In an unexpected finding, scientists have linked the activation of a stress gene in immune-system cells to the spread of breast cancer to other parts of the body.
A statistical model accounting for dozens of different genes in combination—and the interactions between them—is an important step forward in understanding the genetic factors affecting the risk of Crohn's disease (CD), reports a study in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases, official journal of the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America (CCFA). The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health.
A new study at Moffitt Cancer Center could offer hope to people with melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer. Researchers are investigating whether an injectable known as PV-10 can shrink tumors and reduce the spread of cancer. PV-10 is a solution developed from Rose Bengal, a water-soluble dye commonly used to stain damaged cells in the eye. Early clinical trials show PV-10 can boost immune response in melanoma tumors, as well as the blood stream.
Exposure to low to moderate amounts of arsenic in drinking water can impair lung function. Doses of about 120 parts per billion of arsenic in well water produced lung damage comparable to decades of smoking tobacco.
Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine point out that the body mass index (BMI), based on the weight and height, is not an accurate measure of body fat content and does not account for critical factors that contribute to health or mortality, such as fat distribution, proportion of muscle to fat, and the sex and racial differences in body composition.
Despite the longstanding, widespread practice of restricting women’s food and fluid intake during labor, a large-scale analysis in The Cochrane Library finds it unwarranted and supports women eating and drinking as they please.
Astronomers have assembled, from more than 13 years of observations from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, a series of time-lapse movies showing a jet of superheated gas — 5,000 light-years long — as it is ejected from a supermassive black hole in the giant elliptical galaxy M87.
Researchers from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Boston University School of Medicine find that the same genetic mutation responsible for red hair also promotes a well-known cancer-causing pathway
Two simple, non-drug treatments—aromatherapy and intravenous administration of a simple sugar solution—may offer effective new approaches to relieving nausea and vomiting after surgery, report a pair of studies in the September issue of Anesthesia & Analgesia, official journal of the International Anesthesia Research Society (IARS).
A new study points to a simple solution to the high cost of medications that could result in hundreds of dollars in savings per patient: Instead of brand-name drugs, substitute less expensive counterparts that have a similar therapeutic effect .
An international study led by Dana-Farber scientists found that the oral targeted drugs pazopanib (Votrient) and sunitinib (Sutent), approved for metastatic kidney cancer worked equally well, but one proved superior in tolerability.
An international team of scientists have demonstrated that a simple, low-cost intervention holds the potential to eradicate a debilitating tropical disease that threatens nearly 1.4 billion people in more than six dozen countries.
Vedolizumab, a new intravenous antibody medication, has shown positive results for treating both Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, according to researchers at the University of California San Diego, School of Medicine. The findings, published in two papers, will appear in the August 22 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).
New research from the Monell Center reveals that bubbles are not necessary to experience the unique ‘bite’ of carbonated beverages, which actually comes from carbonic acid. Bubbles do, however, enhance carbonation’s bite through the light physical feel of the bubbles picked up by our sense of touch.
High-risk pregnant women are being recruited for a clinical trial that aims to give parents detailed information about genetic abnormalities found with the latest prenatal genetic testing, known as microarray.
In a new study published in Neuron, researchers have identified how a fundamental biological process called protein synthesis is controlled within the body’s circadian clock — the internal mechanism that controls one’s daily rhythms. Their findings may help shed light on future treatments for disorders triggered by circadian clock dysfunction, including jet lag, shift work disorders, and chronic conditions like depression and Parkinson’s disease.
Prescribing of “atypical” antipsychotic medications to children and young adults with behavioral problems or mood disorders may put them at unnecessary risk for type 2 diabetes, a Vanderbilt University Medical Center study shows. Young people using medications like risperidone, quetiapine, aripiprazol and olanzapine led to a threefold increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes within the first year of taking the drug, according to the study published Aug. 21 in the journal JAMA Psychiatry.
A leading group of Alzheimer's researchers contends that, as biomarkers to detect signals of the disease improve at providing clinically meaningful information, researchers will need guidance on how to constructively disclose test results and track how disclosure impacts both patients and the data collected in research studies.
New research suggests that chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a brain disease associated with repeat brain trauma including concussions in athletes, may affect people in two major ways: initially affecting behavior or mood or initially affecting memory and thinking abilities. The study appears in the August 21, 2013, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. CTE has been found in amateur and professional athletes, members of the military and others who experienced repeated head injuries, including concussions and subconcussive trauma.
New research led by scientists at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) and Baylor College of Medicine could aid efforts to diagnose and treat one of the most lethal and hard-to-treat types of cancer.
By any measure, tuberculosis (TB) is a wildly successful pathogen. It infects as many as two billion people in every corner of the world, with a new infection of a human host estimated to occur every second.
New research shows that in a dynamic mind-body interaction during the interpretation of prolonged stress, cells from the immune system are recruited to the brain and promote symptoms of anxiety.
Astronomers have found a clever new way to slice and dice the flickering light from a distant star in a way that reveals its surface gravity, one of the key properties that astronomers use to calculate a star’s physical properties and assess its evolutionary state.
