Health News

Study Of Health Disparities Finds Lack Of Exercise Not A Factor

Date: Apr-23-2013
Health disparities between white and black adults in the South are not connected to a lack of exercise but more likely related to other factors such as access to health care, socioeconomic status and perhaps genetics, according to a Vanderbilt study published in the journal PLOS ONE. In fact, more than 80,000 residents enrolled in the long-term Southern Community Cohort Study (SCCS) spent an equal amount of time - about nine hours or 60 percent of their waking day - in sedentary behaviors regardless of race...

Discovery Of Energy-Efficient Enzyme That May Aid DNA Repair

Date: Apr-23-2013
Scientists have revealed how a bacterial enzyme has evolved an energy-efficient method to move long distances along DNA. The findings, published in Science, present further insight into the coupling of chemical and mechanical energy by a class of enzymes called helicases, a widely-distributed group of proteins, which in human cells are implicated in some cancers...

Ethnicity Influences Immunity

Date: Apr-23-2013
Cracking the DNA code for a complex region of the human genome has helped 14 North American scientists, including five at Simon Fraser University, chart new territory in immunity research. They have discovered that a good number of our antibody genes, how well they operate and, potentially, what they fight off, actually vary from person to person. That means even though drugs, treatments and vaccinations are designed to treat whole populations our response to them could be individualistic...

Dispelling The Myth That Smoking From Hookah Is A Harmless Alternative To Cigarettes

Date: Apr-23-2013
Smoking tobacco through a hookah is a pastime gaining popularity among the college crowd, but many of them mistakenly believe that using the fragrant water pipe is less harmful than smoking cigarettes. In a new study at UC San Francisco, researchers measuring chemicals in the blood and urine concluded that hookah smoke contains a different - but still harmful - mix of toxins. The findings are published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research...

DNA Strands Can Be Zipped Together Or Pulled Apart Using Electrochemistry

Date: Apr-23-2013
A research team from NPL and the University of Edinburgh have invented a new way to zip and unzip DNA strands using electrochemistry. The DNA double helix has been one of the most recognisable structures in science ever since it was first described by Watson and Crick almost 60 years ago (paper published in Nature on 25 April 1953). The binding and unbinding mechanism of DNA strands is vital to natural biological processes and to the polymerase chain reactions used in biotechnology to copy DNA for sequencing and cloning...

Study Identifies Three BRCA1 Mutations Responsible For Breast And Ovarian Hereditary Cancer

Date: Apr-23-2013
Researchers of the hereditary cancer research group at the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL) and the Catalan Institute of Oncology (ICO) conducted a functional and structural study of seven missense variants of the BRCA1 gene concluding that three of these variants are pathogenic, linked to the risk of suffering breast or ovarian cancer. The study has been published in the journal PLoS One The classification of these three variants will improve genetic counseling of patients and families who have these mutations and will serve to personalize the treatment...

Data Gathered Reveals Extent Of Alternative Medicine Use By MS Patients

Date: Apr-23-2013
A major Nordic research project involving researchers from the University of Copenhagen has, for the first time ever, mapped the use of alternative treatment among multiple sclerosis patients - knowledge which is important for patients with chronic disease and the way in which society meets them. People with multiple sclerosis (MS) often use alternative treatments such as dietary supplements, acupuncture and herbal medicine to facilitate their lives with this chronic disease...

Filtering Harmful Antibiotics From Water By Harnessing Solar-Powered Proteins

Date: Apr-23-2013
New researc just published details how University of Cincinnati researchers have developed and tested a solar-powered nano filter that is able to remove harmful carcinogens and antibiotics from water sources - lakes and rivers - at a significantly higher rate than the currently used filtering technology made of activated carbon...

Risk Of Psychosis Reduced By Early Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

Date: Apr-23-2013
Researchers from The University of Manchester found the risk of developing psychosis was more than halved for those receiving CBT at six, 12 and 18-24 months after treatment started. The team from the University's School of Psychological Science and the Psychosis Research Unit at Greater Manchester West Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust adds weight to earlier studies in this area...

Study Contributes To The Understanding And Prevention Of The Side Effects Caused By Drugs

Date: Apr-23-2013
Yellow vision, pseudo-pulmonary obstruction, involuntary body movements, respiratory paralysis. These are some of the 1,600 known side effects (SEs) produced by drugs. Adverse effects are one of the main causes of hospital admission in the west. These effects are difficult to predict, and in practice specific assays are required to test the safety of agents in pre-clinical phases, thus these effects are often not discovered until the drug has been launched. A study published by scientists at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) seeks to fill this information gap...