Health News

Hope Offered By New Treatment For Neuroblastoma

Date: Jun-05-2013
Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have found a promising strategy for defeating neuroblastoma - a malignant form of cancer in children - that focuses on the so-called MYCN protein. A specific chemical molecule helps to break down MYCN, which either kills the cancer cell or makes it mature into a harmless neuron. The discovery, which is published in the scientific journal PNAS, raises hopes for new and more effective treatments in the future. Neuroblastoma is the third most common form of cancer in children...

Medicaid Expansion Best Financial Option For States

Date: Jun-05-2013
States that choose not to expand Medicaid under federal health care reform will leave millions of their residents without health insurance and increase spending, at least in the short term, on the cost of treating uninsured residents, according to a new RAND Corporation study. If 14 states decide not to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act as intended by their governors, those state governments collectively will spend $1 billion more on uncompensated care in 2016 than they would if Medicaid is expanded. In addition, those 14 state governments would forego $8...

Insight Into Nature Vs. Nurture Offered By Songbird Study

Date: Jun-05-2013
JoVE has published a research technique that allows neural imaging of auditory stimuli in songbirds via MRI. The technique, developed by Dr. Annemie Van der Linden and her laboratory at the University of Antwerp in Belgium, will be one of the first published in JoVE Behavior, a new section of the video journal that focuses on observational and experimental techniques that seek to understand human and animal behavior through physiological, neurological, and genetic means...

Law Dramatically Reduced Hospital Prices For The Uninsured

Date: Jun-05-2013
To comply with a statewide "fair pricing" law, hospitals throughout California have significantly lowered prices to uninsured patients, with nearly all even going beyond the state mandate and offering free care to those below the poverty line. The surprising success of the legislation represents the beginnings of a safety net not in place for other states. Some 6.8 million people in California lack health insurance, often relying on hospital emergency departments for healthcare...

4 Lifestyle Changes Can Protect Your Heart And Reduce Your Risk Of Death

Date: Jun-05-2013
A large, multi-center study led by Johns Hopkins researchers has found a significant link between lifestyle factors and heart health, adding even more evidence in support of regular exercise, eating a Mediterranean-style diet, keeping a normal weight and, most importantly, not smoking. The researchers found that adopting those four lifestyle behaviors protected against coronary heart disease as well as the early buildup of calcium deposits in heart arteries, and reduced the chance of death from all causes by 80 percent over an eight-year period...

Enhancing Indoor Lighting May Improve Office Workers' Physical Well-Being And Sleep Quality

Date: Jun-05-2013
A new study demonstrates a strong relationship between workplace daylight exposure and office workers' sleep, activity and quality of life. Compared to workers in offices without windows, those with windows in the workplace received 173 percent more white light exposure during work hours and slept an average of 46 minutes more per night. There also was a trend for workers in offices with windows to have more physical activity than those without windows...

Genetic Testing Could Protect Younger African Americans With Breast Cancer And Their Relatives

Date: Jun-05-2013
A high percentage of African-American women with breast cancer who were evaluated at a university cancer-risk clinic were found to carry inherited genetic mutations that increase their risk for breast cancer. The finding suggests that inherited mutations may be more common than anticipated in this understudied group and may partially explain why African-Americans more often develop early onset and "triple-negative" breast cancer, an aggressive and difficult-to-treat form of the disease...

Shift Workers May Be At Increased Risk For Type 2 Diabetes

Date: Jun-05-2013
A new study suggests that night work may impair glucose tolerance, supporting a causal role of night work in the increased risk of Type 2 diabetes among shift workers. Results show that peak glucose levels were 16 percent higher during one night of simulated shift work, compared with one day of a simulated daytime work schedule. Compared with the daytime protocol, insulin levels during the night shift protocol were 40 to 50 percent higher at 80 minutes and 90 minutes after a meal...

New Oncogene And Potential Target In Lung Cancer: RET Rearrangement

Date: Jun-05-2013
In results presented at ASCO 2013, a University of Colorado Cancer Center study provided important details for a recently identified driver and target in lung adenocarcinoma: rearrangement of the gene RET. The finding is an important step along a trajectory like that which led to FDA approval of the drug crizotinib, which targets a somewhat similar rearrangement in the ALK gene. By comparison, the ALK rearrangement is present in 3-5 percent of lung cancers whereas the present study found RET rearrangements present in 8 of 51 (15...

Tuberculosis, Anthrax, And Other Diseases May Be Treated More Effectively By New Kind Of Antibiotic

Date: Jun-05-2013
Diseases such as tuberculosis, anthrax, and shigellosis - a severe food-borne illness - eventually could be treated with an entirely new and more-effective kind of antibiotic, thanks to a team of scientists led by Kenneth Keiler, an associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Penn State University...