Chimpanzees, the closest living relatives to humans, do not experience a decrease in brain volume as they age like humans do, according to a study by George Washington University researcher Chet Sherwood and his colleagues.
Research by UC Merced Professor Anthony Westerling shows large fires could become annual events by 2050, transforming the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in fundamental ways
UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have narrowed the potential drug targets for advanced prostate cancer by demonstrating that late-stage tumors are driven by a different hormonal pathway than was thought previously.
Children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are at increased risk of being hit by a vehicle when crossing a street compared to their normal-developing peers, according to new research from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
A GWAS found two genetic variations that predict which patients with Hodgkin's lymphoma are likely to develop radiation-induced second cancers years after treatment. This could help physicians reduce the risks for susceptible patients. Younger patients and those who receive more radiation are most at risk.
Infection with E. coli bacteria can wreak havoc in children, leading to bloody diarrhea, fever and kidney failure. But giving children intravenous fluids early in the course of an E. coli O157:H7 infection appears to lower the odds of developing severe kidney failure, according to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and other institutions.
1) High risk of chronic medical conditions such as arthritis hamper aging workforce, particularly blue-collar workers; 2) Disadvantaged neighborhoods linked to trichomoniasis, a common STI; 3) State policies restricting junk food may help shrink the gap of racial disparities in adolescent soda consumption.
Scientists have identified a family of proteins that close a critical gap in an enzyme that is essential to all life, allowing the enzyme to maintain its grip on DNA and start the activation of genes. The enzyme, called RNA polymerase, is responsible for setting gene expression in motion in all cells.
Sexual transmission of hepatitis C virus (HCV) is considered rare. But a new study by researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, working with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), provides substantial evidence that men with the HIV virus who have sex with other men are at increased risk for contracting HCV through sexual transmission. The results of the study are published in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
The American College of Radiology (ACR) and Society of Breast Imaging applaud and support updated American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ (ACOG) recommendations that women begin getting annual mammograms at age 40. The updated ACOG recommendations now correspond with those of the American Cancer Society, ACR, Society of Breast Imaging (SBI), American Society of Breast Disease (ASBD) and many other major medical associations with demonstrated expertise in breast cancer care.
A new study examining the cost-effectiveness of drugs to treat multiple sclerosis (MS) in the United States finds that the health gains from these drugs come at a very high cost compared to basic therapy to control the symptoms of MS and compared to treatments for other chronic diseases. The research is published in the July 20, 2011, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
Johns Hopkins scientists have developed a gene-based test to distinguish harmless from precancerous pancreatic cysts. The test may eventually help some patients avoid needless surgery to remove the harmless variety. A report on the development is published in the July 20 issue of Science Translational Medicine.
The investigators estimate that fluid-filled cysts are identified in more than a million patients each year, most of whom have undergone CT or MRI scans to evaluate non-specific symptoms, such as abdominal pain and swelling.
An existing anti-seizure drug improves memory and brain function in adults with a form of cognitive impairment that often leads to full-blown Alzheimer's disease, a Johns Hopkins University study has found.
Inherited forms of Alzheimer’s disease may be detectable as many as 20 years before problems with memory and thinking develop, scientists will report July 20, 2011, at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease in Paris.
Experts from the Center of Excellence on Brain Aging at NYU Langone Medical Center will present new research at the 2011 Alzheimer’s Association International Conference on Alzheimer’s disease to be held in Paris, France from July 16 – 21. Of particular interest is the presentation about mild cognitive impairment in retired football players, with Stella Karantzoulis, PhD, and the selected “Hot Topics” presentation about a new experimental approach to targeting amyloid plaques, with Fernando Goni, PhD.
Clinical trials in Europe and Asia were thought to have pinpointed the best treatment regimen to eradicate the H. pylori bug, an important cause of peptic ulcers and gastric cancer. New results from a large SWOG study in Latin America turn those findings on their head, suggesting different populations need different therapies.
A surgeon’s behavior in the operating room affects patient outcomes, healthcare costs, medical errors and patient- and staff-satisfaction, says a commentary in the July issue of Archives of Surgery. In an increasingly rude society where it is rare for a stranger to give up a bus seat to a senior citizen and expletives have become all-too common in daily conversation, the lack of civility has degraded all aspects of life, even the surgical suite, says the article’s primary author, Andrew S. Klein, MD, MBA, a prominent liver surgeon and the director of the Cedars-Sinai Comprehensive Transplant Center.
NYU School of Medicine researchers report in a new study that exposure to tobacco smoke nearly doubles the risk of hearing loss among adolescents. The study is published in the July, 2011, issue of Archives of Otolaryngology – Head & Neck Surgery.
A new study describes how hyperactivation of AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) promotes neurodegeneration in Huntington’s disease (HD). The article appears online on July 18, 2011, in The Journal of Cell Biology.
SMARTube cuts false recent classifications,
shows potential for use in incidence estimates. Unique new epidemiological tools aim to differentiate between recent and long-term HIV infections and measure incidence that can assist public health efforts
Retired NFL football players are at higher risk for mild cognitive impairment, which can be a precursor to Alzheimer's disease, a Loyola University Health System study has found. A screening survey of 513 retired players and their wives found that 35 percent of the players had scores suggesting possible mild cognitive impairment (MCI).
