Health News

Targeting Frequent Health Care Users With Severe Addictions

Date: May-16-2013
A program co-led by St. Michael's Hospital could be the next widely used model to treat patients who are frequent users of the health care system and have severe addictions, often complicated by homelessness and mental health problems. The Toronto Community Addiction Team (TCAT) was developed to improve health and social outcomes for people with addictions who are frequent users of health services by providing one-on-one intensive case management from a harm reduction approach...

Detect Alzheimer's Disease Years Before Memory Loss And Cognitive Decline Become Apparent

Date: May-16-2013
Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have helped identify many of the biomarkers for Alzheimer's disease that could potentially predict which patients will develop the disorder later in life. Now, studying spinal fluid samples and health data from 201 research participants at the Charles F. and Joanne Knight Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, the researchers have shown the markers are accurate predictors of Alzheimer's years before symptoms develop...

Purdue Innovation Could Help People With Severe Hearing Loss

Date: May-16-2013
Mel Chua, a Purdue University doctoral candidate in engineering education, received her current set of hearing aids in May 2012. She has severe hearing loss but has not worn hearing aids most of her adult life because they did not offer a significant improvement to her hearing. "I got my first hearing aids before I started kindergarten," she said. "I refused to wear them in fifth grade, and I more or less went without them except for brief interludes at ages 16 and 20. I tried them at those times and decided they weren't helping me...

Researchers Mine The Botulinum Genome In The Hope Of Disarming This Deadly Foe

Date: May-16-2013
The toxin that causes botulism is the most potent that we know of. Eating an amount of toxin just 1000th the weight of a grain of salt can be fatal, which is why so much effort has been put into keeping Clostridium botulinum, which produces the toxin, out of our food. The Institute of Food Research on the Norwich Research Park has been part of that effort through studying the bacteria and the way they survive, multiply and cause such harm. In new research, IFR scientists have been mining the genome of C. botulinum to uncover new information about the toxin genes...

Four Out Of Five People In The UK Support Assisted Dying

Date: May-16-2013
But only 45 per cent of those surveyed think being terminally ill should be a necessary condition of having an assisted death. 74 per cent of Christians support it compared with 88 per cent of those with no religion...

Non-Communicable Disease Care And Mental Health Care Should Be Addressed Together

Date: May-16-2013
Non-communicable diseases (NCD) and mental disorders each constitute a huge portion of the worldwide health care burden, and often occur together, so they should be addressed together. These are the conclusions of the third article in a series published in PLOS Medicine that provides a global perspective on integrating mental health...

Widespread But Neglected Disease Leptospirosis A Significant Health Threat In Africa

Date: May-16-2013
The newest public health threat in Africa, scientists have found, is coming from a previously unknown source: the banded mongoose. Leptospirosis, the disease is called. And the banded mongoose carries it. Leptospirosis is the world's most common illness transmitted to humans by animals. It's a two-phase disease that begins with flu-like symptoms. If untreated, it can cause meningitis, liver damage, pulmonary hemorrhage, renal failure and death...

Population-Based Efforts May Be Necessary To Lower Excessive Dietary Sodium Intake

Date: May-16-2013
Recent studies that examine links between sodium consumption and health outcomes support recommendations to lower sodium intake from the very high levels some Americans consume now, but evidence from these studies does not support reduction in sodium intake to below 2,300 mg per day, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine. Despite efforts over the past several decades to reduce dietary intake of sodium, a main component of table salt, the average American adult still consumes 3,400 mg or more of sodium a day - equivalent to about 1 ½ teaspoons of salt...

Diabetic Patients At Greater Risk From Superbug

Date: May-16-2013
Research by Anglia Ruskin microbiologist shows danger of antibiotic-resistant bacteria New research published this week in the Journal of Medical Microbiology highlights the danger posed to diabetic patients by the deadly superbug Acinetobacter baumannii. It was previously known that people with diabetes were at greater risk of contracting bacterial infections...

Engineered Biomaterial Could Eliminate The Body's Negative Reaction To Medical Implants

Date: May-16-2013
It's a familiar scenario - a patient receives a medical implant and days later, the body attacks the artificial valve or device, causing complications to an already compromised system. Expensive, state-of-the-art medical devices and surgeries often are thwarted by the body's natural response to attack something in the tissue that appears foreign. Now, University of Washington engineers have demonstrated in mice a way to prevent this sort of response. Their findings were published online this week in the journal Nature Biotechnology...