New insights into how cancer cells arise and develop into tumors have come from researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health. Some of them are exploring the process by studying stem cells.
An updated guideline from the American Academy of Neurology recommends that people with nonvalvular atrial fibrillation, or irregular heartbeat, take oral anticoagulants, a type of blood thinner pill, to prevent stroke. The guideline is published in the February 25, 2014, print issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The World Stroke Organization has endorsed the updated guideline.
A panel of experts, including researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, is recommending that depression be added to obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure and smoking as a cardiac risk factor.
Researchers have determined that a small region of the hippocampus known as CA2 is essential for social memory, the ability of an animal to recognize another of the same species. A better grasp of the function of CA2 could prove useful in understanding and treating disorders characterized by altered social behaviors, such as autism, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder. The findings, made in mice, were published on February 23, 2014, in the online edition of Nature.
A multi-center study led by Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has found that high-dose supplementation with both the trace element selenium and vitamin E increase the risk of high-grade prostate cancer. But importantly, this risk depends upon a man’s selenium status before taking the supplements.
Pathways of aging and sleep intersect at the circuitry of a cellular stress response pathway, and that by tinkering with those connections, it may be possible to alter sleep patterns in the aged for the better – at least in fruit flies.
An editorial in American Family Physician proposes a simple way for physicians to communicate to patients about the best treatments for diabetes. The “lending a hand” illustration reprioritizes treatment goals, based on research on mortality reduction, to convey that glycemic control is no longer the primary intervention.
Remember that slim kid in school – the one with the cook-from-scratch mom? He’s likely one of the fittest dudes at your high school reunion according to new research from Cornell University, published online in the journal PLOS ONE.
A new study provides evidence for what many people who experience headache have long suspected—having more stress in your life leads to more headaches. The study released today will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 66th Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, April 26 to May 3, 2014.
New research from the University of Adelaide has delved into the reasons why some people are unable to break free of their delusions, despite overwhelming evidence explaining the delusion isn't real.
The antidepressant drug citalopram, sold under the brand names Celexa and Cipramil and also available as a generic medication, significantly relieved agitation in a group of patients with Alzheimer’s disease. In lower doses than those tested, the drug might be safer than antipsychotic drugs currently used to treat the condition, according to results of a clinical trial led by Johns Hopkins researchers that included seven other academic medical centers in the United States and Canada.
An University of Iowa study shows that police officers move as much on the job as someone holding a baby or washing dishes. The finding comes from police wearing armbands that monitored their physical activity. Results appear in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
Overweight and obese people who feel their physicians are judgmental of their size are more likely to try to shed pounds but are less likely to succeed, according to results of a study by Johns Hopkins researchers.
Researchers have developed the technology for a catheter-based device that would provide forward-looking, real-time, three-dimensional imaging from inside the heart, coronary arteries and peripheral blood vessels.
A study by researchers at the University of Nebraska Medical Center shows vitamin D as an add-on therapy could provide some relief for chronic hives, a condition with no cure and few treatment options.
One factor that makes glioblastoma cancers so difficult to treat is that malignant cells from the tumors spread throughout the brain by following nerve fibers and blood vessels to invade new locations. Now, researchers have learned to hijack this migratory mechanism, turning it against the cancer by using a film of nanofibers thinner than human hair to lure tumor cells away.
If you're a doctor, choosing the best drug for a patient with schizophrenia isn't easy. Researchers at UNC School of Medicine are trying to help by better understanding the genetic underpinnings of drug side effects while creating a better way for geneticists to design experiments.
Instead of only using a standard clinical interview to determine whether individuals met the criteria for a clinical diagnosis of bipolar disorder, UCLA researchers combined the results from brain imaging, cognitive testing, and an array of temperament and behavior measures. Using the new method, they and their collaborators have identified about 50 brain and behavioral measures that are both under strong genetic control and associated with bipolar disorder. Their discoveries could be a major step toward identifying the specific genes that contribute to the illness.