1) Data support these treatment options in women with both cancers; 2) Results of registHER study showed benefit in earlier detection; 3) Treatment independently led to improvement in overall survival.
Researchers at New York University’s Department of Chemistry and NYU Langone Medical Center have developed a compound that blocks signaling from a protein implicated in many types of cancer.
Telomeres, the body’s own cellular clocks, may be a crucial factor underlying the development of emphysema, according to research from Johns Hopkins University.
Successful gene expression requires the concerted action of a host of regulatory factors. Long overshadowed by bonafide transcription factors, coactivators—the hanger-ons that facilitate transcription by docking onto transcription factors or modifying chromatin—have recently come to the fore.
Improving and maintaining health factors not traditionally associated with dementia, such as denture fit, vision and hearing, may lower a person’s risk for developing dementia, according to a new study published in the July 13, 2011, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
Cornell University scientists, in collaboration with physicists and physician-scientists in Germany, France and Rochester, N.Y., have developed a new – and much less painful and potentially damaging – method to end life-threatening heart fibrillations.
Researchers at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine bridged a spinal cord injury and biologically regenerated lost nerve connections to the diaphragm, restoring breathing in an adult rodent model of spinal cord injury. The work, which restored 80 to more than 100 percent of breathing function, will be published in the online issue of the journal Nature July 14.
A tiny plant called Arabidopsis thaliana just helped scientists unearth new clues about the daily cycles of many organisms, including humans. This is the latest in a long line of research, much of it supported by the National Institutes of Health, that uses plants to solve puzzles in human health.
1) Disparity driven by gender differences in cancer incidence; 2) Cancer survival largely similar between men and women;
3) Research needed to understand gender disparities in cancer incidence.
A Johns Hopkins infectious disease expert is calling for all sexually active American women age 40 and older to get tested for the parasite Trichomonas vaginalis after new study evidence found that the sexually transmitted disease (STD) is more than twice as common in this age group than previously thought. Screening is especially important because in many cases there are no symptoms.
Osteoporosis and low bone density are common in people in the early stages of multiple sclerosis (MS), according to a new study published in the July 12, 2011, print issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
Despite changes in standard treatment practice guidelines issued by the American College of Cardiology, American Heart Association and the European Society of Cardiology several years ago, there has been no meaningful change in the nation’s practice of opening completely blocked coronary arteries with balloons and stents in the days after a heart attack, according to a new study published in the July 11, 2011, issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.
New fossil localities from North Dakota and Montana have produced the remains of a turtle that survived the 65 million-year-old meteorite impact that wiped out the dinosaurs.
Genetic instructions for developing limbs and digits were present in primitive fish millions of years before their descendants first crawled on to land, University of Chicago researchers have discovered. The result suggests that the recipe for limb development is conserved in species separated by 400 million years of evolution.
The continued growth of cropland and loss of natural habitat have increasingly simplified agricultural landscapes in the Midwest. A Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC) study concluded that this simplification is associated with increased crop pest abundance and insecticide use, consequences that could be tempered by perennial bioenergy crops.
In their largest and most comprehensive effort to date, researchers from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute examined cells from over 100 tumors, including 25 ovarian cancer tumors, to unearth the genes upon which cancers depend. One of these genes, PAX8, is altered in a significant fraction of ovarian tumors — nearly one-fifth of those surveyed in the study.
A small protein called SUMO might prevent the protein aggregations that typify Parkinson’s disease (PD), according to a new study in the July 11, 2011, issue of The Journal of Cell Biology.
In a new study, scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute provide the first details of the cancer cell machinery that carries out the hormone’s relentless growth orders.
A difficult-to-treat form of childhood leukemia relies on changes in the structure of DNA – so-called epigenetic changes – to wreak genomic havoc within white blood cells, according to one of two studies conducted by a research team at Children's Hospital Boston and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Together with collaborators from a biotechnology company, the same team also showed that a new drug that blocks these changes could deactivate cancer-promoting genes and halt the growth of this cancer.
A study at UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center found that nearly all patients with high-grade, non-invasive bladder cancer are not receiving the guideline-recommended care that would best protect them from recurrence, a finding that researchers characterized as alarming.
Researchers at the University at Buffalo examined more than 360 U.S. metro areas to determine which would be most likely to come out of the next recession, natural disaster or other regional “shock” relatively unscathed.
Researchers have discovered that obese adults undergoing surgery are less frequently developing respiratory insufficiency (RI) and adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), and that when they do, they are less likely to have fatal outcomes.
De novo mutations – genetic errors that are present in patients but not in their parents – are more frequent in schizophrenic patients than in normal individuals.
University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists are part of an international consortium that has successfully sequenced and analyzed the potato genome. The consortium’s work, which is described in the current issue of Nature, turned up more than 39,000 genes and is expected to speed potato research and breeding projects around the globe.
How deep is the ocean’s capacity to buffer against climate change? As one of the planet’s largest single carbon absorbers, the ocean takes up roughly one-third of all human carbon emissions, reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide and its associated global changes.
Arthroscopic treatment of a common hip problem that leads to arthritis is successful in terms of restoring range of motion, according to results from a recent Hospital for Special Surgery study. The study will be presented at the annual meeting of the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine, held July 7-11 in San Diego.