the patients to life-threatening infections... Read more at this website... 05/18/2012 Experts Recommend Overhaul Of Psychiatry's Diagnostic Manual The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), long the master reference work in psychiatry, is seriously flawed and needs radical change from its current "field guide" form, according to an essay by two Johns Hopkins psychiatrists published in the New England Journal of Medicine. "A generation ago it served useful purposes, but now it needs clear alterations," says Paul R. McHugh, M.D., a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and co-author of the paper with Phillip R. Slavney, M.D... Read more at this website... 05/18/2012 Established Cancer Vaccine Works Better In Tandem With FDA-Approved Kidney Transplant Drug A team from the Perelman School of Medicine and the Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute at the University of Pennsylvania found that the FDA-approved drug daclizumab improved the survival of breast cancer patients taking a cancer vaccine by 30 percent, compared to those patients not taking daclizumab. This proof-of-concept study is published this week in Science Translational Medicine. Senior authors of the study are Robert H. Vonderheide, MD, DPhil, associate professor of Medicine, and James Riley, PhD, associate professor of Microbiology... Read more at this website... 05/18/2012 Gene Related To Autism, Schizophrenia And Obesity Isolated By Zebrafish Study What can a fish tell us about human brain development? Researchers at Duke University Medical Center transplanted a set of human genes into a zebrafish and then used it to identify genes responsible for head size at birth. Researchers at Duke University Medical Center transplanted a set of human genes into a zebrafish and then used it to identify genes responsible for head size at birth. Head size in human babies is a feature that is related to autism, a condition that recent figures have shown to be more common than previously reported, 1 in 88 children in a March 2012 study... Read more at this website... 05/18/2012 New Clues On How ApoE4 Affects Alzheimer's Risk Common variants of the ApoE gene are strongly associated with the risk of developing late-onset Alzheimer's disease, but the gene's role in the disease has been unclear. Now, researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health have found that in mice, having the most risky variant of ApoE damages the blood vessels that feed the brain. The researchers found that the high-risk variant, ApoE4, triggers an inflammatory reaction that weakens the blood-brain barrier, a network of cells and other components that lines brain's brain vessels... Read more at this website... 05/18/2012 Minimal Residual Disease Detected In Nearly Double The Number Of Leukemia Patients Using High-Throughput Sequencing A study led by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has found that a next-generation, high-speed DNA-decoding technology called high-throughput sequencing can detect the earliest signs of potential relapse in nearly twice the number of leukemia patients as compared to flow cytometry, the current gold standard for detecting minimal residual disease. The results of the study, led by Hutchinson Center computational biologist Harlan Robins, Ph.D., are reported in Science Translational Medicine... Read more at this website... 05/18/2012 More Genes Discovered In The Fight Against Breast Cancer In a study published in Nature, researchers describe nine new genes that drive the development of breast cancer. This takes the tally of all genes associated with breast cancer development to 40. The team examined all the genes in the genomes of 100 cases of breast cancer. The mutated cancer-causing genes were different in different cancer samples, indicating that breast cancer is genetically very diverse. Understanding the consequences of this diversity will be important in progressing towards more rational treatment. Changes to DNA lie behind all cases of cancer... Read more at this website... 05/18/2012 Positive Survival Trend Seen In Phase I Study Of Temsirolimus, Capecitabine A phase I clinical trial examining the safety of combining temsirolimus and capecitabine in advanced malignancies suggests the two agents can be given safely to patients. In addition, the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center researchers conducting the study in cancer patients whose tumors have resisted multiple treatments say the combination demonstrates "promising evidence" of disease control and should be studied in a phase II trial... Read more at this website... 05/18/2012 Lapatinib Combined With Cetuximab Overcomes Resistance In EGFR-Driven Tumors Targeted therapies have been studied for years, but recent laboratory research is providing robust clues about drugs that might work better in combination, particularly in treating cancers that have become resistant to therapy. That kind of information is behind a novel clinical trial at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center that combines cetuximab and lapatinib. Findings from this phase I study will be presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting in Chicago, June 1st through 5th... Read more at this website... 