Feature Channels: All Journal News

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A study from UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center has found that head and neck cancer patients receiving radiation as part of their treatment were less likely to suffer unwanted side effects such as worsening of diet, need for a feeding tube, or narrowing of the throat passage if they complied with a set of prescribed swallowing exercises called a swallow preservation protocol during therapy.

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A prominent protein activated by inflammation is the key instigator that converts glioblastoma multiforme cells to their most aggressive, untreatable form and promotes resistance to radiation therapy, an international team lead by researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center reported online today in the journal Cancer Cell.

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• Income status is strongly associated with living kidney donation: lower income populations have lower rates of living kidney donation compared with higher income populations among both African Americans and Whites. • In low income populations, African Americans have lower rates of kidney donation compared with White Americans, but in high income populations, African Americans actually have higher rates of kidney donation compared with White Americans.

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• Diabetics with persistent protein in the urine over four to five years had greater declines in cognitive function than diabetics without protein in the urine. • The decline was subtle; however, over 10 to 15 years it could translate into noticeable impairment.

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A new drug target to treat depression and other mood disorders may lie in a group of GABA neurons shown to contribute to symptoms like social withdrawal and increased anxiety, Penn Medicine researchers report in a new study in the Journal of Neuroscience.

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A team of researchers led by Janet Stanford, Ph.D., of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has discovered that mutations in the gene BTNL2, which encodes a protein involved in regulating T-cell proliferation and cytokine production – both of which impact immune function – increase the risk of developing prostate cancer.

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International law usually develops gradually—a process known as crystallization, but sometimes transformative change, known as a “Grotian Moment,” causes rules and doctrines to emerge surprisingly quickly. Case Western Reserve University School of Law Professor Michael P. Scharf’s new book, Customary International Law in Times of Fundamental Change: Recognizing Grotian Moments (Cambridge University Press), explains why recognizing a Grotian moment is important.

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Alcohol intoxication reduces communication between two areas of the brain that work together to properly interpret and respond to social signals, according to researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine.

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Seeing oneself as overweight or obese may be an important, independent predictor of suicidal thoughts, especially in young girls, reports a new study in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

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Wildfire smoke is complicated. A new understanding of its many particles and their properties may lead to a clearer vision of Earth's future climate.

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Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have taken a major step in explaining why material around the giant black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy is extraordinarily faint in X-rays. This discovery holds important implications for understanding black holes.

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The law that has helped medical discoveries make the leap from university labs to the marketplace for more than 30 years needs revising, in part to ensure the American people benefit from science their tax dollars have paid for, says a physician and medical historian.

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St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital scientists have identified a protein that certain high-risk acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) cells need to survive and have used that knowledge to fashion a more effective method of killing tumor cells.

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A team of Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) scientists has discovered that some loose breast cancer cells, have a leg up on survival—the genes they express make them more likely to prosper in bone tissue. The team also found that whether or not cancer cells turn on those genes depends on what their surroundings were like in the primary breast tumor. If the breast tumor had molecular patterns similar to those found in bone, the tumor is more likely to spread to bone later.

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Virtual surgical planning technologies give surgeons a powerful new tool for their most challenging facial reconstruction cases, reports a paper in the September issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery®, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS).

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For patients undergoing plastic and reconstructive surgery procedures, obesity, anemia and postoperative complications—especially surgical and wound complications—are independent risk factors for hospital readmission, reports a study in the September issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery®, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS).

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Whitehead Institute researchers have used the gene regulation system CRISPR/Cas (for “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat/CRISPR-associated) to engineer mouse genomes containing reporter and conditional alleles in one step. Animals containing such sophisticated engineered alleles can now be made in a matter of weeks rather than years and could be used to model diseases and study gene function.

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A team of neuroscientists has found a key to the reduction of forgetting. Their findings show that the better the coordination between two regions of the brain, the less likely we are to forget newly obtained information.

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Researchers have identified a disease gene in which mutations cause rare but devastating genetic diseases known as mitochondrial disorders. Nine mutations of the gene were found in nine children in seven families, including three siblings from the same family.

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Getting kids to share their toys is a never-ending battle, and compelling them to do so never seems to help. New research suggests that allowing children to make a choice to sacrifice their own toys in order to share with someone else makes them share more in the future. The new findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

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Researchers publish findings that a new form of imaging – PET/MRI – is promising for several types of cancer. Article is titled “PET/MRI: Applications in Clinical Imaging,” and is published in the September issue of Current Radiology Reports.

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Infectious disease experts at Johns Hopkins have found, in studies in mice, that a drug better known as a treatment for high blood pressure and headaches effectively speeds up treatment of TB when added to the standard, daily antibiotic regimen. Test animals were cured in four months instead of the usual six.

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Deep down, men may not bask in the glory of their successful wives or girlfriends. While this is not true of women, men’s subconscious self-esteem may be bruised when their spouse or girlfriend excels, says a study published by the American Psychological Association.

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Adults age 45 and older who engaged in moderate physical activity up to two and a half hours a week did not increase their risk of developing knee osteoarthritis over a 6-year follow-up period, a new study finds.

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Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute have shown that a well-known cancer-causing gene implicated in a number of malignancies plays a far more critical role in non-small cell lung cancer, the most common form of the disease, than previously thought.

