Health News

Men Who Can't Produce Sperm Face Increased Cancer Risk, Stanford-Led Study Finds

Date: Jun-25-2013
Men who are diagnosed as azoospermic - infertile because of an absence of sperm in their ejaculate - are more prone to developing cancer than the general population, a study led by a Stanford University School of Medicine urologist has found. And a diagnosis of azoospermia before age 30 carries an eight-fold cancer risk, the study says...

Iron Dosing Regimens Affect Dialysis Patients' Infection Risk

Date: Jun-25-2013
While intravenous iron is critical for maintaining the health of many dialysis patients, administering large doses over a short period of time increases patients' risk of developing serious infections, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN). Smaller doses given for a longer period of time appears to be much safer. Dialysis patients often develop anemia, or low levels of red blood cells, and must receive intravenous treatments of iron to correct the condition...

Brain Images Of Previously Unattainable Quality In High-Resolution Brain Model

Date: Jun-25-2013
"BigBrain helps us to generate new knowledge on the healthy and also the diseased brain," says Katrin Amunts, director at the Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-1) and the C. and O. Vogt Institute of Brain Research at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. For example: "As a consequence of its evolution, the human cerebral cortex is very heavily folded," says the neuroscientist. She explains that this is the reason why, in some areas, the thickness of the cerebral cortex can only be determined very imprecisely using imaging techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging...

Pluripotent Cells From Pancreatic Cancer Cells First Human Model Of Cancer's Progression

Date: Jun-25-2013
Pancreatic cancer carries a dismal prognosis. According to the National Cancer Institute, the overall five-year relative survival for 2003-2009 was 6 percent. Still, researchers and clinicians don't have a non-invasive way to even detect early cells that portent later disease. 'There's no PSA test for pancreatic cancer,' they say, and that's one of the main reasons why pancreatic cancer is detected so late in its course. They have been searching for a human-cell model of early-disease progression...

Scientists Discover Key Signaling Pathway That Makes Young Neurons Connect

Date: Jun-25-2013
Neuroscientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have filled in a significant gap in the scientific understanding of how neurons mature, pointing to a better understanding of some developmental brain disorders. In the new study, the researchers identified a molecular program that controls an essential step in the fast-growing brains of young mammals. The researchers found that this signaling pathway spurs the growth of neuronal output connections by a mechanism called "mitochondrial capture," which has never been described before...

Lumosity's Big Data Provides New Approach To Understanding Human Cognition

Date: Jun-25-2013
Lumosity, the leading brain training company, have announced a new web-based, big data methodology for conducting human cognitive performance research. Lumosity's research platform, the Human Cognition Project, contains the world's largest and continuously growing dataset of human cognitive performance, which currently includes more than 40 million people who have been tracked for up to 6 years...

Breastfeeding Boosts Ability To Climb Social Ladder

Date: Jun-25-2013
And lessens chances of downwards social mobility Breastfeeding not only boosts children's chances of climbing the social ladder, but it also reduces the chances of downwards mobility, suggests a large study published online in the Archives of Disease in Childhood. The findings are based on changes in the social class of two groups of individuals born in 1958 (17,419 people) and in 1970 (16,771 people). The researchers asked each of the children's mums, when their child was five or seven years old, whether they had breastfed him/her...

700 Women With Urinary Cancers Missing Out On Prompt Diagnosis Every Year

Date: Jun-25-2013
Family doctors may be attributing bladder and kidney cancer symptoms to harmless causes Around 700 women in England with symptoms of kidney or bladder cancer are missing out on prompt diagnosis and treatment of their condition every year, reveals research in the online only journal BMJ Open. This may be because family doctors tend to attribute women's - rather than men's - initial symptoms to harmless causes, such as bacterial infections, and some women therefore have to visit their GP several times before they get referred to a specialist, say the researchers...

Findings Will Help Explain Vitamin D's Role In Seasonal Illnesses

Date: Jun-25-2013
UC Irvine and Mayo Clinic researchers have found that vitamin D levels in the U.S. population peak in August and bottom out in February. The essential vitamin - necessary for healthy bones - is produced in the skin upon exposure to ultraviolet B rays from the sun. Vitamin D helps bones absorb calcium and can protect against osteoporosis. It's also thought to play a role in seasonal illnesses, such as the flu. Low levels of vitamin D are believed to impair "innate immunity" i.e., the body's first line of defense against pathogens...

Emergency Helicopter Airlifts Help The Seriously Injured

Date: Jun-25-2013
Patients transferred to hospital via helicopter ambulance tend to have a higher survival rate than those who take the more traditional road route, despite having more severe injuries. The research, published in BioMed Central's open access journal Critical Care suggests that air ambulances are both effective and worthy of investment. Helicopters have been used as emergency ambulances for the past 40 years. For much of that time there has been ongoing debate about the cost of the service compared to the benefit in saving lives...