Health News

Researchers seek a genetic answer to the Alzheimer's riddle

Date: Aug-16-2013
What if we could pinpoint a hereditary cause for Alzheimer's, and intervene to reduce the risk of the disease? We may be closer to that goal, thanks to a team at the University of Kentucky. Researchers affiliated with the UK Sanders-Brown Center on Aging have completed new work in Alzheimer's genetics; the research is detailed in a paper published today in the Journal of Neuroscience. Emerging evidence indicates that, much like in the case of high cholesterol, some Alzheimer's disease risk is inherited while the remainder is environmental...

Many people unnecessarily fear low amounts of chemicals in their food

Date: Aug-16-2013
When it comes to what's for dinner - or breakfast and lunch for that matter - many people suffer from chemophobia, an irrational fear of natural and synthetic chemicals that pose no risk to our health, a Dartmouth study finds. Chemistry Professor Gordon Gribble, whose paper appears in the journal Food Security, argues that low doses of chemicals in modern food are inherent, typically harmless and often highly beneficial. He says most people don't know they are routinely exposed to a host of compounds in non-toxic concentrations in what they eat and drink each day...

With a little help from their Virtual friend, older Latino adults get more exercise

Date: Aug-16-2013
When it comes to getting motivated to exercise and do things that are good for our health, sometimes all it takes is a little help from our friends. This was certainly the case for a group of older, Latino adults in Northern California: They benefited from the advice and encouragement of a virtual friend - a physical-activity adviser named Carmen, a new study reports...

Invasive breast cancer surgery increasing with growing use of MRIs

Date: Aug-16-2013
Heavy use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) may be leading to unnecessary breast removal in older women with breast cancer, according to a study by Yale School of Medicine researchers in the current issue of Breast Cancer Research and Treatment. "These data are concerning because the long-term benefits associated with bilateral mastectomy for older women with breast cancer are unclear," said the study's lead author Cary Gross. M.D...

No evidence that impaired blood flow or blockage in veins of neck or head is involved in MS

Date: Aug-16-2013
There is no evidence that impaired blood flow or blockage in the veins of the neck or head is involved in multiple sclerosis, says a McMaster University study. The research, published online by PLOS ONE, found no evidence of abnormalities in the internal jugular or vertebral veins or in the deep cerebral veins of any of 100 patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) compared with 100 people who had no history of any neurological condition...

Novel potential biomarker could reveal Alzheimer's disease years before onset

Date: Aug-16-2013
A study just published reported the identification of what may be the earliest known biomarker associated with the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease (AD). The results suggest that this novel potential biomarker is present in cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) at least a decade before signs of dementia manifest. "If our initial findings can be replicated by other laboratories, the results will change the way we currently think about the causes of Alzheimer's disease," said Dr...

ADHD more likely in children with asthma or allergies

Date: Aug-16-2013
Children with a history of asthma and various allergies may be at higher risk of developing ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), according to a study published in the journal Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. Researchers from Boston and the Netherlands conducted a case-control study among boys from the UK General Practice Research Database (GPRD). The study authors analyzed 884 boys with ADHD, and 3,536 boys without the disorder. Results of the analysis showed that of the boys with ADHD, 34% suffered from asthma and 35% had a type of allergic disorder...

Discovery of the genetic imprints and signatures left by DNA-damaging processes that lead to cancer

Date: Aug-16-2013
Researchers have provided the first comprehensive compendium of mutational processes that drive tumour development. Together, these mutational processes explain most mutations found in 30 of the most common cancer types. This new understanding of cancer development could help to treat and prevent a wide-range of cancers. Each mutational process leaves a particular pattern of mutations, an imprint or signature, in the genomes of cancers it has caused...

DNA-based familial search may misidentify distant relatives of known offenders as close relatives

Date: Aug-16-2013
Forensic DNA-based familial search methods may mistakenly identify individuals in a database as siblings or parents of an unknown perpetrator, when in fact they are distant relatives, according to research published in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Rori Rohlfs and colleagues from the University of California at Berkeley and New York University. Familial searching is a new forensic technique to identify a perpetrator if a crime scene DNA sample has no matches in a DNA database...

Where in the body immune cells reach maturity is important for their later function

Date: Aug-16-2013
Regulatory T cells (or "Tregs" for short) play a central role in the human immune system: They guide all of the other immune cells and make sure they are tolerant of the body's own cells and harmless foreign substances. How Tregs become Tregs in the first place has been only incompletely understood - until now. Scientists at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig, Germany, along with their colleagues at the Hannover Medical School (MHH) have recently gleaned important new insights into the workings of these cells...