Health News

Withholding estrogen therapy cost tens of thousands of lives

Date: Jul-20-2013
Nearly 50,000 women died unnecessarily over the last ten years because estrogen therapy was not given to patients aged 50 to 69 who had undergone a hysterectomy after the 2002 Women's Health Initiative (WHI) study. In 2002, doctors and patients were seriously put off using HRT (hormone replacement therapy) because two trials - HERS and WHI - suggested that one type might raise the risk of cardiovascular problems. Up to that time, HRT had been seen as the savior for women who were in medical menopause; those who had undergone hysterectomy. Dr...

Link between mutation and congenital urinary tract defects

Date: Jul-20-2013
Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) and collaborators have identified a genetic mutation that causes congenital malformations of the kidney and urinary tract, a common form of birth defect and the most common cause of kidney failure in children. It is the first time that a specific genetic mutation has been linked to a non-syndromic form of urinary tract malformation. The findings were published in the online issue of the New England Journal of Medicine...

Personality dispositions affect health and happiness

Date: Jul-20-2013
Research from the University of Southampton has shown that young adults, who are more outgoing or more emotionally stable, are happier in later life than their more introverted or less emotionally stable peers...

Researchers are defeating persistent bacteria known for causing infections in hospitals

Date: Jul-20-2013
The bacteria, Enterococcus faecalis, are the second-leading cause of hospital-associated infections in the U.S., said Lynn Hancock, associate professor of biology and leader of the research. His team has discovered how a regulatory system helps this bacteria resist a host's innate immune defense - a finding that may help develop novel drug compounds to fight the bacteria. "Right now, we have very limited therapeutic interventions because the bacteria is highly resistant to not only antibiotics but a variety of other environmental stresses," Hancock said...

Scientists find 3D structure of key drug target for diabetes

Date: Jul-20-2013
An international team led by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) has determined and analyzed the three-dimensional atomic structure of the human glucagon receptor. The receptor, found mainly on liver and kidney cells, helps regulate glucose levels in the bloodstream and is the target of potential therapeutic agents for type 2 diabetes. "Our data should change the current view of how drugs are designed with this and related receptors," said TSRI Research Associate Fai Yiu Siu, PhD, who was first author of the study...

Missed diagnoses and drug errors are main causes of malpractice suits

Date: Jul-20-2013
Most primary care doctors are sued mainly for missed diagnoses and drug errors, researchers at Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland Medical School and Trinity College Dublin reported in BMJ Open. Most of the missed diagnoses involved cases of meningitis, heart attack and cancer. The authors, E. Wallace, J. Lowry, S. M. Smith and T. Fahey explained that there have been very few studies on litigation at primary care level. This is surprising, given that most patient visits are with their primary care physician (general practitioner)...

Controlled insulin delivery via injectable 'smart sponge'

Date: Jul-20-2013
Researchers have developed a drug delivery technique for diabetes treatment in which a sponge-like material surrounds an insulin core. The sponge expands and contracts in response to blood sugar levels to release insulin as needed. The technique could also be used for targeted drug delivery to cancer cells. "We wanted to mimic the function of health beta-cells, which produce insulin and control its release in a healthy body," says Dr...

Predicting surgical outcome for epilepsy patients

Date: Jul-20-2013
Scientists at Bonn University Hospital and at the Max Planck Institute for neurological research in Cologne have developed a method with which the chances of success of a surgical procedure for temporal lobe epilepsy can be accurately predicted. The rate of accurate predictions is more than 90%. The results are now being presented in the scientific journal NeuroImage:Clinical. When many nerve cells simultaneously fire in the brain, an epileptic seizure results. The most frequent form is temporal lobe epilepsy...

Chemical contaminants in food evaluated by Danish survey

Date: Jul-20-2013
In general, Danes have no reason to worry about unwanted chemical compounds in the food they put on their table - especially not if they eat a varied diet. However, a monitoring survey puts focus on certain compounds - e.g. inorganic arsenic and acrylamide, the intake of which should be reduced due to health risks. These findings are presented in the latest report on chemical contaminants in food prepared by the National Food Institute, Technical University of Denmark...

The soaring costs of treating dizziness in the emergency room

Date: Jul-20-2013
A new Johns Hopkins research report says emergency room visits for severe dizziness have grown exponentially in recent years, with costs topping $3.9 billion in 2011 and projected to reach $4.4 billion by 2015. The investigators say roughly half a billion a year could be saved immediately if emergency room physicians stopped the routine and excessive use of head CT scans to search for stroke in dizzy patients, and instead used simple bedside physical exams to identify the small group of patients that truly needs imaging...