Health News

Lives of patients with acute heart attack saved by blood pressure cuff

Date: Sep-24-2013
In patients with an acute heart attack, remote ischemic conditioning - intermittent inflation of a blood pressure cuff to cut off blood flow to the arm during transportation to hospital for acute balloon dilatation - reduces subsequent cardiac symptoms and mortality after acute heart attack. The results were presented recently by researchers from Aarhus University Hospital and Aarhus University in the European Heart Journal on-line...

Heart disease patients benefit from high intensity training

Date: Sep-24-2013
High-intensity exercise is shown to be protective against coronary heart disease (CHD) and is well known as a popular and time-saving approach to getting fit. But what about people who already have heart disease? Previously, these patients were told to exercise, but only at a moderate intensity to protect their hearts. More recently, however, researchers have found that high-intensity exercise is very beneficial for these patients. But how intense should these sessions actually be? A new study from the K. G...

Clinical research study first to compare refeeding protocols for anorexia nervosa

Date: Sep-24-2013
Higher calorie diets produce twice the rate of weight gain compared to the lower calorie diets that currently are recommended for adolescents hospitalized with anorexia nervosa, according to a study by researchers at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital. The findings will be published in the November issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health along with an accompanying editorial and two supporting studies, challenging the current conservative approach to feeding adolescents with anorexia nervosa during hospitalization for malnutrition...

How the body responds to pain: Groundbreaking research

Date: Sep-24-2013
The bodies of mammals, including humans, respond to injury by releasing endogenous opioids - compounds that mitigate acute pain. A team of researchers led by those at the University of Kentucky has uncovered groundbreaking new information about how the body responds to traumatic injury with the development of a surprisingly long-lasting opioid mechanism of natural chronic pain control. Remarkably, the body develops both physical and physiological dependence on this opioid system, just as it does to opiate narcotic drugs...

Improved outcomes for patients with type 1 diabetes offered by new islet cell transplant procedure

Date: Sep-24-2013
The latest approach to islet transplantation, in which clusters of insulin-producing cells known as islets are transplanted from a donor pancreas into another person's liver, has produced substantially improved results for patients with type 1 diabetes, and may offer a more durable alternative to a whole pancreas transplant. Participants in the new study received islet cells isolated from the pancreas of organ donors to help their bodies produce insulin, the life-sustaining hormone responsible for absorbing glucose from the blood...

Solution to puzzle of brain circuitry controlling fertility

Date: Sep-24-2013
In a landmark discovery, the final piece in the puzzle of understanding how the brain circuitry vital to normal fertility in humans and other mammals operates has been put together by researchers at New Zealand's University of Otago. Their new findings, which appear in the leading international journal Nature Communications, will be critical to enabling the design of novel therapies for infertile couples as well as new forms of contraception...

American College of Physicians releases new recommendations for treating obstructive sleep apnea

Date: Sep-24-2013
People diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) should lose weight and use continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) as initial therapy, according to new recommendations from the American College of Physicians (ACP) published today in Annals of Internal Medicine, ACP's flagship journal. More than 18 million American adults have sleep apnea, which increases the risk of high blood pressure, heart attack, stroke, heart failure, and diabetes and increases the chance of driving or other accidents. Sleep apnea is a leading cause of excessive daytime sleepiness...

Artificial kidney could help those with renal failure

Date: Sep-24-2013
It may not look like one, but the Implantable Artificial Kidney device has been designed to function in the same way that a human kidney does. By extracting waste and keeping nutrients needed by the body, it could one day help those with chronic renal failure. According to the Implantable Artificial Kidney Corporation, the organization developing and testing the device, it uses special filters, osmosis/diffusion and reverse osmosis to separate waste material and water...

Develop after-sex contraceptive pill for routine use, urge researchers - political opposition biggest hurdle

Date: Sep-24-2013
A contraceptive pill that could be routinely used after, rather than before, sex and fertilisation is probably scientifically feasible and would probably be welcomed by many women, say researchers in the Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care. But the biggest hurdle impeding its development is likely to be political opposition, they suggest - despite the fact that some current contraceptive methods, such as intrauterine devices (IUDs), can sometimes prevent pregnancy even after fertilisation...

Dog food preservative may thwart pain and damage of peripheral neuropathy

Date: Sep-24-2013
Working with cells in test tubes and in mice, researchers at Johns Hopkins have discovered that a chemical commonly used as a dog food preservative may prevent the kind of painful nerve damage found in the hands and feet of four out of five cancer patients taking the chemotherapy drug Taxol. The Food and Drug Administration-approved preservative, an antioxidant called ethoxyquin, was shown in experiments to bind to certain cell proteins in a way that limits their exposure to the damaging effects of Taxol, the researchers say...