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Rhode Island Hospital Reduces Incidence Of Hospital-Associated C. Difficile By 70 Percent
Date: Jun-24-2013Rhode Island Hospital has reduced the incidence of hospital-associated Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) infections by 70 percent and reduced annual associated mortality in patients with hospital-associated C. difficile by 64 percent through successive implementation of five rigorous interventions, as reported in the July 2013 issue of The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety. Clostridium difficile is a toxin-producing bacterium that lives in the colon. A major cause of morbidity and mortality in the U.S...
Herding Cancer Cells To Their Death
Date: Jun-24-2013An advanced tumor is a complex ecosystem. Though derived from a single cell, it evolves as it grows until it contains several subspecies of cells that vary dramatically in their genetic traits and behaviors. This cellular heterogeneity is what makes advanced tumors so difficult to treat...
'Forrest Gump' Mice Show Too Much Of A Key Neurotransmitter Called Acetylcholine Can Be Bad
Date: Jun-24-2013A line of genetically modified mice that Western University scientists call "Forrest Gump" because, like the movie character, they can run far but they aren't smart, is furthering the understanding of a key neurotransmitter called acetylcholine (ACh). Marco Prado and his team at Robarts Research Institute say the mice show what happens when too much of this neurotransmitter becomes available in the brain. Boosting ACh is a therapeutic target for Alzheimer's disease because it's found in reduced amounts when there's cognitive failure...
Lab Reproduction Of A Marine Compound With Antibiotic Properties
Date: Jun-24-2013Bacterial resistance to drugs leads pharmaceutical labs to be in constant search for new antibiotics to treat the same diseases. For the last thirty years, the sea bottom has yielded a wealth of substances with properties of interest to the pharmaceutical industry. Isolated from a marine microorganism off the coast of Alicante by the company BioMar, baringolin shows promising antibiotic activity at a very low concentration...
New Risk Assessment Tool To Predict Stroke In Patients With Atrial Fibrillation
Date: Jun-24-2013A more accurate and reliable stroke prediction model has been developed to help physicians decide whether to start blood-thinning treatment for patients with atrial fibrillation, as described in the current online issue of the Journal of the American Heart Association. Atrial fibrillation affects millions of Americans. Because the heart-rhythm disturbance promotes the formation of blood clots that can travel to the brain and block an artery, atrial fibrillation independently increases the risk of ischemic stroke four-to-five-fold...
African-Americans On Medicaid Are Far Less Likely To Receive Living Kidney Transplants
Date: Jun-24-2013African-Americans with Medicaid as their primary insurance were less likely to receive a living kidney transplant (LKT) than patients with private insurance, according to a new study by researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. The study is published on the Early View online edition of Clinical Transplantation. "Living kidney transplantation is the optimal treatment for patients with end-stage renal disease, offering the best quality of life and longest survival," said Amber Reeves-Daniel, D.O...
Black-White Education Gap Is Worsened By Unresponsive State Policymakers, Baylor Study Shows
Date: Jun-24-2013State policymakers' attention to teacher quality - an issue education research shows is essential to improving schooling outcomes for racial minority students - is highly responsive to low graduation rates among white students, but not to low graduation rates among black students, according to a Baylor University study. The findings are evidence that "the persisting achievement gap between white and black students has distinctively political foundations," the researchers wrote...
The Brain Can Plan Actions Toward Things The Eye Doesn't See
Date: Jun-24-2013People can plan strategic movements to several different targets at the same time, even when they see far fewer targets than are actually present, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. A team of researchers at the Brain and Mind Institute at the University of Western Ontario took advantage of a pictorial illusion - known as the "connectedness illusion" - that causes people to underestimate the number of targets they see...
Researchers Determine Factors That Influence Spinach Contamination Pre-Harvest
Date: Jun-24-2013A team of researchers from Texas and Colorado has identified a variety of factors that influence the likelihood of E. coli contamination of spinach on farms prior to harvest. Their research is published in the July 2013 issue of the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology. "Microbial contamination of produce seems strongly influenced by the time since the last irrigation, the workers' personal hygiene and the field's use prior to planting of produce," says first author Sangshin Park of Texas A&M University, College Station...
Deep Brain Stimulation Effective For Most Common Hereditary Dystonia
Date: Jun-24-2013In what is believed to be the largest follow-up record of patients with the most common form of hereditary dystonia - a movement disorder that can cause crippling muscle contractions - experts in deep brain stimulation report good success rates and lasting benefits. Michele Tagliati, MD, neurologist, director of the Movement Disorders Program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center's Department of Neurology, and Ron L. Alterman, MD, chief of the Division of Neurosurgery at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, published the study in the July issue of the journal Neurosurgery...
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