05/18/2012 Shared Risk Factors For Child Behavior Problems Revealed For U.S., Great Britain New research from North Carolina State University shows that the United States and Great Britain share common risk factors that increase the likelihood of behavioral problems in children - and that Britain's broader social welfare programs don't appear to mitigate those risks. The researchers - from NC State, California State University Northridge and the University of Illinois (UI) - evaluated data from a 1994 study of children between the ages of five and 13 in the U.S. and a 1991 study of children in the same age range from England, Scotland and Wales... Read more at this website... 05/18/2012 A Competent, Virtual Exercise Partner Can Boost Motivation And Improve Team Performance A new study, testing the benefits of a virtual exercise partner, shows that the presence of a moderately more capable cycling partner boosts motivation to stick to an exercise program. The work by Brandon Irwin and colleagues, from Michigan State University in the US, is published online in Springer's journal, Annals of Behavioral Medicine. For many people, lack of motivation is a barrier to achieving both the recommended amount and intensity of exercise... Read more at this website... 05/18/2012 Make Or Break For Cellular Tissues Models developed to study liquids are used to investigate the mechanics of cellular tissues, which could further our understanding of embryonic development and cancer In a study about to be published in EPJ E¹, French physicists from the Curie Institute in Paris have demonstrated that the behaviour of a thin layer of cells in contact with an unfavourable substrate is akin to that of thin fluid or elastic films... Read more at this website... 05/18/2012 Unravelling How Locomotion Starts Scientists at the University of Bristol have shed new light on one of the great unanswered questions of neuroscience: how the brain initiates rhythmic movements like walking, running and swimming. While experiments in the 1970s using electrical brain stimulation identified areas of the brain responsible for starting locomotion, the precise neuron-by-neuron pathway has not been described in any vertebrate - until now. To find this pathway, Dr Edgar Buhl and colleagues in Bristol's School of Biological Sciences studied a small, simple vertebrate: the Xenopus frog tadpole... Read more at this website... 05/18/2012 A Very Sugary Diet Makes You Stupid As we near the final year exams for schools and universities, students should be wary of powering up on buckets of soda and pocketfuls of candy bars. A UCLA study on rats suggests that fructose slows down the brain and memory functions. Too much sweetness can also prevent learning. The findings are published in Journal of Physiology and also show omega-3 fatty acids helping to negate the effect. Earlier studies have shown that fructose is involved in causing diabetes, obesity and a fatty liver, but this is the first research to uncover how sugar can influence the brain... Read more at this website... 05/17/2012 Google Algorithm Finds Cancer Biomarkers Seven proteins that can help physicians evaluate how aggressive a patient's cancer is and whether or not they should receive chemotherapy have been identified by German researchers. Using a strategy similar to Google's PageRank algorithm, the researchers from Dresden University of Technology, Germany, were able to rank around 20,000 proteins by their genetic relevance to the progression of pancreatic cancer. The study is published in PLoS Computational Biology... Read more at this website... 05/17/2012 Should Children Be Made To Have Vaccines? Two experts discuss in the journal BMJ whether childhood vaccination should be mandatory in the UK. According to Paul Offit, Chief of Infectious diseases at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, mandatory vaccination is essential to protect those who are vulnerable from infection... Read more at this website... 05/17/2012 Controlling Blood Pressure - Team Based Care Vital High blood pressure was listed as a primary or contributing cause of death for approximately 336,000 Americans in 2007. If all patients with high blood pressure were treated to goal as outlined in current clinical guidelines, it is estimated that 46,000 deaths might be averted each year. Total annual costs associated with hypertension are $156 billion, including medical costs of $131 billion and lost productivity costs of $25 billion. The Task Force on Community Preventive Services recommends team-based care (TBC) to improve blood pressure (BP) control... Read more at this website... 