Health News

Older Drivers More Open To Talking About 'Driving Retirement'

Date: Jun-05-2013
Clinicians often wait too long before talking to elderly patients about giving up driving even though many may be open to those discussions earlier, according to a new study from the University of Colorado School of Medicine and the CU College of Nursing. "These conversations often don't happen until clinicians see a 'red flag' which could mean an accident or some physical problem that makes driving more difficult for the elderly," said Marian Betz, MD, MPH, at the CU School of Medicine and lead author of the study...

Researchers Closer To A Blood Test For Alzheimer's Disease

Date: Jun-05-2013
Alzheimer researchers in Spain have taken a step closer to finding a blood test to help in the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. With approximately 75% of the estimated 36 million Alzheimer's sufferers worldwide yet to receive a reliable diagnosis, the potential impact on the lives of possible sufferers, present and future, could be huge. Alzheimer's disease is a neurodegenerative disease most frequently affecting the elderly. The most commonly associated symptom is a progressive loss of memory to the stage in which the patient is completely dependent on caregivers for their daily needs...

Baby's Ability To Roll Unaffected By Sleeping On Back

Date: Jun-05-2013
Baby, keep on rolling. A campaign to put babies to bed on their backs to reduce the risk of sudden infant death syndrome has not impaired infants' rolling abilities, according to University of Alberta research. Johanna Darrah, a professor of physical therapy in the Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine, says infants develop the ability to roll much the same today as they did 20 years ago when the "back to sleep" campaign was introduced and successfully reduced the occurrence of SIDS...

Study Supports Role For Skin Sodium In Blood Pressure Regulation

Date: Jun-05-2013
It's time to expand the models for blood pressure regulation, according to clinical pharmacologist Jens Titze, M.D. Titze and his colleagues have identified a new cast of cells and molecules that function in the skin to control sodium balance and blood pressure. "Hypertension research has traditionally focused on the kidney, blood vessels and brain," said Titze, associate professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt University. "But despite massive research efforts, we still do not understand in more than 90 percent of our patients why their blood pressure is elevated...

Researchers Studying Cocaine Craving Focus On A Brain Protein And An Antibiotic

Date: Jun-05-2013
A new study conducted by a team of Indiana University neuroscientists demonstrates that GLT1, a protein that clears glutamate from the brain, plays a critical role in the craving for cocaine that develops after only several days of cocaine use. The study, appearing in The Journal of Neuroscience, showed that when rats taking large doses of cocaine are withdrawn from the drug, the production of GLT1 in the nucleus accumbens, a region of the brain implicated in motivation, begins to decrease...

Canine Companionship Helps Improve Moods Among Teens In Treatment

Date: Jun-05-2013
Lindsay Ellsworth is prescribing a new, mood-boosting therapy for teenagers in drug and alcohol treatment: shelter dogs. On Friday afternoons, about four dogs from the Spokane Humane Society take a field trip to Excelsior Youth Center as a group of teenage boys eagerly await their arrival. Ellsworth, a doctoral candidate in animal sciences at Washington State University, organizes the meet-ups where participants can help brush, feed and play with the dogs. "We found one of the most robust effects of interacting with the dogs was increased joviality," she said...

Protein Modification May Help Control Alzheimer's And Epilepsy

Date: Jun-05-2013
In the brain, cell-to-cell communication is dependent on neurotransmitters, chemicals that aid the transfer of information between neurons. Several proteins have the ability to modify the production of these chemicals by either increasing or decreasing their amount, or promoting or preventing their secretion. One example is tomosyn, which hinders the secretion of neurotransmitters in abnormal amounts. Dr. Boaz Barak of Tel Aviv University's Sagol School of Neuroscience, in collaboration with Prof...

Increase In Neurons That Produce Histamine Discovered In Narcolepsy Patients

Date: Jun-05-2013
A new study provides surprising evidence that people with narcolepsy have an increased number of neurons that produce histamine, suggesting that histamine signaling may be a novel therapeutic target for this potentially disabling sleep disorder. "The orexin/hypocretin neuropeptides promote wakefulness, and researchers have known for 13 years that narcolepsy is caused by loss of the orexin/hypocretin neurons in the hypothalamus," said principal investigator Thomas Scammell, MD, professor of Neurology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Mass...

Physical Symptoms Often Manifest In Stressed Middle-Aged Women

Date: Jun-05-2013
In four out of ten cases, long-term stress suffered by women leads to some form of physical complaint. This is shown by a study of 1,500 women carried out at the Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Within the Population Study of Women in Gothenburg, researchers at the University of Gothenburg's Sahlgrenska Academy have followed around 1,500 women since the late 1960s...

Researchers Reveal Potential New Way To Suppress Tumor Growth

Date: Jun-05-2013
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, with colleagues at the University of Rochester Medical Center, have identified a new mechanism that appears to suppress tumor growth, opening the possibility of developing a new class of anti-cancer drugs. Writing in this week's online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Willis X...