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Suicide rates and suicidal talk on Twitter
Date: Oct-14-2013Heart-breaking accounts of cyber bullying and suicide seem all too common, but a new study offers hope that social media can become an early warning system to help prevent such tragedies. Researchers at Brigham Young University examined tweets originating from all 50 states over a three month period. Sifting through millions of tweets, their algorithms searched for direct discussion of suicide, as well as keywords and phrases associated with known risk factors such as bullying...
New brain imaging technology helping researchers bridge gap between art and science
Date: Oct-14-2013Scientists at the University of Exeter used state-of-the-art functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology, which allows them to visualise which parts of the brain are activated to process various activities. No one had previously looked specifically at the differing responses in the brain to poetry and prose. In research published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies, the team found activity in a "reading network" of brain areas which was activated in response to any written material...
Patients' knowledge and skills impact readmission rates
Date: Oct-14-2013A study by physicians at Boston Medical Center (BMC), has found that patients with a high degree of activation (possessing the knowledge, skills, confidence and inclination to assume responsibility for managing one's health and health-care needs) were less likely to be readmitted to the hospital within 30 days of discharge than those with a low level of activation. This study, which appears online in Journal of General Internal Medicine, is the first to evaluate patient activation and its effects on utilization of hospital services after discharge...
Among young transplant recipients, racial and social disparities in kidney allocation discovered
Date: Oct-14-2013Among younger kidney transplant recipients, a disproportionate number of African Americans and individuals with less education receive organs that are of lower quality or are considered marginal, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN). The findings suggest that there are racial and social disparities in the allocation of transplanted organs that need to be addressed...
Likely causes, treatment strategies identified for systemic scleroderma
Date: Oct-14-2013Using mice, lab-grown cells and clues from a related disorder, Johns Hopkins researchers have greatly increased understanding of the causes of systemic sclerosis, showing that a critical culprit is a defect in the way certain cells communicate with their structural scaffolding. They say the new insights point the way toward potentially developing drugs for the disease, which affects approximately 100,000 people in the United States...
Cause of gynecological disease may soon be discovered
Date: Oct-14-2013For the first time, researchers have created a model that could help unlock what causes adenomyosis, a common gynecological disease that is a major contributor to women having to undergo hysterectomies. In a two-step process, a team led by Michigan State University's Jae-Wook Jeong first identified a protein known as beta-catenin that may play a key role in the development of the disease. When activated, beta-catenin causes changes in certain cells in a woman's uterus, leading to adenomyosis...
EEG brainwave tests help diagnose ADHD symptoms
Date: Oct-14-2013Tests of brainwaves using EEG may be helpful in distinguishing subtypes of ADHD, helping to diagnose whether a teen's symptoms are mainly inattention or mainly hyperactivity and impulsiveness. The two subtypes of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are known as "inattentive" or "combined" and as well as telling these apart, the brain tests also help to rule out normal adolescents...
'Remarkable' gene pool changes in the short history of French Canadians
Date: Oct-14-2013Scientists are calling for the creation of genetic sequencing catalogs for all populations after discovering "substantial" differences in genetic variation in the relatively short 400-year period of the French Canadian population. Researchers at the University of Montreal and the Sainte-Justine University Hospital Center have discovered that the genomic signature of today's 6 million French Canadians has "gone through an unparalleled change in human history, in a remarkably short timescale...
Liver cancer progenitor cells identified before tumors become visible
Date: Oct-14-2013For the first time, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have isolated and characterized the progenitor cells that eventually give rise to malignant hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) tumors - the most common form of liver cancer. The researchers found ways to identify and isolate the HCC progenitor cells (HcPC) long before actual tumors were apparent...
Reduced striatal dopamine synthesis linked to depression in newly diagnosed Parkinson's Disease
Date: Oct-14-2013According to the Parkinson's Disease Foundation, up to 60% of individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD) exhibit mild to moderate depression, which is often underdiagnosed. It is unclear whether depression results from having a debilitating disease or reflects a parallel abnormal change in the brain caused by PD pathophysiology. One hypothesis is that depression in PD may reflect impaired striatal dopamine function, but previous investigations have produced contradictory results...
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