Health News

Commercial baby foods fail to meet weaning needs

Date: Sep-10-2013
Researchers say that commercial baby foods do not meet an infant's weaning needs and provide little extra nutritional goodness, compared with breast milk. This is according to a study published in Archives of Disease in Childhood. The weaning process is considered to be a crucial process in an infant's early life, aiming to introduce him or her to a wider range of textures, tastes and flavors, and encouraging the acceptance of a variety of foods while boosting nutrient and energy intake...

Explaining why so many cases of cardiac arrest strike in the morning

Date: Sep-10-2013
Evidence from people with heart disease strongly supports the existence of the molecular link first discovered in laboratory mice between the body's natural circadian rhythms and cardiac arrest or sudden cardiac death (SCD) - the No. 1 cause of death in heart attacks, a scientist said recently. The research, which offers the most focused explanation ever for SCD's predilection for the morning hours, was part of the 246th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society...

Argan powder found in some cosmetics linked with occupational asthma

Date: Sep-10-2013
Argan powder, which is used by the cosmetic industry in the production of foundation products, could be linked with occupational asthma. A small study, presented at the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Annual Congress in Barcelona today (9 September 2013), has found the first evidence of a risk associated with the use of argan powder during the industrial production of cosmetics. A sample of nine patients from a cosmetic factory in France were analysed in the study. All participants were exposed to the product in three different forms: crude granules, powder or liquid...

Tissue loss triggers regeneration in planarian flatworms

Date: Sep-10-2013
Unlike humans, planarian flatworms have the remarkable ability to regrow any missing body part, making them an ideal model with which to study the molecular basis of regeneration. Over the years scientists have learned that planarians mount recovery responses that differ depending on the severity of the injury they suffer. For example, a worm with a cut or a puncture wound reacts at the cellular and molecular levels quite differently from one that loses its head or tail. What has remained unclear, however, is just exactly how these responses are triggered...

New 'artificial nose' device can speed diagnosis of sepsis

Date: Sep-10-2013
Disease-causing bacteria stink - literally - and the odor released by some of the nastiest microbes has become the basis for a faster and simpler new way to diagnose blood infections and finger the specific microbe, scientists reported here today at the 246th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society...

Rapid diagnostic tests decrease waiting time for drug-resistant TB patients

Date: Sep-10-2013
Results of a new study suggest that three new diagnostic tests could each be used to successfully diagnose drug resistance in tuberculosis (TB) patients in a quarter of the time taken by the current method. The research, presented on 8 September 2013 at the European Respiratory Society's Annual Congress in Barcelona, has provided evidence that each test could be used as an effective alternative to standard testing, increasing the possibilities open to clinicians...

Virtual monitoring could aid adherence to TB medication

Date: Sep-10-2013
Virtual observation of patients taking their prescribed TB medication, could prove an effective technique for ensuring patients effectively complete their course of treatment. The research was presented on 8 September 2013 at the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Annual Congress. The new study suggests an alternative method to directly observed treatment (DOT), which is recommended by the World Health Organization...

MERS-CoV treatment effective in monkeys, NIH study finds

Date: Sep-10-2013
National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientists report that a combination of two licensed antiviral drugs reduces virus replication and improves clinical outcome in a recently developed monkey model of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) infection. Their study, which appears as a letter in the Sept. 8 edition of Nature Medicine, expands on work published in April showing that a combination of ribavirin and interferon-alpha 2b stops MERS-CoV from replicating in cell culture. Both antivirals are routinely used together to treat viral diseases such as hepatitis C...

Henry Ford's ideas may cut the cost and speed production of medicines

Date: Sep-10-2013
Ideas that Henry Ford taught a century ago about the advantages of continuous mass production are finding their way into the manufacture of one of the few remaining products still made batch-wise: the billions of tablets, capsules and other forms of medicine that people take each year. That change-over from making medicines in individual batches to continuous output was the topic of a keynote address at the 246th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society...

Synthetic mRNA can induce self-repair and regeneration of the infarcted heart

Date: Sep-10-2013
A team of scientists at Karolinska Institutet and Harvard University has taken a major step towards treatment for heart attack, by instructing the injured heart in mice to heal by expressing a factor that triggers cardiovascular regeneration driven by native heart stem cells. The study, published in Nature Biotechnology, also shows that there was an effect on driving the formation of a small number of new cardiac muscle cells...