Health News

Improving coordinated health care to better serve Haitians post-earthquake

Date: Oct-08-2013
Three years after an earthquake killed more than 200,000 people and left an estimated 1.5 million people homeless in Haiti, a Henry Ford Hospital study found that more mobilized medical care is necessary to bridge cultural and health care barriers and better serve the Haitian population. Highlights of the study:  79 percent said their religious leader was their main source of health care information.   76 percent said they felt insecure in their ability to care for loved ones who are sick.   69 percent said Western medicine is less safe than traditional Haitian medicine...

Cellular process critical to kidney health suppressed by obesity

Date: Oct-08-2013
Obesity increases a chronic kidney disease patient's risk of developing kidney failure. Obesity suppresses an important cellular process that prevents kidney cell damage, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN). The findings suggest that restoring the process could protect the kidney health of obese individuals. Obesity increases a chronic kidney disease patient's risk of developing kidney failure, but the mechanism underlying this connection has remained unclear...

Self-medication may lead to abuse of prescription drugs by doctors

Date: Oct-08-2013
Doctors who abuse prescription drugs often do so for "self-medication" - whether for physical or emotional pain or stress relief, reports a study in the October Journal of Addiction Medicine, the official journal of the American Society of Addiction Medicine. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. Based on focus groups with physicians in treatment for substance abuse, the findings lend "unique insights" into the reasons why doctors abuse prescription medications - as well as important implications for prevention and recognition...

Genes involved in kidney disease identified by "in silico nano-dissection"

Date: Oct-08-2013
Understanding how genes act in specific tissues is critical to our ability to combat many human diseases, from heart disease to kidney failure to cancer. Yet isolating individual cell types for study is impossible for most human tissues. A new method developed by researchers at Princeton University and the University of Michigan called "in silico nano-dissection" uses computers rather than scalpels to separate and identify genes from specific cell types, enabling the systematic study of genes involved in diseases...

Keys uncovered to antibiotic resistance in MRSA

Date: Oct-08-2013
University of Notre Dame researchers Shahriar Mobashery and Mayland Chang and their collaborators in Spain have published research results that show how methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) regulates the critical crosslinking of its cell wall in the face of beta-lactam antibiotics. The work, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveals the mechanistic basis for how the MRSA bacterium became such a difficult pathogen over the previous 50 years, in which time it spread rapidly across the world...

Program improves sun protection practices among children of melanoma survivors

Date: Oct-08-2013
Children of melanoma survivors were more likely to wear hats and re-apply sunscreen after receiving a multi-media informational program designed specifically for them. These new findings were included in research published in the journal of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention - a publication of the American Association for Cancer Research. A team of researchers led by Ellen R. Gritz, Ph.D., and Mary Tripp, Ph.D., M.P.H...

Discovery of new therapeutic agents may benefit leukemia patients

Date: Oct-08-2013
An Indiana University cancer researcher and his colleagues have discovered new therapeutic targets and drugs that may someday benefit people with certain types of leukemia or blood cancer. Reuben Kapur, Ph.D...

Einstein's brilliance may have been due to well-connected brain hemispheres

Date: Oct-08-2013
The left and right hemispheres of Albert Einstein's brain were unusually well connected to each other and may have contributed to his brilliance, according to a new study conducted in part by Florida State University evolutionary anthropologist Dean Falk. "This study, more than any other to date, really gets at the 'inside' of Einstein's brain," Falk said. "It provides new information that helps make sense of what is known about the surface of Einstein's brain...

Higher death rates in boom times, survey shows

Date: Oct-08-2013
A new study shows that the death rate among middle-aged and elderly people is higher when the economy is booming than when it is heading into a recession. As many countries are not only in recession, but also have increasing numbers of of elderly people in the population, the authors wanted to know what impact this might have on life expectancy. The researchers, from the Leyden Academy on Vitality and Ageing and Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands, defined middle age as years 40-44 and older people as aged 70-74...

Study shows 1 in 10 young people commit sexual violence

Date: Oct-08-2013
Not much has been known about how many young people are using sexual violence, but a new study has revealed surprising details about this issue in youths under the age of 21. As the criminal justice system is not often involved, very little information has been collected. But this public health issue is affecting over 1 million victims and costing $127 billion a year.  The study, published in JAMA Pediatrics, employs data collected online in 2010 and 2011 from the national Growing Up With Media study...