Health News

Link Between Mutation That Causes Rare Sleep Disorder And Migraines

Date: May-06-2013
A gene mutation associated with a rare sleep disorder surprisingly also contributes to debilitating migraines, a new discovery that could change the treatment of migraines by allowing development of drugs specifically designed to treat the chronic headaches. Further study is needed to understand how this genetic pathway relates to migraines. But the finding is exciting because it most likely will shed light on all types of migraines, meaning hundreds of millions of people worldwide could benefit, according to K.C. Brennan, M.D...

Discovery Improves Understanding Of The Biology That Underlies Breast And Ovarian Cancers

Date: May-06-2013
A major international study involving a Simon Fraser University scientist has found that sequence differences in a gene crucial to the maintenance of our chromosomes' integrity predispose us to certain cancers. Angela Brooks-Wilson, an associate professor in SFU's biomedical physiology and kinesiology department and a Distinguished Scientist at the BC Cancer Agency, is one of more than 600 scientists globally who contributed to this study...

Weight Loss After Gastric Bypass May Be Predicted By Gene Variant

Date: May-06-2013
Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers have identified a gene variant that helps predict how much weight an individual will lose after gastric bypass surgery, a finding with the potential both to guide treatment planning and to facilitate the development of new therapeutic approaches to treating obesity and related conditions like diabetes. The report receiving advance online publication in The American Journal of Human Genetics is the first to identify genetic predictors of weight loss after bariatric surgery...

Psychology, Psychiatry And Neuroscience News From 'Frontiers'

Date: May-06-2013
Frontiers in Psychology Inherently analog quantity representations in olive baboons (Papio anubis) Human babies can 'count' up to 3 or 4, but for greater numbers, infants - and adults when distracted from counting precisely - use the analog system for comparing between counts of objects. Through this system, the relative difference between two counts is more important than the absolute difference, making it easier to distinguish 20 from 10 than 30 from 20. Previous studies suggested that monkeys also use the analog system, but this has remained controversial...

Breast Cancer Patients At High And Low Risk Of Late Recurrence Can Be Identified By Gene Expression Test

Date: May-06-2013
A test that measures the expression levels of 58 genes in oestrogen receptor-positive breast cancers can effectively differentiate between patients who are at higher and lower risk for having their cancer recur elsewhere in the body more than five years after diagnosis, researchers report. The new findings show that better individual risk prediction for women with these cancers is getting nearer, says study author Prof Michael Gnant from the Medical University of Vienna, Austria. Prof Gnant reported the findings at the 5th IMPAKT Breast Cancer Conference in Brussels, Belgium...

Largest Hospice Chain Sued For Alleged False Billings To Medicare

Date: May-05-2013
America's largest for-profit hospital chain, Vitas Hospice Services LLC, and other hospice subsidiaries of Chemed Corp are being sued by the US Justice Department for alleged false billings for Medicare hospice services. The suit (Complaint) is also filed against Vitas Healthcare Corporation. Vitas provides hospice services to patients in a total of 18 states - Wisconsin, Virginia, Texas, Alabama, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey, Missouri, Michigan, Kansas, Indiana, Illinois, Georgia, Florida, Delaware, Connecticut, Colorado, California, and the District of Columbia...

PET/CT Enhance Inflammatory Bowel Disease Detection

Date: May-05-2013
Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), such as Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, may be detected and monitored more effectively in the future with positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT), according to research published in the May issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine. Typically assessed by endoscopic and histologic evaluations, investigators demonstrated the ability of PET/CT to identify lesions along the complete intestinal wall that could be missed with traditional imaging techniques...

Preeclampsia May Be Prevented By Hormone Emitted By Fetus

Date: May-05-2013
In a study using mice, researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that a hormone, adrenomedullin, plays a crucial role in preventing the pregnancy complication preeclampsia. Surprisingly, this hormone protects women from preeclampsia when emitted by the fetus, not the mother, during the most critical times in pregnancy. "We've identified the fact that the baby is important in protecting the mom from preeclampsia," said the study's senior author, Kathleen M. Caron, Ph.D...

Investigators Prescribe Caution With Vitamin D Supplementation

Date: May-05-2013
In recent years, healthy people have been bombarded by stories in the media and on health websites warning about the dangers of too-low vitamin D levels, and urging high doses of supplements to protect against everything from hypertension to hardening of the arteries to diabetes. But new research from Johns Hopkins finds that blood levels of the so-called "sunshine vitamin" higher than the top of the range suggested by the Institute of Medicine confer no additional benefit...

Mind-Body Course Has Positive Impact On Well-Being Of Medical Students

Date: May-05-2013
A Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) study shows a mind-body class elective for medical students helps increase their self-compassion and ability to manage thoughts and tasks more effectively. The study, published in Medical Education Online, also discusses how this innovative course may help medical students better manage stress and feel more empowered to use mind-body skills with their patients. Allison Bond, MA, a third-year medical student at BUSM, served as the paper's first author...