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A new study of more than 2,700 mothers of children with autism shows that about one in 10 mothers have antibodies in their bloodstream that react with proteins in the brain of their babies.

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Using wireless technology may speed patients’ postoperative recovery following heart surgery and improve post-discharge outcomes

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Better-educated middle-aged Americans are less likely to smoke and more apt to be physically active than their less-educated peers. They are also more inclined to make healthy changes — in general and in the face of new medical conditions — and adhere to them, according to a new study.

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Physicists have reproduced a pattern resembling the cosmic microwave background radiation in a laboratory simulation of the Big Bang, using ultracold cesium atoms in a vacuum chamber at the University of Chicago.

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A failure to adapt to changes in mobile computing ultimately led to the most recent change at the top of Microsoft. An Iowa State University professor explains how the problems at Microsoft can serve as a lesson for all businesses.

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A team of Columbia University Medical Center researchers, led by Nobel laureate Eric R. Kandel, MD, has found that deficiency of a protein called RbAp48 in the hippocampus is a significant contributor to age-related memory loss and that this form of memory loss is reversible. The findings were published today in the online edition of Science Translational Medicine.

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Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a new oxygen “sponge” that can easily absorb or shed oxygen atoms at low temperatures. Materials with these novel characteristics would be useful in devices such as rechargeable batteries, sensors, gas converters and fuel cells.

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​For every daily drink a girl or woman consumes before motherhood, she increases her lifetime risk of breast cancer by 13 percent, according to a study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

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Studies show that migraine is more common among people with lower incomes. This relationship is examined in a study published in the August 28, 2013, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, looking at whether developing migraines limits people’s educational and career achievements, leading to a lower income status, or whether problems related to low income such as stressful life events and poor access to health care increase the likelihood of developing migraines.

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Migraine may have long-lasting effects on the brain’s structure, according to a study published in the August 28, 2013, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

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Teachers who practice “mindfulness” are better able to reduce their own levels of stress and prevent burnout, according to a new study conducted by the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds (CIHM) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Waisman Center.

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When a beating heart slips into an irregular, rhythm, the treatment is electric current from a pacemaker or defibrillator. But the electricity itself can cause pain, tissue damage and other side-effects. Now, researchers want to replace jolts with a gentler remedy: light.

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Researchers have created a model that may explain the complexities of the origins of life. Their work offers new insights into how RNA signaling likely developed into the modern “genetic code.”

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Problems with a key group of enzymes called topoisomerases can have profound effects on the genetic machinery behind brain development and potentially lead to autism spectrum disorder (ASD), according to research announced today in the journal Nature. Scientists at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine have described a finding that represents a significant advance in the hunt for environmental factors behind autism and lends new insights into the disorder’s genetic causes.

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Researchers have tied mutations in a gene that causes amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and other neurodegenerative disorders to the toxic buildup of certain proteins and related molecules in cells, including neurons.

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Scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have shown that high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (ASD) children appear to outgrow a critical social communication disability. Younger children with ASD have trouble integrating the auditory and visual cues associated with speech, but the researchers found that the problem clears up in adolescence. The study was published today in the online edition of the journal Cerebral Cortex.

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Investigators working to stem the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria have taken a major step in their efforts to develop new treatments.

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An increasing gap between the incidence of thyroid cancer and deaths from the disease suggests that low-risk cancers are being overdiagnosed and overtreated, a study from the Mayo Clinic Center for the Science of Health Care Delivery finds. The study appears in the current issue of the British Medical Journal.

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Results from the START clinical study (Study of Thymoglobulin to Arrest Newly Diagnosed Type 1 Diabetes), sponsored by the Immune Tolerance Network (ITN), are published today in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology. The study did not meet its primary endpoint: at 12 months, insulin production, as measured by C-peptide responses, showed no difference in overall decline between the treatment and placebo groups.

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Research on new polymer additives that enhance the ability of orally administered drugs will result in greater effectiveness and fewer side effects, researchers say

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Fast food TV commercials aimed at children 2-11 years old did not comply with self-imposed guidelines organized through the Better Business Bureau (BBB) during a one-year study period, according to Dartmouth researchers who published their findings today with PLOS ONE.

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Stomach cancer, one of the leading causes of cancer death worldwide, actually falls into three broad subtypes that respond differently to currently available therapies, according to researchers at Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore.

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“Implementation of infant rotavirus vaccination in 2006 has substantially reduced the burden of severe gastroenteritis among U.S. children younger than 5 years,” write Paul A. Gastanaduy, M.D., M.P.H., of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, and colleagues. “Whether indirect protection (due to reduced transmission of rotavirus) extends to adults remains unclear.”

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In an analysis of a procedure used to help prevent common duct injury during gallbladder removal surgery, use of intraoperative cholangiography (radiologic examination of the ducts during gallbladder surgery) was not associated with a reduced risk of common duct injury, according to a study in the August 28 issue of JAMA.

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Researchers have identified a previously unknown genetic locus (the place a gene occupies on a chromosome) significantly associated with increased coronary heart disease risk among patients with type 2 diabetes, but the association was not found in individuals without diabetes, according to a study in the August 28 issue of JAMA.