Health News

General Anesthesia Raises Dementia Risk Among Elderly Patients

Date: Jun-02-2013
Elderly patients who are exposed to general anesthesia have a 35% higher risk of developing dementia, researchers from INSERM and University of Bordeaux, France, reported at Euroanaesthesia, the annual congress of the European Society of Anaesthesiology (ESA). Dr Francois Sztark and team explained that POCD (post-operative cognitive dysfunction), a common complication of major surgery, could be linked to dementia several years after the procedure. Dr...

Improving Understanding Of HIV-1 Infection Through Computer Simulations

Date: Jun-02-2013
Scientists have long been unable to fully explain how infections attack the body, but now a team of researchers, including one from the University of Central Florida, has taken a step closer to understanding how the process works in HIV-1. The results mean that one day that knowledge may prevent infection. The result of the team's work appears in the online edition of Nature. Peijun Zhang, an associate professor in the department of Structural Biology at the University of Pittsburgh led the team...

Overcoming Infections Without Antibiotics

Date: Jun-02-2013
Given the option, many women with symptoms of urinary tract infections are choosing to avoid antibiotics and give their bodies a chance to heal naturally, finds research in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Family Practice. The research shows that 70% of women with symptoms of uncomplicated urinary tract infections who did not use antibiotics for a week were cured or showed improvement. Antimicrobial-resistant bacteria are already a big problem and the incidence of 'superbugs', which are resistant to several antibiotics, is on the rise...

Can We Do More To Make Drinking Water Clean And Safe In Developing Countries

Date: Jun-02-2013
There is a lack of evidence regarding the effectiveness of technologies used to reduce arsenic contamination finds research in BioMed Central's open access journal Environmental Evidence. More studies assessing the technologies themselves and how they are used in the community are needed to ensure that people have access to safe, clean water. Arsenic is now recognised to be one of the world's greatest environmental hazards, threatening the lives of several hundred million people...

Links Identified Between Genetic Variants And Educational Attainment

Date: Jun-02-2013
A multi-national team of researchers has identified genetic markers that predict educational attainment by pooling data from more than 125,000 individuals in the United States, Australia, and 13 western European countries. The study, which appears in the journal Science, was conducted by the Social Science Genetic Association Consortium (SSGAC), which includes researchers at NYU, Erasmus University, Cornell University, Harvard University, the University of Bristol, and the University of Queensland, among other institutions...

Locating HIV Patients 'Lost To Follow-Up' In New York City

Date: Jun-02-2013
Public health officials in New York City have launched a successful program to locate HIV-positive patients who have been "lost to follow-up" and reconnect them with treatment services, reports a study published in AIDS, official journal of the International AIDS Society. AIDS is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. Efforts to restart antiretroviral therapy are especially important with the current emphasis on "treatment-as-prevention" for HIV, according to the study by Chi-Chi N...

15 Years Olds At Greatest Risk Of Sexual Assault

Date: Jun-02-2013
Sexual assault has almost as much to do with age as it does with gender, according to Penn State criminologists. Young people - both male and female - are the most likely targets of rape and other sexual assaults, said Richard Felson, professor of criminology and sociology. The most frequent victims of those assaults are 15 years old, regardless of gender, or the age of the offender, he said. Older people and women rarely commit the crime, but when they do, their most frequent victims are still 15 years old...

The Real Cost Of Resiliency In Children From Poor Families

Date: Jun-02-2013
Children living in poverty who appear to succeed socially may be failing biologically. Students able to overcome the stress of growing up poor are labeled "resilient" because of their ability to overcome adversity, but University of Georgia researchers found this resiliency has health costs that last well into adulthood. "Exposure to stress over time gets under the skin of children and adolescents, which makes them more vulnerable to disease later in life," said Gene Brody, founder and director of the UGA Center for Family Research...

Heart Health Of Men With Type 2 Diabetes Improved By Soccer Training

Date: Jun-02-2013
A new study from the Copenhagen Centre for Team Sport and Health at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, demonstrates that soccer training improves heart function, reduces blood pressure and elevates exercise capacity in patients with type 2 diabetes. Soccer training also reduces the need for medication. Soccer training makes the heart ten years younger "We discovered that soccer training significantly improved the flexibility of the heart and furthermore, that the cardiac muscle tissue was able to work 29% faster...

Faster Disease Diagnosis With New Single Virus Detection Techniques

Date: Jun-02-2013
To test the severity of a viral infection, clinicians try to gauge how many viruses are packed into a certain volume of blood or other bodily fluid. This measurement, called viral load, helps doctors diagnose or monitor chronic viral diseases such as HIV/AIDS and hepatitis. However, the standard methods used for these tests are only able to estimate the number of viruses in a given volume of fluid. Now two independent teams have developed new optics-based methods for determining the exact viral load of a sample by counting individual virus particles...