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Weight discrimination makes people more obese
Date: Jul-29-2013Weight discrimination, rather than motivating people to lose weight is more likely to make them become even more obese, researchers from the Florida State University College of Medicine reported in PLoS ONE. Weight discrimination is common in the USA. Studies have demonstrated a link between weight discrimination and poor economic and psychological outcomes. However, very few studies have examined whether it might also have an impact on long-term body weight. Angelina Sutin and Antonio Terracciano analyzed body weight data on more than 6,000 participants from 2006 to 2010...
Stem cell discovery: Astrocytes could repair stroke brain damage
Date: Jul-29-2013Stem cell researchers have discovered that astrocytes may prove useful against stroke and other brain disorders. Astrocytes - neural cells that form the blood-brain barrier and so control what can and cannot enter the brain from the blood supply - have previously been overlooked in this area of stroke research. A collaborative study published in Nature Communications suggests that astrocytes can do far more than simply support nerve cells (neurons)...
Robots taking over to help medical research
Date: Jul-29-2013It has been a long and stealthy takeover, but robots now dominate many leading bioscience laboratories, doing in just hours what once took days or weeks. Now the convergence of automation with nanotechnologies, biomedics and advanced algorithms promises to take robotization of medical research much further. In May of this year, Ross King, professor of machine intelligence at the UK's University of Manchester, traveled east to talk to students at the University of Nottingham campus in Ningbo, China...
Parkinson's discovery yields potential to 'protect' nerve cells
Date: Jul-29-2013Biologists at The Scripps Research Institute in California have made a significant discovery that could lead to a new therapeutic strategy for Parkinson's disease. The findings, recently published online in the journal Molecular and Cell Biology, focus on an enzyme known as parkin, whose absence causes an early-onset form of Parkinson's disease. Precisely how the loss of this enzyme leads to the deaths of neurons had been unclear...
'Promising' blood test discovered for Alzheimer's dementia
Date: Jul-29-2013Researchers in Germany have identified a new blood test that may in future provide much earlier diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease and other degenerative disorders. The team, from Saarland University and Siemens Healthcare, describe their test in the open access journal Genome Biology. They found it could be used to discriminate between people with Alzheimer's from healthy people without the dementia...
Simple and versatile tool enables broad-scale genome tinkering
Date: Jul-29-2013Duke researchers have devised a way to quickly and easily target and tinker with any gene in the human genome. The new tool, which builds on an RNA-guided enzyme they borrowed from bacteria, is being made freely available to researchers who may now apply it to the next round of genome discovery. The new method also has obvious utility for gene therapy and for efforts to reprogram stem or adult cells into other cell types - for example, to make new neurons from skin cells...
Dry eye sufferers benefit from supplement with omega fatty acids
Date: Jul-29-2013Study findings published online, ahead of print, in Cornea show that daily dietary supplementation with a unique combination of omega fatty acids (GLA, EPA and DHA) for six months is effective in improving ocular irritation symptoms and halting the progression of inflammation that characterizes moderate to severe dry eye. The multicenter, double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial conducted at Baylor College of Medicine and Virginia Eye Consultants evaluated 38 post-menopausal women with tear dysfunction in both eyes...
Clues to Dravet syndrome's origins and possible treatment offered by technique called "epilepsy in a dish"
Date: Jul-28-2013A new stem cell-based approach to studying epilepsy has yielded a surprising discovery about what causes one form of the disease, and may help in the search for better medicines to treat all kinds of seizure disorders. The findings, reported by a team of scientists from the University of Michigan Medical School and colleagues, use a technique that could be called "epilepsy in a dish". By turning skin cells of epilepsy patients into stem cells, and then turning those stem cells into neurons, or brain nerve cells, the team created a miniature testing ground for epilepsy...
45 percent of older adults suffer delirium in recovery room after surgery
Date: Jul-28-2013Close to half of older adults undergoing surgery with general anesthesia are found to have delirium in the postanesthesia care unit (PACU), according to a study in the August issue of Anesthesia & Analgesia, official journal of the International Anesthesia Research Society (IARS). Delirium occurring early after surgery is linked to decreased cognitive (mental) function and an increased rate of nursing home admission, according to the study by Dr Karin J. Neufeld of Johns Hopkins University and colleagues...
Accidental ingestion of liquid medications by young children may be reduced by flow restrictors
Date: Jul-28-2013In the US, child-resistant packaging for most medications has contributed to the prevention of thousands of pediatric deaths. Nevertheless, over 500,000 calls are made to poison control centers each year after accidental ingestion of medications by young children, and the number of emergency department visits for unsupervised medication ingestions is rising...
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