People who are dementia-free but have two parents with Alzheimer’s disease may show signs of the disease on brain scans decades before symptoms appear, according to a new study published in the February 12, 2014, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
The risk of a kidney donor developing kidney failure in the remaining organ is much lower than in the population at large, even when compared with people who have two kidneys, according to results of new Johns Hopkins research.
Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have demonstrated a new approach to treating muscular dystrophy. Mice with a form of this muscle-weakening disease showed improved strength and heart function when treated with nanoparticles loaded with rapamycin, an immunosuppressive drug recently found to improve recycling of cellular waste.
Income inequality is making Americans sick, according to a groundbreaking Social Science and Medicine article by Jonathan Metzl and Helena Hansen.
Researchers at the University of Kansas Medical Center found that a combination of infused vitamin C and conventional chemotherapy stopped ovarian cancer in the laboratory, and reduced chemotherapy-associated toxicity in patients with ovarian cancer.
African-Americans were 39 times more likely to die of a stroke if they were exposed to an infection.
Getting struck by Cupid's arrow may very well take your breath away and make your heart go pitter-patter this Valentine's Day, reports sexual wellness specialists at Loyola University Health System.
Dengue fever and West Nile fever are mosquito-borne diseases that affect hundreds of millions of people worldwide each year, but there is no vaccine against either of the related viruses.
In most cases of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig’s disease, a toxin released by cells that normally nurture neurons in the brain and spinal cord can trigger loss of the nerve cells affected in the disease, Columbia researchers reported today in the online edition of the journal Neuron.
A new study correlating brain activity with how people make decisions suggests that when individuals engage in risky behavior, such as drunk driving or unsafe sex, it’s probably not because their brains’ desire systems are too active, but because their self-control systems are not active enough. This might have implications for how health experts treat mental illness and addiction or how the legal system assesses a criminal’s likelihood of committing another crime.
A new Mayo Clinic study found that among middle-aged men and women, 40 to 60 years old, the overall incidence of skin cancer increased nearly eightfold between 1970 and 2009, according to a study published in the January issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
Investigators from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center help explain why diabetes patients are at risk for microvascular complications
Previous studies have shown the certain pesticides can increase the risk for developing Parkinson’s disease. Now, UCLA researchers have now found that the strength of that risk depends on an individual’s genetic makeup, which in the most pesticide-exposed populations could increase the chances of developing the debilitating disease by two- to six-fold.
Women that are pregnant may want to take extra precaution around those that are sniffling and sneezing this winter. According to a new study published today in Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, the more common colds and viral infections a woman has during pregnancy, the higher the risk her baby will have asthma.
A group of prominent healthcare experts including bioethicists, pharmacists, policymakers and cancer specialists have proposed concrete steps for preventing and managing a nightmare scenario that is becoming all too common: shortages of life-saving drugs.
During his lifetime, Henry G. Molaison (H.M.) was the best-known and possibly the most-studied patient of modern neuroscience. Now, thanks to the postmortem study of his brain, based on histological sectioning and digital three-dimensional construction led by Jacopo Annese, PhD, at the University of California, San Diego, scientists around the globe will finally have insight into the neurological basis of the case that defined modern studies of human memory.
Researchers have come up with a method to convert adult cells into epithelial stem cells, the first time anyone has achieved this in either humans or mice. The epithelial stem cells, when implanted into immunocompromised mice, regenerated the different cell types of human skin and hair follicles, and even produced structurally recognizable hair shaft, raising the possibility that they may eventually enable hair regeneration in people.
An international team of scientists has discovered that two of the world’s most devastating plagues – the plague of Justinian and the Black Death, each responsible for killing as many as half the people in Europe—were caused by distinct strains of the same pathogen, one that faded out on its own, the other leading to worldwide spread and re-emergence in the late 1800s. These findings suggest a new strain of plague could emerge again in humans in the future.
Research among college students found that men under the influence of alcohol are more likely to perpetrate physical, psychological or sexual aggression against their partners than men under the influence of marijuana. Women, on the other hand, were more likely to be physically and psychologically aggressive under the influence of alcohol but, unlike men, they were also more likely to be psychologically aggressive under the influence of marijuana.