05/17/2012 General Practice - Uk India Partnership Initiative An article featured in BMJ reports on a 'white paper', which investigates as to how India and the UK can collaborate more closely in an equal partnership to improve both nations' primary health care.The paper lists a number of opportunities based on India's plans to achieve Universal Health Coverage, which requires the collaboration of the UK and India to benefit both nations by strengthening primary care in India and bringing expertise and innovations from India to improve care in the UK... Read more at this website... 05/17/2012 Brushing Teeth - Which Way Is The Right Way? Twenty five percent of teenagers in Sweden do not brush their teeth regularly and only 10% of Swedes know how to use toothpaste effectively, according to researchers at the Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg. Even though the majority of people in Sweden brush their teeth, only 1 in 10 brush in a way that effectively prevents tooth decay. Pia Gabre and her colleagues examined the toothbrushing habits of 2,013 Swedes aged between 15 to 80 years old... Read more at this website... 05/17/2012 Palpitations May Mean Looming Atrial Fibrillation The European Journal of Preventive Cardiology reveals that the emergence of palpitations is a risk factor for atrial fibrillation (AF). Findings of a large population study reveal the strongest risk factors for atrial fibrillation in both men and women to be a history of palpitations and hypertension. Although it is a well-known fact that hypertension is a risk factor for AF, the researchers say, that "the impact of self-reported palpitations on later occurrence of AF has not been documented earlier"... Read more at this website... 05/17/2012 Education And Income Affect Health Levels Considerably An annual report on American's health reveals that individuals with lower income levels and lower education are more likely to develop chronic diseases than people with higher incomes and higher levels of education. The report, entitled "Health, United States, 2011" was conducted by CDC's National Center for Health Statistics. Obesity According to the report, in 2007-2010, women aged 25+ were less likely to be obese (25%) if they had a bachelor's degree or higher than women who did not (39-43%) have a degree at all... Read more at this website... 05/17/2012 Common Antibiotic Found To Carry Heart Risk Vanderbilt researchers have discovered a rare, but important risk posed by the antibiotic azithromycin, commonly called a "Z-pack." The study found a 2.5-fold higher risk of cardiovascular death in the first five days of taking azithromycin when compared with another common antibiotic or no antibiotics at all. Wayne A. Ray, Ph.D., professor of Preventive Medicine, and C. Michael Stein, M.B.Ch.B., the Dan May Chair in Medicine and professor of Pharmacology, collaborated on the research published in the May 17 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine... Read more at this website... 05/17/2012 Study Shows Delays In Siblings Of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders A new University of Miami (UM) study shows that one in three children who have an older sibling with an Autism Related Disorder (ASD) fall into a group characterized by higher levels of autism-related behaviors or lower levels of developmental progress. The study will be presented at the International Meeting for Autism Research (IMFAR) in May, 2012. ASDs are developmental conditions characterized by problems with social interaction and communication... Read more at this website... 05/17/2012 Fatal Falls Increase For Older Adults The recent dramatic increase in the fall death rate in older Americans is likely the effect of improved reporting quality, according to a new report from the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy. The report finds the largest increase in the mortality rate occurred immediately following the 1999 introduction of an update to the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10), suggesting a major change in the way deaths were classified... Read more at this website... 05/17/2012 Less Inflammation Seen In Patients With NAFLD, A Common Liver Disease, Who Consume Modest Amounts Of Alcohol NAFLD (non-alcoholic fatty liver disease) is the most common type of liver disease in the developed world, affecting up to one-third of the US population. NAFLD is often associated with obesity and other parameters of the so-called "metabolic syndrome," which is a major risk factor for the development of cardiovascular disease... Read more at this website... 05/17/2012 An Estimated 53 Million Americans May Have Diabetes By 2025 The Diabetes 2025 Model for the U.S. projects a continuous and dramatic increase in the diabetes epidemic and makes it possible to estimate the potential effects of society-wide changes in lifestyle and healthcare delivery systems. Predictions for individual states and population subgroups are highlighted in an article published in Population Health Management, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Population Health Management website... Read more at this website... 