Health News

Changes To Autism Diagnosis: Benefits And Challenges Ahead

Date: Apr-23-2013
Next month, the American Psychiatric Association will release its new edition of the psychiatry diagnostic "bible" of mental disorders. The new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) will have a strong impact on how clinicians diagnose many mental health conditions, including autism...

Air Pollution Linked To Heart Disease Through Increased Hardening Of The Arteries

Date: Apr-23-2013
Long term exposure to air pollution may be linked to heart attacks and strokes by speeding up atherosclerosis, or "hardening of the arteries", according to a study by U.S. researchers published in this week's PLOS Medicine. The researchers, led by Sara Adar, John Searle Assistant Professor of Epidemiology, University of Michigan School of Public Health, and Joel Kaufman, Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences and Medicine, University of Washington, found that higher concentrations of fine particulate air pollution (PM2...

Playing Tetris Effective Way Of Treating Lazy Eye

Date: Apr-23-2013
The popular video game Tetris has been found to be effective at treating adult amblyopia, also known as 'lazy eye', according to new research conducted by scientists at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC). As one of the most common causes of visual impairment, amblyopia affects nearly 3 percent of the population. It occurs as a result of improper brain processing, causing the weaker eye to be suppressed by the stronger eye...

Obese Men With Benign Biopsy At High Risk For Prostate Cancer

Date: Apr-23-2013
Data on obesity and prostate cancer conflict. Precancerous lesions were more common in benign biopsy specimens from obese men. After benign biopsy, obese men at higher risk for future prostate cancer. Obese men were more likely to have precancerous lesions detected in their benign prostate biopsies compared with nonobese men and were at a greater risk for subsequently developing prostate cancer, according to data published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research...

Sofosbuvir Offers High Cure Rate For Two Hepatitis C Subtypes

Date: Apr-23-2013
Sofosbuvir, a new drug, is offering impressive cure rates for Hepatitis C patients with two subtypes of the disease - genotypes 2 and 3, according to researchers led by Weill Cornell Medical College. Approximately 1 in every 4 hepatitis C patients in the USA has one of these two subtypes. Sofosbuvir, which is much safer than Interferon, offered more effective treatment for the majority of patients involved in a Phase 3 clinical trial. The participants had no other treatment options, the scientists reported in NEJM (New England Journal of Medicine)...

Ovarian Cancer May Be Detectable Early By Testing Cells From Uterus Or Cervix

Date: Apr-23-2013
Pioneering biophotonics technology developed in the US can detect nanoscale changes in cells from the cervix and uterus that may indicate early stage ovarian cancer, according to a study published this month in the International Journal of Cancer.  The researchers describe how using partial wave spectroscopic (PWS) microscopy they could detect diagnostic changes in uterus and cervix cells taken from ovarian cancer patients via a minimally invasive procedure. Under an ordinary microscope, the cells would look normal...

Study Sheds New Light On Early Stage Alzheimer's Disease

Date: Apr-23-2013
New light has been shed on how neuronal metabolism relates to the development of Alzheimer's disease in a recent study. The research was conducted by scientists from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Scientists have known that the disrupted metabolism of sugar, fat, and calcium is part of the process that results in the death of neurons in Alzheimer's disease...

Doctors 2.0 & You To Feature Best Practices For Social Media, Apps Per Medical Condition And Original Research Pieces, 6-7 June 2013, Paris

Date: Apr-23-2013
The widely-acclaimed Doctors 2.0™ & You conference announces for its 3rd edition that: All Social Media and Web or Mobile Applications will be presented in light of specific disease conditions including a special focus on diabetes and cancer. Four original research studies in social media have been conducted for the conference.  +80 Speakers hail from Europe, North America, Middle East and Asia . According to Denise Silber, president of Basil Strategies, digital health agency and founders of the Doctors 2...

Discovery Of Three Unique Genes That Influence Body Size And Obesity In Those Of African Ancestry

Date: Apr-23-2013
Researchers from Dartmouth's Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Sciences (iQBS) and the Center for Genomic Medicine have helped to discover three unique genetic variations that influence body size and obesity in men and women of African ancestry. This study, a meta-analysis that examined 3.2 million genetic variants in over 30,000 people with African heritage for links to body-mass index or BMI - by professors Jason Moore, Christopher Amos and Scott Williams - was the largest ever done on this population to date...

Green Spaces Boost Wellbeing In Cities

Date: Apr-23-2013
People living in urban areas tend to report greater wellbeing if they have parks and gardens nearby, says a new study from the UK that suggests green spaces have a positive impact on mental health in cities. Mathew White and colleagues from the University of Exeter Medical School's European Centre for Environment & Human Health, in Truro, Cornwall, write about their findings in a paper due to be published online this week in the journal Psychological Science...