Health News

Smoking increases risk of complications, death after colorectal surgery and most common procedures

Date: Sep-27-2013
Infection, pneumonia, blood clots and kidney failure are all possible complications after any major surgery. A new study shows that smoking boosts the risk of such complications following some of the most common colorectal procedures, including surgery for colon cancer, diverticulitis or inflammatory bowel disease. Lighting up also increases a patient's risk of death after surgery compared with patients who have never smoked. The study, published in the Annals of Surgery, is unique because it focuses on elective, or non-emergency, surgeries...

In disordered eating, past weight loss an overlooked factor

Date: Sep-27-2013
Dieters and weight loss researchers are familiar with the principle: The more weight you've lost, the harder it is to keep it off. A complex and vicious cycle of biological and behavioral factors make it so. But eating disorder research has largely overlooked this influence, and Dr. Michael Lowe, a professor of psychology at Drexel University, has published a flurry of research studies showing that needs to change. "The focus of eating disorder research has very much been on the state of patients' thoughts, beliefs, emotions and personalities," Lowe said...

Researchers harness the immune system to fight pancreatic cancer

Date: Sep-27-2013
Study Reveals Separate Tumor Sites Respond Differently to New Immunotherapy, Highlights the Power of New Real-Time Imaging Technique to Study Response Pancreatic cancer ranks as the fourth-leading cause of cancer death in the United States, and is one of the most deadly forms of cancer, due to its resistance to standard treatments with chemotherapy and radiation therapy and frequently, its late stage at the time of diagnosis...

Noise-induced hearing loss a real risk for professional French horn players

Date: Sep-27-2013
Professional French horn players may need to seriously consider adopting effective strategies to prevent noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL). A new study published online in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene (JOEH) found further evidence that French horn players are one of the most at-risk groups of developing NIHL among professional orchestral musicians...

Increasing awareness that untreated sore throat can lead to rheumatic heart disease is a huge part of the battle

Date: Sep-27-2013
Without a huge improvement in living conditions, a cure, or a vaccine, rheumatic heart disease (RHD) will continue to blight low-income and middle-income countries. Raising community awareness of the condition, emphasising that untreated sore throat caused by group A streptococcal (GAS) infection can lead to acute rheumatic fever (ARF)/RHD, is a huge part of the battle...

Why don't the majority of patients who qualify for lifesaving heart treatment receive it?

Date: Sep-27-2013
A new study of patients who died of sudden cardiac arrest, a usually fatal condition that causes the heart to stop beating, shows the majority who qualified to receive potentially lifesaving treatment did not receive it. Researchers led by Sumeet Chugh, MD, associate director of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, examined medical records of 2,093 patients who died of sudden cardiac arrest and found that only 488 patients, or about 20 percent, were medically evaluated to see if they met the criteria to receive an implantable cardiac defibrillator, which can shock a stopped heart into beating...

Repurposed antidepressants have potential to treat small-cell lung cancer

Date: Sep-27-2013
A bioinformatics approach to repurposing drugs resulted in identification of a class of antidepressants as a potential new treatment for small-cell lung cancer (SCLC), according to a study published in Cancer Discovery, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. Based on data generated using bioinformatics, two drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat symptoms of depression were tested on SCLC cells and animal models. Both antidepressants were found to induce SCLC cell death...

The importance of responsive interactions for language learning

Date: Sep-27-2013
Young children readily learn words from their parents, grandparents, and child care providers in live conversations, but learning from video has proven more difficult. A new study questioned why and found that it's the responsiveness of the interactions that's key: When we respond to children in timely and meaningful ways, they learn - even when that response comes from a screen. The study, by researchers at the University of Washington, Temple University, and the University of Delaware, appears in the journal Child Development...

Determining an enzyme's function

Date: Sep-27-2013
Scientists have sequenced the genomes of nearly 6,900 organisms, but they know the functions of only about half of the protein-coding genes thus far discovered. Now a multidisciplinary effort involving 15 scientists from three institutions has begun chipping away at this mystery - in a big way. Their work to identify the function of one bacterial protein and the biochemical pathway in which it operates will also help identify the functions of hundreds of other proteins. A report of their new approach and findings appears in the journal Nature...

Why humans are musical but apes are not

Date: Sep-27-2013
Why don't apes have musical talent, while humans, parrots, small birds, elephants, whales, and bats do? Matz Larsson, senior physician at the Lung Clinic at Orebro University Hospital, attempts to answer this question in the scientific publication Animal Cognition. In his article, he asserts that the ability to mimic and imitate things like music and speech is the result of the fact that synchronised group movement quite simply makes it possible to perceive sounds from the surroundings better...