Health News

Lower Risk Of Cancer For Children Of Long-Lived Parents

Date: May-30-2013
The offspring of parents who live to a ripe old age are more likely to live longer themselves, and less prone to cancer and other common diseases associated with ageing, a study has revealed. Experts at the University of Exeter Medical School, supported by the National Institute for Health Research Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care in the South West Peninsula (NIHR PenCLAHRC), led an international collaboration which discovered that people who had a long-lived mother or father were 24% less likely to get cancer...

Stereotyping Leads Men And Women To Lie About Sex

Date: May-30-2013
People will lie about their sexual behavior to match cultural expectations about how men or women should act - even though they wouldn't distort other gender-related behaviors, new research suggests. The study found that men were willing to admit that they sometimes engaged in behaviors seen by college students as more appropriate for women, such as writing poetry. The same was true for women, who didn't hide the fact that they told obscene jokes, or sometimes participated in other "male-type" deeds...

Health Inequalities In Children May Have Widened In Past 10 Years

Date: May-30-2013
Action needed to close the gap in children's health between different socio-economic groups Government efforts to narrow the gap on health inequalities amongst children from different socioeconomic groups across England during the past 10 years have failed and may even have got wider, indicates research published online in the Archives of Disease in Childhood. Researchers from London have said concerted efforts are now needed to change this trend especially as a rise in child poverty is anticipated in coming years as a consequence of the current financial climate...

Low Mortality Hospitals Better Equipped To Handle Heart Surgery Complications

Date: May-30-2013
Hospitals with low rates of patient mortality appear better able to rescue patients from complications following cardiac surgery, according to a study published in the June 2013 issue of The Annals of Thoracic Surgery. Researchers, led by Haritha G. Reddy from the University of Michigan, analyzed "failure to rescue" (FTR; the probability of death following a complication) data for 45,904 adult patients who underwent cardiac surgery at one of 33 surgical programs in Michigan between 2006 and 2010...

Disease That Attacks Songbirds Can Teach Us About Virulence Of Human Diseases

Date: May-30-2013
A novel disease in songbirds has rapidly evolved to become more harmful to its host on at least two separate occasions in just two decades, according to a new study. The research provides a real-life model to help understand how diseases that threaten humans can be expected to change in virulence as they emerge. "Everybody who's had the flu has probably wondered at some point, 'Why do I feel so bad?'" said Dana Hawley of Virginia Tech, the lead author of the study published in PLOS Biology...

Red Blood Cell Transfusion In Cardiac Surgery May Increase Risk Of Infection - Use Of Platelets During Transfusion Does Not Appear To Carry Same Risk

Date: May-30-2013
The risk of postoperative infection appears to increase when patients receive red blood cell (RBC) transfusion during or after cardiac surgery, and greater attention to practices that limit red blood cell use could potentially reduce the occurrence of major postoperative infections, according to a study published in the June 2013 issue of The Annals of Thoracic Surgery...

Smokers Die Ten Years Sooner Than Non-Smokers

Date: May-30-2013
We all know that smoking is bad for our health. But how bad is bad? The answer is very bad, life changing in fact. But everyone also knows someone who has smoked all their adult life, never gotten lung cancer or a respiratory disease of any kind and lived to a ripe old age. George Burns, the famous comedian, who lived to be 100 hundred years old, often remarked "I smoke ten to fifteen cigars a day. At my age I have to hold on to something". So, true enough - but in the discussion ahead you will find that these individuals are very much the rare exception and certainly not the rule...

New Gene Discovered Associated With A Form Of Congenital Heart Disease - Babies Born With Hole In The Heart

Date: May-30-2013
British Heart Foundation (BHF) Professor Bernard Keavney, from The University of Manchester and Newcastle University, led the research which saw investigators from Newcastle, Nottingham, Oxford and Leicester universities in the UK, together with colleagues in Europe, Australia and Canada pool resources. The discovery, published in Nature Genetics, will help lead to better understanding of why some patients are born with the disorder...

Brain Activity In Sleep May Impact Emotional Disturbances In Children With ADHD

Date: May-29-2013
Sleep consolidates emotional memories in healthy children but not those with ADHD Sleep consolidates emotional memories in healthy children but not in children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), according to research published May 29 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by TK and colleagues from TK. The study suggests these deficits in sleep-related emotional processing may exacerbate emotional problems experienced in the daytime by children with ADHD...

Apes Get Emotional Over Games Of Chance

Date: May-29-2013
Chimpanzees, bonobos exhibit emotional responses to outcomes of decision-making Like some humans, chimpanzees and bonobos exhibit emotional responses to outcomes of their decisions by pouting or throwing angry tantrums when a risk-taking strategy fails to pay off, according to research published May 29 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Alexandra Rosati from Yale University and Brian Hare from Duke University. The researchers assessed the emotional responses and motivation of chimpanzees and bonobos living in African sanctuaries...