Health News

Deficits caused by workweek sleep loss not totally recouped by sleeping in on the weekends

Date: Oct-11-2013
In many modern societies, adults often sacrifice sleep during the workweek to make time for other demands, then snooze longer on the weekends to recoup that lost sleep. Research has shown that even a few days of lost sleep can have adverse effects, including increased daytime sleepiness, worsened daytime performance, an increase in molecules that are a sign of inflammation in the body, and impaired blood sugar regulation. These last two could be partially responsible for why sleeping less negatively affects health in other ways and shortens the lifespan...

More injuries suffered by football players when their team is ahead

Date: Oct-11-2013
Male football players are at a greater risk of injury five minutes after a card has been given or after a goal has been scored. The frequency of player injuries also increases when their own team is in the lead. These are the findings of researchers at the Sahlgrenska Academy, who, in collaboration with Fifa, have analysed injuries over the last three World Cup tournaments. Football players do not just injure themselves whenever and however...

Fitness trumps weight when it comes to the good cholesterol

Date: Oct-11-2013
There's no question that high levels of good cholesterol - also known as high-density lipoprotein (HDL) - seem to be protective against heart disease. Rather than depositing fat into the blood vessels the way the "bad" cholesterol (low-density lipoprotein (LDL)) does, HDL appears to carry cholesterol away from blood vessels to the liver. From there, the liver processes it for removal from the body. However, adequate levels of HDL might not be enough. Several recent studies have suggested that many cases of heart disease occur in people with normal levels of HDL cholesterol...

Steps to reduce risk of inadvertent harm to potentially normal pregnancies

Date: Oct-11-2013
A panel of 15 medical experts from the fields of radiology, obstetrics-gynecology and emergency medicine, convened by the Society of Radiologists in Ultrasound (SRU), has recommended new criteria for use of ultrasonography in determining when a first trimester pregnancy is nonviable (has no chance of progressing and resulting in a live-born baby). These new diagnostic thresholds, published Oct. 10 in the New England Journal of Medicine, would help to avoid the possibility of physicians causing inadvertent harm to a potentially normal pregnancy...

Persistent anti-tumor immune response enabled by novel gene therapy

Date: Oct-11-2013
Cancer immunotherapy can successfully use the body's own immune system to kill tumor cells. But some current approaches to stimulate an antitumor immune response are short-lived, with limited clinical effectiveness. A new gene transfer strategy that introduces modified, immune-stimulating human stem cells is both feasible and effective for achieving persistent immunotherapy to treat leukemias and lymophomas, according to a study published in Human Gene Therapy, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available on the Human Gene Therapy website...

Blood-brain barrier breached by anti-breast cancer drugs using new technique

Date: Oct-11-2013
Some breast cancer drugs can penetrate the blood-brain barrier (BBB), but they have not been very effective against brain metastases, whereas other, more effective anti-breast cancer drugs cannot penetrate the BBB at all. In a study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, researchers used a new approach to selectively permeabilize the BBB at sites of brain metastases, even those 200 times smaller than currently detectable in the clinic...

Cholera is emerging as a driver of progress in public health in Haiti

Date: Oct-11-2013
The deadly cholera epidemic that rocked earthquake-shattered Haiti in 2010, claiming 8,000 lives and counting, has rallied the public health community to seek water and sewer improvements that, combined with vaccination, could prevent some 89,000 future cholera infections...

Cellular signals between pancreatic cancer tumors and saliva support validity of salivary diagnostics

Date: Oct-11-2013
Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest forms of cancer. Most of those with the disease will die within the first year of diagnosis, and just 6 percent will survive five years. The disease is typically diagnosed through an invasive and complicated biopsy. But a discovery by researchers at the UCLA School of Dentistry may be one major step toward creating a noninvasive tool that would enable clinicians and oncologists to detect pancreatic cancer through a simple risk assessment test using saliva...

Hope for knee osteoarthritis sufferers offered by 'mobility shoes'

Date: Oct-11-2013
The results of a new study by bone and joint experts at Rush University Medical Center suggest that patients with knee osteoarthritis (OA) who wear flat, flexible footwear, which allows natural foot mobility and provide sufficient support for the foot, had significant reduction in knee loading - the force placed upon the joint during daily activities. Findings from the study were published in an issue of Arthritis & Rheumatism, a journal of the American College of Rheumatology (ACR). The research led by Dr...

Fat may be linked to memory loss

Date: Oct-11-2013
Although problems with memory become increasingly common as people age, in some persons, memories last a long time, even a life time. On the other hand, some people experience milder to substantial memory problems even at an earlier age. Although there are several risk factors of dementia, abnormal fat metabolism has been known to pose a risk for memory and learning. People with high amounts of abdominal fat in their middle age are 3.6 times as likely to develop memory loss and dementia later in their life...