Health News

How And Where Breast Tumor Cells Become Dormant And What Causes Them To Become Metastatic

Date: Jun-05-2013
The long-standing mystery behind dormant disseminated breast tumor cells and what activates them after years and even decades of latency may have been solved. Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have identified the microenvironment surrounding microvasculature - the small blood vessels that transport blood within tissues - as a niche where dormant cancer cells reside. When these blood vessels begin to sprout, the new tips produce molecules that transform dormant cancer cells into metastatic tumors...

Physicians Call For New Tax On Sugary Drinks, Fatty Foods; Tax Hike On Tobacco, Alcoholic Beverages

Date: Jun-05-2013
Go ye and sin no more - or pay for it, when it comes to junk food, smoking and consuming alcohol. That's the message from two Mayo Clinic physicians who say raising "sin" taxes on tobacco and alcoholic beverages and imposing them on sugary drinks and fatty foods would lead many people to cut back, improving public health. The article by Michael Joyner, M.D., and David Warner, M.D., appears in the June issue of the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings. The physicians contend that much of overall health depends on behavior and is relatively independent of the health care system...

In Highly Educated Pre-Alzheimer's Patients, PET Finds Increased Cognitive Reserve Levels

Date: Jun-05-2013
Highly educated individuals with mild cognitive impairment that later progressed to Alzheimer's disease cope better with the disease than individuals with a lower level of education in the same situation, according to research published in the June issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine. In the study "Metabolic Networks Underlying Cognitive Reserve in Prodromal Alzheimer Disease: A European Alzheimer Disease Consortium Project,"neural reserve and neural compensation were both shown to play a role in determining cognitive reserve, as evidenced by positron emission tomography (PET)...

Genetic Signature Of Deadly Brain Cancer Identified

Date: Jun-05-2013
A multi-institutional team of researchers have pinpointed the genetic traits of the cells that give rise to gliomas - the most common form of malignant brain cancer. The findings, which appear in the journal Cell Reports, provide scientists with rich new potential set of targets to treat the disease. "This study identifies a core set of genes and pathways that are dysregulated during both the early and late stages of tumor progression," said University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) neurologist Steven Goldman, M.D., Ph.D...

New Drug Target Identified In Deadly Form Of Leukemia

Date: Jun-05-2013
A research team led by the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School (Duke-NUS) in Singapore has identified ways to inhibit the function of a key protein linked to stem cell-like behavior in terminal-stage chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), making it possible to develop drugs that may extend the survival of these patients...

Weather May Influence Transmission Of West Nile, Other Threats

Date: Jun-05-2013
Urban epidemics resulting from viral diseases, such as West Nile fever and chikungunya fever, are transmitted by infected mosquitoes. According to Virginia Tech scientists, mosquitoes reared in cooler temperatures have weaker immune systems, making them more susceptible to dangerous viruses and more likely to transmit them to people...

Enrollees In Family Transition Program Lost 9 Months Of Life Expectancy

Date: Jun-05-2013
U.S. workfare programs have been praised by some for cutting welfare rolls and improving the economic well-being of families. But little is known about how these policies affected participants' health and mortality. Researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health studied enrollees in Florida's Family Transition Program who were given a time limit for welfare benefits and exposed to job training. They were compared to a control group who received traditional welfare benefits...

New UK Coins Increase Nickel Skin Allergy Risk 4 Fold

Date: Jun-05-2013
In a bid to save 10 million pounds a year the British Treasury is replacing copper-nickel five and ten pence coins with new nickel-plated steel versions. However, while no UK health assessment has taken place, scientists in Sweden have analyzed the allergy risk after the Swedish state bank announced it will reduce traces of nickel in Swedish coinage. The assessment, published in Contact Dermatitis reveals that the UK public's exposure to nickel allergic reactions will increase four fold...

Cognitive Function, IQ Linked To Blood Vessels In The Eye

Date: Jun-05-2013
The width of blood vessels in the retina, located at the back of the eye, may indicate brain health years before the onset of dementia and other deficits, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Research shows that younger people who score low on intelligence tests, such as IQ, tend to be at higher risk for poorer health and shorter lifespan, but factors like socioeconomic status and health behaviors don't fully account for the relationship...

A New Approach To Multiple Sclerosis

Date: Jun-05-2013
In his article, "Pathoetiology of multiple sclerosis: are we barking up the wrong tree?", Peter K...