Health News

Colombia is first country in the world to eliminate river blindness

Date: Jul-31-2013
Colombia has been verified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as having eliminated onchocerciasis (known as "river blindness"), thus becoming the first country in the world to achieve this goal. In an official notification letter, WHO Director-General, Margaret Chan, congratulated the Government of Colombia and urged it to "maintain vigilance to detect any future outbreaks" of the disease, which continues to circulate in other countries of Latin America. Dr. Carissa F...

Poor dental health may lead to Alzheimer's, study suggests

Date: Jul-31-2013
People with poor oral hygiene or gum disease may be at a greater risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, a new study led by The University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) School of Medicine and Dentistry suggests. The research, which has received international collaboration, and led by Professor Stjohn Crean and Dr Sim Singhrao from UCLan, examined brain samples donated by ten patients without dementia and ten patients suffering from dementia. The research demonstrated the presence of products from Porphyromonas gingivalis in brains from patients suffering from dementia...

Reinforcing commercial host liability helps reduce excessive alcohol consumption

Date: Jul-31-2013
Fewer states are holding alcohol retailers liable for harms caused by customers who were served illegally, according to a new report from researchers at Alcohol Policy Consultations and the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Published online by the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, the legal research study documents the gradual erosion of commercial host liability (also referred to as dram shop liability) from 1989 to 2011...

Status quo bias in health decision making

Date: Jul-31-2013
Medical noncompliance -- or failure to follow the doctor's orders -- is estimated to increase healthcare costs in the US by $100 billion per year. Patients sometimes opt not to take medicines, for instance, because the side effects are unbearable or the dosing regimens are too complicated. But medical noncompliance may also stem from sheer inertia -- the tendency to stay in the current state, even when that state is undesirable...

Contemplating reasons for not getting results of HIV tests increases likelihood of returning to doctor

Date: Jul-31-2013
Some studies of at-risk populations suggest that up to half of the people tested for HIV never return to the doctor's office to find out their test results. While many of these people may simply forget to return or deem the results unimportant, it is likely that a portion of people don't return because they don't want to know the results...

Evolution is likely responsible for menopause

Date: Jul-31-2013
A study of mortality and fertility patterns among seven species of wild apes and monkeys and their relatives, compared with similar data from hunter-gatherer humans, shows that menopause sets humans apart from other primates. Nonhuman primates aren't immune to the fading female fertility that comes with age, the researchers say. But human females are unique in living well beyond their childbearing years. "Unlike other primates women tend to have a long post-reproductive life...

Undoing a hairpin doubles gene activity

Date: Jul-31-2013
Male fruit flies have one X chromosome per cell, females have two. So genes on the male X must work twice as hard to produce the same amount of protein as its female counterparts. An LMU team has found a new switch involved in making this possible. In the fruit fly Drosophila - as in humans - the sexes have different sets of chromosomes. While females have two X chromosomes in their somatic cells, males have one X and one copy of the much smaller Y. The latter determines maleness but carries very few genes, while the X chromosome has thousands of genes...

Improving results of cataract surgery by looking at outcomes important to patients

Date: Jul-31-2013
Special issue of Optometry and Vision Science focuses on patient-reported outcome measures Cataract surgery can lead to good results from a clinical standpoint yet have poor outcomes from the patient's point of view, reports a study, "Analyzing Patient-Reported Outcomes to Improve Cataract Care", appearing in the August issue of Optometry and Vision Science, official journal of the American Academy of Optometry. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health...

Diets lacking omega-3s lead to anxiety, hyperactivity in teens

Date: Jul-31-2013
Diets lacking omega-3 fatty acids - found in foods like wild fish, eggs, and grass-fed livestock - can have worsened effects over consecutive generations, especially affecting teens, according to a University of Pittsburgh study. Published in Biological Psychiatry, the Pitt team found that in a rodent model second-generation deficiencies of omega-3s caused elevated states of anxiety and hyperactivity in adolescents and affected the teens' memory and cognition...

Poverty during childhood increases risk of substance use later in life

Date: Jul-31-2013
Children who grow up in poverty are more likely than wealthier children to smoke cigarettes, but they are less likely to binge drink and are no more prone to use marijuana, according to researchers at Duke Medicine. The researchers also found that economic strains in early life - including family worries about paying bills or needing to sell possessions for cash - independently erode a child's self-control, regardless of strong parenting in adolescence. Lack of self-control often leads to substance use...