Scientists have known for more than 40 years that the synthetic pesticide DDT is harmful to bird habitats and a threat to the environment. Now researchers at Rutgers University, writing in JAMA Neurology, say exposure to DDT – banned in the United States since 1972 but still used as a pesticide in other countries – may also increase the risk and severity of Alzheimer’s disease in some people, particularly those over the age of 60.
Researchers from Massachusetts Eye and Ear, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Massachusetts General Hospital have demonstrated, for the first time, that aspirin intake correlates with halted growth of vestibular schwannomas (also known as acoustic neuromas), a sometimes lethal intracranial tumor that typically causes hearing loss and tinnitus.
Setting the stage for possible advances in pain treatment, researchers at The Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland report they have pinpointed two molecules involved in perpetuating chronic pain in mice. The molecules, they say, also appear to have a role in the phenomenon that causes uninjured areas of the body to be more sensitive to pain when an area nearby has been hurt.
Researchers at Duke Medicine have shown that continuing spinal cord stimulation appears to produce improvements in symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, and may protect critical neurons from injury or deterioration.
Columbia University Medical Center researchers have identified a gene, called matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9), that appears to play a major role in motor neuron degeneration in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. The findings, made in mice, explain why most but not all motor neurons are affected by the disease and identify a potential therapeutic target for this still-incurable neurodegenerative disease. The study was published today in the online edition of the journal Neuron.
Scientists have known for years that stem cells in male and female sexual organs are regulated differently by their respective hormones. In a surprising discovery, researchers at the Children’s Medical Center Research Institute at UT Southwestern (CRI) and Baylor College of Medicine have found that stem cells in the blood-forming system — which is similar in both sexes — also are regulated differently by hormones, with estrogen proving to be an especially prolific promoter of stem cell self-renewal.
The researchers assembled information from many sources, including experiments on human volunteers and on ferrets, then used a mathematical model to compute how the increase in the amount of virus given off by a single person taking fever-reducing drugs would increase the overall number of cases in a typical year, or in a year when a new strain of influenza caused a flu pandemic. The bottom line is that fever suppression increases the number of annual cases by approximately five per cent, corresponding to more than 1,000 additional deaths from influenza in a typical year across North America.
More people die and emergency hospital treatment takes longer for heart attack victims who arrive at the hospital during off-hours (nights and weekends), compared with patients who arrive during regular daily hours, according to a Mayo Clinic study published online in the British Medical Journal on Jan. 21.
Using a simple study of eye movements, Johns Hopkins scientists report evidence that people who are less patient tend to move their eyes with greater speed. The findings, the researchers say, suggest that the weight people give to the passage of time may be a trait consistently used throughout their brains, affecting the speed with which they make movements, as well as the way they make certain decisions.
AML is a blood cancer, but for many patients the cancer may originate from an unusual source: a mutation in their bone cells. In a study published today in the online edition of Nature, researchers at Columbia University Medical Center found that a mutation in the bone cells called osteoblasts, which build new bone, causes AML in mice. The mutation was found in nearly 40 percent of patients with AML or myelodysplastic syndrome, a precursor condition, who were examined as part of the study.
New report in Nature Communications by Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai shows their new statin nanotherapy can target high-risk inflammation inside heart arteries that causes heart attacks or stroke.
The immune system plays an important role in the heart’s response to injury. Now, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have shown that two major pools of immune cells are at work in the heart. Both belong to a class of cells known as macrophages. One appears to promote healing, while the other likely drives inflammation, which is detrimental to long-term heart function.
A thickening of parts of the brain cortex associated with regular meditation or other spiritual or religious practice could be the reason those activities guard against depression – particularly in people who are predisposed to the disease, according to new research led by Lisa Miller, professor and director of Clinical Psychology and director of the Spirituality Mind Body Institute at Teachers College, Columbia University. Miller and colleagues studied 130 subjects and found that those who highly valued spirituality showed thicker portions of brain cortices that may protect against depression -- especially in those at high risk for the disease.
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