Health News

Hip Fracture In India Is Associated With High Rates Of Mortality And Disability

Date: Apr-24-2013
Indian study shows that 30.4 percent of hip fracture patients died within one year, with the majority of deaths occurring within the first six months after fracture; survivors had high rates of functional impairment In various studies across different countries the reported one year mortality risks after hip fracture can vary anywhere from 5 to 50 %. In India, however, there has been little research on the risk of mortality and functional impairment following hip fracture...

Binge Eating May Represent A Sub-Type Of Obesity Most Closely Related To Drug Addiction

Date: Apr-24-2013
Biological Psychiatry is proud to announce this week's publication of a special issue focusing on the question of food as an addiction. Addiction is the continued or compulsive use of a substance, despite negative and/or harmful consequences. Over the years, addiction has come to be re-defined to include behaviors, as well as substances, and the term is now used to describe significant problems with alcohol, nicotine, drugs, gambling, internet use, and sex...

Mortality In Older Hip Fracture Patients Increased By Surgical Delay Of More Than 48 Hours

Date: Apr-24-2013
Although hip fractures in older patients are known to be a major cause of long term disability and increased risk of death, less is known about the relationship between surgical delay after hip fracture and mortality risk. A study by Belgian investigators shows that that in older patients with hip fracture, surgical delay of more than 48 hours is significantly and independently associated with increased long-term mortality, even after adjusting for age, sex, and co-morbidities...

Alternative Therapies May Help Lower Blood Pressure

Date: Apr-24-2013
Alternative therapies such as aerobic exercise, resistance or strength training, and isometric hand grip exercises may help reduce your blood pressure, according to the American Heart Association. In a new scientific statement published in its journal Hypertension, the association said alternative approaches could help people with blood pressure levels higher than 120/80 mm Hg and those who can't tolerate or don't respond well to standard medications...

Mouse Model Sheds New Light On Early Stage Alzheimer's Disease

Date: Apr-24-2013
The disrupted metabolism of sugar, fat and calcium is part of the process that causes the death of neurons in Alzheimer's disease. Researchers from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have now shown, for the first time, how important parts of the nerve cell that are involved in the cell's energy metabolism operate in the early stages of the disease. These somewhat surprising results shed new light on how neuronal metabolism relates to the development of the disease. In the Alzheimer's disease brain, plaques consisting of so called amyloid-beta-peptide (Aβ) are accumulated...

Association Discovered Between Malaria And Rare Condition In Pregnancy

Date: Apr-24-2013
A passing remark launched the project that was described at the Experimental Biology 2013 conference in Boston. A poster, presented by undergraduate Ashley McMichael from Albany State University, has preliminary data that hint that there is an association between a rare pregnancy condition and malaria. The remark that launched the project was made by a collaborator of Julie Moore, a malaria expert at the University of Georgia...

Vitamin D Supplements Or Mushroom Powder? You Choose

Date: Apr-24-2013
Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine have discovered that eating mushrooms containing vitamin D2 can be as effective at increasing and maintaining vitamin D levels (25-hydroxyvitamin D) as taking supplemental vitamin D2 or vitamin D3. These findings were presented at the annual meeting of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, held in conjunction with the Experimental Biology 2013 meeting in Boston. The findings also appeared concurrently as an open-access article in the journal Dermato-Endocrinology...

Cells Sent Up In The Shuttle May Help Answer Important Questions About The Effects Of Microgravity On The Human Body

Date: Apr-24-2013
When the space shuttle Atlantis touched down in the summer of 2011 at Cape Canaveral, closing the book on the U.S. shuttle program, a team of U.S. Army researchers stood at the ready, eager to get their gloved hands on a small device in the payload that housed a set of biological samples. At the Experimental Biology 2013 conference in Boston, the team presented the results of nearly two years' worth of study on those samples, results that shed light on how the human immune system responds to stress and assaults while in space - and maybe here on Earth...

Modified New Technique Uncovers Antibody That Transforms Bone Marrow Stem Cells Directly Into Brain Cells

Date: Apr-24-2013
In a serendipitous discovery, scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have found a way to turn bone marrow stem cells directly into brain cells. Current techniques for turning patients' marrow cells into cells of some other desired type are relatively cumbersome, risky and effectively confined to the lab dish. The new finding points to the possibility of simpler and safer techniques...

User-Friendly Alternative Dietary Analysis Tool For Athletes

Date: Apr-24-2013
A new website application for athletes called Dietary Analysis Tool for Athletes (D.A.T.A.) has been validated as accurately recording dietary intake based on the 24-hour recall method. "This tool offers sports dietitians and health professionals a new, quick alternative to analyze athletes' dietary intake," said Lindsay Baker, PhD, Principal Scientist, Gatorade Sports Science Institute. To confirm the accuracy of the tool, Baker and colleagues compared D.A.T.A. with the USDA 5-step multiple-pass method. A total of 56 athletes ages 14-20 participated in the study...