Health News

Grip Function Restored More Quickly To Patients With Tetraplegia

Date: Apr-14-2013
A new method in which a number of operations are performed simultaneously can provide people with tetraplegia with a better grip function and the ability to open their hand. This method also shortens the patient's rehabilitation period by at least three months, reveals a doctoral thesis from the Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. If the neck is broken and there is a cervical spinal cord injury, muscles in the arm and hand are paralysed...

Marmosets Fed Solid Food Early Set On The Path To Obesity

Date: Apr-14-2013
Baby marmoset monkeys that began eating solid food earlier than their peers were significantly more likely to be obese at 1 year of age, scientists at The University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio and the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute found. This early life obesity resulted in metabolic damage such as insulin resistance and poor blood sugar control, a companion study showed. Marmosets on track for obesity appeared to be more efficient in their feeding behavior...

Statin Drugs May Lead To Co-Q10 Deficiency, Diabetes Risk

Date: Apr-14-2013
A laboratory study has shown for the first time that coenzyme Q10 offsets cellular changes that may be linked to a side-effect of some statin drugs - an increased risk of adult-onset diabetes. Statins are some of the most widely prescribed drugs in the world, able to reduce LDL, or "bad" cholesterol levels, and the risk of heart attacks or other cardiovascular events. However, their role in raising the risk of diabetes has only been observed and studied in recent years...

Researchers Engineer 'Protein Switch' To Dissect Role Of Cancer's Key Players

Date: Apr-14-2013
Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine have "rationally rewired" some of the cell's smallest components to create proteins that can be switched on or off by command. These "protein switches" can be used to interrogate the inner workings of each cell, helping scientists uncover the molecular mechanisms of human health and disease...

Study Shows Different Brains Have Similar Responses To Music

Date: Apr-14-2013
Do the brains of different people listening to the same piece of music actually respond in the same way? An imaging study by Stanford University School of Medicine scientists says the answer is yes, which may in part explain why music plays such a big role in our social existence. The investigators used functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify a distributed network of several brain structures whose activity levels waxed and waned in a strikingly similar pattern among study participants as they listened to classical music they'd never heard before...

Blood Stem Cells Have A Surprising Ability In Response To Emergencies

Date: Apr-14-2013
A research team of Inserm, CNRS and MDC lead by Michael Sieweke of the Centre d'Immunologie de Marseille Luminy (CNRS, INSERM, Aix Marseille Universite) and Max Delbruck Centre for Molecular Medicine, Berlin-Buch, has revealed an unexpected role for hematopoietic stem cells: they do not merely ensure the continuous renewal of our blood cells; in emergencies they are capable of producing white blood cells "on demand" that help the body deal with inflammation or infection...

Should Orthopaedic Surgeons Recommend Weight Loss To Patients Prior To Joint Replacement?

Date: Apr-14-2013
The obesity epidemic in America and its impact on musculoskeletal health, as well as related treatment outcomes and costs, was discussed during the AAOS Now forum, "Obesity, Orthopaedics and Outcomes," at the 2013 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) at McCormick Place in Chicago. "From 1960 to 2000, the rate of obesity more than doubled in the United States," said Frank B. Kelly, MD, AAOS Now editorial board member and forum moderator. "By 2010, more than 72 million of U.S. adults were obese, and no state had an obesity rate of less than 20 percent...

Gastric Bypass Surgery Corrects Genes As Well As Shrinking Waists

Date: Apr-14-2013
Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery does not only shrink waists, but also results in gene-expression alterations, researchers from the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden, and the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, reported in the journal Cell Reports. Professor Juleen Zierath and team explained that gastric bypass surgery, which is often performed on obese patients, can significantly reduce their body weight in a short time. They add, that for reasons that are not entirely clear, the surgical procedure can also bring patients with type 2 diabetes into remission...

New Techniques To Help Halt The Spread Of Disease Focus On Fighting Disease From Within The Mosquito

Date: Apr-13-2013
Scientists have revealed a new technique to introduce disease-blocking bacteria into mosquitoes, with promising results that may halt the spread of diseases such as dengue, yellow fever and potentially malaria. When infected with the bacteria Wolbachia, mosquitoes are unable to spread viruses such as dengue, a disease which kills round 40,000 people each year with no vaccines or specific treatments currently available. There have been around 2,400 cases of dengue infection in Northern Australia in recent years...

Bras Make Breasts Sag, 15-Year Study Concludes

Date: Apr-13-2013
Wearing a bra does more harm than good - it does nothing to reduce back pain and weakens the muscles that hold up the breasts, resulting in greater breast sagging, Jean-Denis Rouillon, a sports science expert from the University of Besançon, France, reported after a 15-year study. Rouillon says that the main conclusion from the preliminary results of his "marathon experiment" is that the bra is a false necessity. In an interview with France Info (radio), Professor Rouillon said: "Medically, physiologically, anatomically - breasts gain no benefit from being denied gravity...