05/17/2012 Groundbreaking Advance In Medical Diagnostics Researchers have created an ultrasensitive biosensor that could open up new opportunities for early detection of cancer and "personalized medicine" tailored to the specific biochemistry of individual patients. The device, which could be several hundred times more sensitive than other biosensors, combines the attributes of two distinctly different types of sensors, said Muhammad A. Alam, a Purdue University professor of electrical and computer engineering... Read more at this website... 05/17/2012 Off-Label Use Of Antipsychotic Medications Reducing the non-FDA-approved use of antipsychotic drugs may be a way to save money while having little effect on patient care, according to a Penn State College of Medicine study. Researchers say that 57.6 percent of patients prescribed antipsychotic medications in data from 2003 did not have schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, the conditions for which the drugs were approved for use. Use of medication for treatments that is not FDA-approved is called off-label use... Read more at this website... 05/17/2012 Some Dietary Supplements May Increase Cancer Risk Beta-carotene, selenium and folic acid - taken up to three times their recommended daily allowance, these supplements are probably harmless. But taken at much higher levels as some supplement manufacturers suggest, these three supplements have now been proven to increase the risk of developing a host of cancers... Read more at this website... 05/17/2012 Study Shows High-Fructose Diet Sabotages Learning, Memory Attention, college students cramming between midterms and finals: Binging on soda and sweets for as little as six weeks may make you stupid. A new UCLA rat study is the first to show how a diet steadily high in fructose slows the brain, hampering memory and learning - and how omega-3 fatty acids can counteract the disruption. The peer-reviewed Journal of Physiology has published the findings... Read more at this website... 05/17/2012 Teaching Hospitals With Fellowship Programs Have Less Radical Prostatectomy Complications Patients who undergo radical surgery for prostate cancer may expect better results, on average, if they're treated in accredited teaching hospitals with residency programs, and better still if the hospitals also have medical fellowships, according to a new study by Henry Ford Hospital. The study, which evaluated postoperative complications in 47,100 radical prostatectomy (RP) patients throughout the U.S., also found that those with fewer complications after the surgery were more likely to have private insurance... Read more at this website... 05/17/2012 Under-Use Of Safer Kidney Cancer Surgery For Poorer, Sicker Medicare, Medicaid Patients An increasingly common and safer type of surgery for kidney cancer is not as likely to be used for older, sicker and poorer patients who are uninsured or rely on Medicare or Medicaid for their health care, according to a new study by researchers at Henry Ford Hospital. The treatment, partial nephrectomy (PN), involves surgically removing only the diseased portion of a cancerous kidney, leaving the unaffected part to continue to function... Read more at this website... 05/17/2012 Gender Comparison In Kidney Cancer Surgery Women do better than men after surgical removal of part or all of a cancerous kidney, with fewer post-operative complications, including dying in the hospital, although they are more likely to receive blood transfusions related to their surgery. But Henry Ford Hospital researchers who documented these gender differences can't say why they exist. The results of the new study, based on population samples from throughout the U.S., will be presented this week at the American Urological Association's Annual Meeting in Atlanta. "This is a controversial area," says Quoc-Dien Trinh, M.D... Read more at this website... 05/17/2012 Food Cravings Reduced By Lizard Saliva A drug made from the saliva of the Gila monster lizard is effective in reducing the craving for food. Researchers at the Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, have tested the drug on rats, who after treatment ceased their cravings for both food and chocolate. An increasing number of patients suffering from type 2 diabetes are offered a pharmaceutical preparation called Exenatide, which helps them to control their blood sugar... Read more at this website... 05/17/2012 Most People Brush Their Teeth The Wrong Way Almost all Swedes brush their teeth, yet only one in ten does it in a way that effectively prevents tooth decay. Now researchers at the Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, are eager to teach Swedes how to brush their teeth more effectively. Most Swedes regularly brush their teeth with fluoride toothpaste. But only few know the best brushing technique, how the toothpaste should be used and how fluoride prevents tooth decay... Read more at this website... |
