Health News

Altering task parameters can lead to faster improvement in attention and spatial memory tasks

Date: Nov-12-2013
Lumosity, the online cognitive training and neuroscience research company, presented at the annual 2013 Society for Neuroscience meeting showing that optimizing training tasks can accelerate and lengthen learning rates. The study, titled "Optimizing Cognitive Training Task Designs to Improve Learning Rates in a Large Online Population," found that altering various psychophysical task parameters that make a task more challenging led to different learning rates of the tasks...

Asthma sufferers allergic to cats doubles, making holiday travel challenging

Date: Nov-12-2013
People with asthma traveling to pet friendly homes for the holidays may want to pack allergy medication along with their inhaler. A study presented at the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology's (ACAAI) Annual Scientific Meeting reveals the number of people with asthma that are also allergic to cats has more than doubled over an 18 year period. "From 1976 to 1994, positive allergy skin tests in people with asthma have increased significantly," said Leonard Bielory, MD, ACAAI fellow and study author...

Assessing the extent of dopamine loss in Parkinson's disease

Date: Nov-12-2013
A pilot study by a multi-disciplinary team of investigators at Georgetown University suggests that a simple dot test could help doctors gauge the extent of dopamine loss in individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD). Their study was presented at Neuroscience 2013, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. "It is very difficult now to assess the extent of dopamine loss - a hallmark of Parkinson's disease - in people with the disease," says lead author Katherine R. Gamble, a psychology PhD student working with two Georgetown psychologists, a psychiatrist and a neurologist...

Discovery could accelerate body's response to infection, autoimmune disorders

Date: Nov-12-2013
UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers report that disrupting the light-dark cycle of mice increased their susceptibility to inflammatory disease, indicating that the production of a key immune cell is controlled by the body's circadian clock. The study published in the journal Science identifies a previously hidden pathway by which the body's circadian clock controls the numbers of key inflammatory cells called interleukin-17-producing CD4+ T helper cells (TH17)...

Kidney disease progression hastened in African-Americans by gene variant

Date: Nov-12-2013
A gene variant common in African-Americans predicts that people with that gene who also have chronic kidney disease (CKD) are twice as likely to progress to kidney failure as African-Americans without the high-risk gene and white people with CKD. People with the high-risk gene also tend to lose kidney function at twice the rate of those without the gene, according to the research, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health...

Asthma inhalers with dose counters lessen emergency room visits by 55 percent

Date: Nov-12-2013
Asthma is the most common chronic illness and is responsible for 2.1 million emergency room visits annually. But according to a study presented at the Annual Scientific Meeting of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI), these costly visits can be reduced by 55 percent when inhalers contain a simple dose counter. Dose counters on rescue inhalers display the amount of medication remaining in the device, but are not standard for all meter dose inhalers...

Life-saving transplant results in end to peanut allergy

Date: Nov-12-2013
Not only can bone marrow transplants be life-saving for children with acute lymphocytic leukemia, they may also cure peanut allergies. According to research presented during the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology's (ACAAI) Annual Scientific Meeting, a 10-year-old boy no longer had a peanut allergy after undergoing a bone marrow transplant. "It has been reported that bone marrow and liver transplants can transfer peanut allergy from donor to recipient," said allergist Yong Luo, MD, Ph.D., ACAAI member and lead study author...

Poor, minority moms benefit from depression therapy

Date: Nov-12-2013
Faced with the dual demands of motherhood and poverty, as many as one fourth of low-income minority mothers struggle with major depression. But the stigma associated with mental illness coupled with limited access to quality treatment prevent the majority of these struggling women from receiving help. Now a new study shows that screening for the disorder and providing short-term, relationship-focused therapy through weekly home visits can relieve depression among minority mothers, even in the face of poverty and personal histories of abuse or violence...

Detecting skin cancer online course improves physicians skill level

Date: Nov-12-2013
Primary care physicians who took an online training course about skin cancer detection significantly improved their skill to properly diagnose and manage benign and malignant lesions, according to a national study from Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. The physicians' enhanced skill level also led to a reduction in unnecessary referrals to dermatology specialists. The INFORMED study is believed to be the first of its kind to track physician practice patterns as an outcome of a skin cancer detection training course. INFORMED stands for INternet curriculum FOR Melanoma Early Detection...

Human stomach cancer cells in culture destroyed by peptide derived from cow's milk

Date: Nov-12-2013
New research from a team of researchers in Taiwan indicates that a peptide fragment derived from cow's milk, known as lactoferricin B25 (LFcinB25), exhibited potent anticancer capability against human stomach cancer cell cultures. The findings, published in the Journal of Dairy Science®, provide support for future use of LFcinB25 as a potential therapeutic agent for gastric cancer...