Health News

Intermittent Androgen Deprivation Not Equivalent To Continuous Treatment For Prostate Cancer, May Compromise Survival

Date: Apr-05-2013
Taking a break from hormone-blocking prostate cancer treatments once the cancer seems to be stabilized is not equivalent to continuing therapy, a new large-scale international study finds. Based on previous smaller studies, it looked like an approach called intermittent androgen deprivation therapy might be just as good as continuous androgen deprivation in terms of survival while meanwhile giving patients a breather from the side effects of therapy...

Government Spending Cuts Associated With More Miscarriages

Date: Apr-04-2013
Government spending cuts are linked to an increase in the number of stress-related miscarriages, according to new research on the health impacts of economic austerity measures, presented at the Royal Economic Society's 2013 annual conference. The research reveals that some pregnant women suffer from extreme stress and end up losing their baby following government spending cuts. The researchers analyzed the effects of recent austerity measures carried out by the Romanian government in 2010 and looked at the effects it had on child birth...

Dementia Care Costing Over $150 Billion, USA

Date: Apr-04-2013
Caring for people with dementia is costing up to $157 billion each year in the U.S., which makes the disorder more expensive than treatments for heart disease and cancer. The finding came from a new study conducted by the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit organization that helps improve policy and decision-making through research, and was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Dementia is a chronic disease of aging that results in progressive cognitive decline which can severely undermine independent functioning. The disease includes Alzheimer's and other illnesses...

Walgreens Pharmacy Extends Care To Treat Chronic Illnesses

Date: Apr-04-2013
Walgreens - a well known neighborhood pharmacy in the U.S. - has announced it will now expand its services to chronic care in the majority of its in-store clinics. Currently, Walgreens has 370 Take Care Clinics that were set up to treat minor medical issues when consumers are unable to make an appointment with a doctor, or to receive flu shots. Nurse practitioners and pharmacy technicians run these clinics...

$100 Million Initiative To Map Brain Announced By President Obama

Date: Apr-04-2013
President Barak Obama announced on Tuesday that he will ask for $100 million in his fiscal 2014 budget next week to sponsor the first year of the "BRAIN Initiative", a bold, new 10-year research effort to advance our understanding of the human brain and uncover new ways to treat, prevent and cure brain disorders like autism, epilepsy, traumatic brain injury, schizophrenia and Alzheimer's. BRAIN stands for Brain Research through Advancing Neurotechnologies. According to Obama, it builds on his call for historic investments in R&D to promote innovations, new jobs and economic growth...

Near Vision Restored By Wearing Contact Lens Overnight

Date: Apr-04-2013
Wearing contact lenses overnight may offer a non-surgical alternative to restoring near vision without the need for glasses, according to a new Australian study that successfully tested the method in middle-aged patients with presbyopia, or age-related loss of near vision. Paul Gifford and Helen A Swarbrick of the School of Optometry and Vision Science at the University of New South Wales in Sydney write about their findings in the April issue of Optometry and Vision Science, the official journal of the American Academy of Optometry...

Chemical Signature Of Exhaled Breath Unique To Each Person

Date: Apr-04-2013
The chemical signature of a person's exhaled breath is unique to that individual, according to a new study that suggests "breathprint" analysis may be a useful tool in testing health and disease, in much the same way as analysis of blood and urine. Renato Zenobi and colleagues from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) and the University Hospital Zürich, Switzerland, write about their findings in the 3 April issue of the open access journal PLOS ONE. Body fluids such as blood and urine carry a lot of chemical information about a person's health...

Varicella Vaccine Has Long-Term Effectiveness Against Chicken Pox

Date: Apr-04-2013
Chicken pox, the childhood affliction of earlier generations, has been largely neutralized by the varicella vaccine, according to a new study by the Kaiser Permanente Vaccine Study Center, which appears in the current online issue of Pediatrics. The 14-year study followed 7,585 children who were vaccinated in 1995, when they were 12 to 23 months old, to assess the long-term effectiveness of the vaccine and the impact on the epidemiology of varicella (chicken pox) and herpes zoster (shingles). Researchers also observed the impact of the second dose of varicella vaccine, introduced in 2006...

African-Americans Express Keen Interest In Medical Research Participation, UF Study Finds

Date: Apr-04-2013
In interviews with nearly 6,000 residents of five U.S. cities, African-Americans were more likely than other racial and ethnic groups to express an interest in participating in medical research, even if studies involved providing blood or genetic samples. The findings appear online ahead of print in the American Journal of Public Health. "For years, African-Americans have been underrepresented in research," said lead investigator Linda Cottler, Ph.D., M.P.H...

Research Reveals How Antibodies Neutralize Mosquito-Borne Virus

Date: Apr-04-2013
Researchers have learned the precise structure of the mosquito-transmitted chikungunya virus pathogen while it is bound to antibodies, showing how the infection is likely neutralized. The findings could help researchers develop effective vaccines against the infection, which causes symptoms similar to dengue fever, followed by a prolonged disease that affects the joints and causes severe arthritis. In recent outbreaks, some cases progressed to fatal encephalitis. The researchers studied "virus-like particles," or non-infectious forms of the virus...