Scientists have made the first-ever accurate determination of a solid-state triple point -- the temperature and pressure at which three different solid phases can coexist stably -- in a substance called vanadium dioxide.
Poor oral health, including gum disease and dental problems, was found to be associated with oral human papillomavirus (HPV) infection, which causes about 40 percent to 80 percent of oropharyngeal cancers, according to a study published in Cancer Prevention Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.
The small size and abnormal anatomy of children born with heart defects often force doctors to place lifesaving defibrillators entirely outside the heart, rather than partly inside — a less-than-ideal solution to dangerous heart rhythms that involves a degree of guesstimating and can compromise therapy.
A rare, small RNA turns a gene-splicing machine into a switch that controls the expression of hundreds of human genes. Researchers have discovered an entirely new aspect of the gene-splicing process that produces messenger RNA.
Carbon monoxide (CO) from external sources can easily penetrate gypsum wallboard (drywall) commonly used in apartments and houses, potentially exposing people indoors to the toxic, odorless, tasteless gas within minutes, concludes a study conducted at Virginia Mason Medical Center.
Grandmothers who care for their grandkids fulltime need help for depression and family strains, report researchers from the Case Western Reserve University’s Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing.
A new study led by the Wildlife Conservation Society says that the American alligator and a dozen other crocodile species enjoy an occasional taste of fruit along with their normal meat-heavy diets of mammals, birds, and fish.
With the number of maternal deaths on the rise in the United States, researchers found that a drug frequently used to augment or induce labor may contribute to postpartum bleeding, a study in the September issue of Anesthesiology notes.
In an examination comparing the effects of two drugs on blood pressure, pulse, heart rate and cardiac output in women having elective delivery by cesarean section was challenged, according to a study in the September issue of Anesthesiology.
Part of the risk for alcohol dependence is genetic. The same is true for eating disorders. Now researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that some of the same genes likely are involved in both. They report that people with alcohol dependence may be more genetically susceptible to certain types of eating disorders and vice versa.
A culturally tailored HIV prevention program developed and tested by investigators at UCLA and the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science has been shown to significantly reduce unprotected sex among bisexual black men.
An opinion piece in this week’s JAMA from Penn Medicine fourth-year medical student Mark Attiah suggests that if adult hospitals were modeled more closely after children’s hospitals—from the paint color to practice patterns—they may improve patient quality of life, satisfaction and even health outcomes.
The researchers found that carbon monoxide diffused across single-layer gypsum wallboard of 2 thicknesses, double-layer wallboard, and painted double-layer wallboard. “Gypsum's permeability to CO is due to its porosity.
Researchers have identified a new genome-wide significant locus (the place a gene occupies on a chromosome) for infantile hypertrophic pyloric stenosis (IHPS), a serious gastrointestinal condition associated with gastrointestinal obstruction, according to a study in the August 21 issue of JAMA. Characteristics of this locus also suggest the possibility of an inverse relationship between levels of circulating cholesterol in neonates and IHPS risk.
Although a pooling of data from 12 studies showed a statistically significant association between use of lateral wedge insoles and lower pain in medial knee osteoarthritis, among trials comparing wedge insoles with neutral insoles, there was no significant or clinically important association between use of wedge insoles and reduction in knee pain, according to a study in the August 21 issue of JAMA.
In a large national study, higher levels of the urinary albumin-to-creatinine ratio was associated with greater risk of incident but not recurrent coronary heart disease in black individuals when compared with white individuals, according to a study in the August 21 issue of JAMA.
Implementation of a large-scale hypertension program that included evidence-based guidelines and development and sharing of performance metrics was associated with a near-doubling of hypertension control between 2001 and 2009, compared to only modest improvements in state and national control rates, according to a study in the August 21 issue of JAMA.
A scientist at Michigan Tech has developed a new, inexpensive material that could replace the platinum in solar cells without degrading their efficiency.
In 2005, the Institute of Medicine, surveying the outlook for the growing number of American cancer survivors, first described the idea of a survivorship care plan: a roadmap for the group of patients, today numbering nearly 12 million, who are beginning new lives as cancer survivors. Now, in a study published online this month in the journal Cancer, a group of Penn Medicine researchers have published the first study to assess the effectiveness of care plans at equipping patients to meet these goals.
Indiana University School of Medicine researchers have found a series of RNA biomarkers in blood that may help identify who is at risk for committing suicide.
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory have devised a quantum algorithm for solving big linear systems of equations. Furthermore, they say the algorithm could be used to calculate complex measurements such as radar cross sections, an ability integral to the development of radar stealth technology, among many other applications. Their research is reported in the June 18 issue of Physical Review Letters.
A recent study by members of the Children’s Oncology Group reports results of a large trial showing that children whose leukemia cells have amplification of a portion of chromosome 21 may require more aggressive treatment for Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) than children without this gene amplification.
Women diagnosed with gestational diabetes are nearly seven times more likely to have obstructive sleep apnea than other pregnant women, according to a recent study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM).
Glucagon, a hormone involved in regulating appetite, loses its ability to help obese people feel full after a meal, but it continues to suppress hunger pangs in people with type 1 diabetes, according to a recent study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM).