Health News

Exercise linked to reduced symptoms of depression

Date: Sep-12-2013
Researchers say they have found evidence to support previous research that suggests exercise may reduce symptoms of depression, according to a review published in The Cochrane Library. The updated systemic review, conducted by UK researchers, analyzed the Cochrane Depression, Anxiety and Neurosis Review Group's Controlled Trials Register (CCDANCTR), which includes randomized controlled trials from various bibliographic databases. The previous version of the review found only limited evidence to suggest that exercise could benefit people suffering from depression...

Closing in on risk factors for cerebral palsy and infant death

Date: Sep-12-2013
Karin B. Nelson, M.D., scientist emeritus at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), part of the National Institutes of Health, and her colleagues from the University of Sydney, the University of Western Australia and Sydney Adventist Hospital in Australia examined the degree to which four specific risk factors contributed to cerebral palsy and young infant death...

Cancer researchers discover root cause of multiple myeloma relapse

Date: Sep-12-2013
Clinical researchers at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre have discovered why multiple myeloma, an incurable cancer of the bone marrow, persistently escapes cure by an initially effective treatment that can keep the disease at bay for up to several years. The reason, explains research published online in Cancer Cell, is intrinsic resistance found in immature progenitor cells that are the root cause of the disease - and relapse - says principal investigator Dr...

Study reveals why warnings may be ineffective at teaching young people about risks

Date: Sep-12-2013
Campaigns to get young people to stop smoking may be more successful by focusing on the positive benefits, such as having more money and better skin, rather than emphasising negative outcomes like increased disease risk, a study from Wellcome Trust researchers suggests. The findings reveal that young people have greater difficulty in learning from bad news to interpret their risk of future events, which might explain why they often do not respond to warnings. We all make decisions based on what we believe may happen in the future as a consequence of our actions...

Severe asthma patients less responsive to treatment

Date: Sep-12-2013
People with severe asthma, who are often described as 'steroid-dependent', are actually less likely to respond to the treatment they depend on, when compared to people with mild asthma. The study, presented at the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Annual Congress in Barcelona today (9 September 2013), represents the first analysis of a cohort of patients from an unparalleled research project that will collect over 3 million samples from 300 children and 700 adults with severe and non-severe asthma, and without asthma...

Severity of sleep apnea predicts aggressiveness of melanoma

Date: Sep-12-2013
The severity of sleep apnoea can independently predict the aggressiveness of malignant skin melanoma, according to a new study. The research, presented today (9 September 2013) at the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Annual Congress, adds new evidence to a number of studies that have found a link between cancer and the sleep disorder. Previous studies have looked at a link between sleep apnoea and both mortality and incidence rates from cancer...

Blacks in U.S. may be at higher risk for health problems from insufficient sleep

Date: Sep-12-2013
Blacks are more likely than whites to sleep less than seven hours a night and the black-white sleep disparity is greatest in professional occupations, according to a new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). "Short sleep" has been linked with increased risk of health problems, including obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, and death. The researchers also found that black professionals had the highest prevalence of short sleep and white professionals had the lowest prevalence. The study appears online September 9, 2013 in the American Journal of Epidemiology...

Children referred for chest pain rarely have cardiac disease

Date: Sep-12-2013
Employing a unique quality improvement methodology, called Standardized Clinical Assessment and Management Plans (SCAMPs), physicians have demonstrated that chest pain in children, rarely caused by heart disease, can be effectively evaluated in the ambulatory setting using minimal resources, even across a diverse patient population. So found a multi-institutional study, led by cardiologists throughout New England and published September 9 in Pediatrics...

First animal model of adult-onset spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) sheds light on disease progression & treatment

Date: Sep-12-2013
A research team at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) has used a recently developed technology they call TSUNAMI to create the first animal model of the adult-onset version of spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a devastating motor-neuron illness. The same team, led by CSHL Professor Adrian R. Krainer, Ph.D., and including scientists from California-based Isis Pharmaceuticals, as well as the University of Southern California and Stony Brook University, succeeded a year ago in using TSUNAMI to make a mouse model of the disease as it is manifest in children...

Report calls on policy makers to make happiness a key measure and target of development

Date: Sep-12-2013
As heads of state get ready for the United Nations General Assembly in two weeks, the second World Happiness Report further strengthens the case that well-being is a critical component of economic and social development. The report is published by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), under the auspices of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, and was launched at an international workshop on September 8. The World Happiness Report 2013 will be available at http://unsdsn.org/...