Health News

The Importance Of Bereavement Counseling For Children Losing Parent At Early Age

Date: Feb-12-2013
A study exploring the impact of early parental death has revealed the long-term damage and suffering that can be experienced by individuals in adult life if appropriate levels of support are not provided at the time of bereavement. The new research, published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, describes the low self-esteem, loneliness, isolation and inability to express feelings of some individuals who lost a parent in childhood, with the effects felt for as long as 71 years after the bereavement...

Artificial Bone Implants Make Light Work Of Fixing Broken Bones

Date: Feb-12-2013
Artificial bone, created using stem cells and a new lightweight plastic, could soon be used to heal shattered limbs. The use of bone stem cells combined with a degradable rigid material that inserts into broken bones and encourages real bone to re-grow has been developed at the Universities of Edinburgh and Southampton. Researchers have developed the material with a honeycomb scaffold structure that allows blood to flow through it, enabling stem cells from the patient's bone marrow to attach to the material and grow new bone...

Tumoral Texture Features May Be A Valuable Biomarker In Localized Esophageal Cancer

Date: Feb-12-2013
CT texture analysis of primary tumors may be a potential imaging biomarker in localized esophageal cancer following neoadjuvant chemotherapy, according to research presented at the 2013 Cancer Imaging and Radiation Therapy Symposium. This Symposium is sponsored by the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) and the Radiological Society of North American (RSNA)...

Immigrant Women In Ontario Bear Bigger Babies Than The Norm In Their Native Countries

Date: Feb-12-2013
Women who immigrate to Ontario have babies who are bigger than those born in their native countries, new research has shown. But the babies of immigrant mothers from East and South Asia are still smaller than babies born to mothers who were themselves born in Canada. The typical male born to an immigrant mother in Ontario weighs 115 grams more than babies in her native country, said Dr. Joel Ray, a researcher and physician at St. Michael's Hospital. The typical female weighs 112 grams more than babies in her mother's native country, he said...

Shedding Light On Functions Of Uncharacterized Genes

Date: Feb-12-2013
Genes that have roles in the same biological pathways change their rate of evolution in parallel, a finding that could be used to discover their functions, said a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in the February issue of GENETICS. Humans have nearly 21,000 genes that make as many proteins, but the functions of most of those genes have not been fully determined, said lead investigator Nathan Clark, Ph.D., assistant professor of computational and systems biology at the Pitt School of Medicine...

Findings From Study In Spinal Cord-Injured Man

Date: Feb-12-2013
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and UPMC describe in PLoS ONE how an electrode array sitting on top of the brain enabled a 30-year-old paralyzed man to control the movement of a character on a computer screen in three dimensions with just his thoughts. It also enabled him to move a robot arm to touch a friend's hand for the first time in the seven years since he was injured in a motorcycle accident...

In Stage I Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Patients, SUVmax Provides Valuable Indicator Of Progression-Free Survival

Date: Feb-12-2013
SUVmax (Maximum Standardized Uptake Value) may be a significant and clinically independent marker to indicate progression-free survival in stage I non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients treated with stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT), according to research presented at the 2013 Cancer Imaging and Radiation Therapy Symposium. This Symposium is sponsored by the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) and the Radiological Society of North American (RSNA). SUVmax is measured via PET/CT scan after patients have been injected with radioactive sugar (glucose)...

Hepatic Function Testing Prior To And During Radiation Therapy Can Assist In Treatment Planning For Liver Cancer Patients

Date: Feb-12-2013
Monitoring the hepatic function of unresectable liver cancer patients, measured by 99mTc-labeled iminodiacetic acid (HIDA) via single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) prior to and during radiation therapy, provides vital information that could guide more customized treatment plans and reduce risks of liver injury, according to research presented at the 2013 Cancer Imaging and Radiation Therapy Symposium. This Symposium is sponsored by the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) and the Radiological Society of North American (RSNA)...

Smartphones Offer A Wealth Of Possibilities For Psychological Research

Date: Feb-12-2013
Two years ago, researcher Josef Bless was listening to music on his phone when he suddenly had an idea. "I noticed that the sounds of the different instruments were distributed differently between the ears, and it struck me that this was very similar to the tests we routinely use in our laboratory to measure brain function. In dichotic listening, each ear is presented with a different syllable at the same time (one to the left and one to the right ear) and the listener has to say which syllable seems clearest...

For Children Exposed To Traumatic Events There Are Few Effective, Evidence-Based Interventions

Date: Feb-12-2013
About two of every three children will experience at least one traumatic event before they turn 18. Despite this high rate of exposure, little is known about the effectiveness of treatments aimed at preventing and relieving traumatic stress symptoms that children may experience after such events, according to researchers at RTI International, the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, the RTI-UNC Evidence-based Practice Center, and Boston Medical Center...