Health News

1.5 Million Premature Cancer Deaths Could Be Prevented Per Year If Targets Set To Reduce NCDs Are Met By 2025

Date: Feb-06-2013
On World Cancer Day, UICC and International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) reveal real-life impact of achieving goal. The Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) today announced that 1.5 million lives which would be lost to cancer, could be saved per year if decisive measures are taken to achieve the World Health Organization's (WHO) '25 by 25' target; to reduce premature deaths due to non-communicable diseases (NCDs) by 25% by 2025.[i] Currently, 7...

Cognitive Impairment In Alzheimer's Disease Worsened By Damaged Blood Vessels Loaded With Amyloid

Date: Feb-06-2013
A team of researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College has discovered that amyloid peptides are harmful to the blood vessels that supply the brain with blood in Alzheimer's disease -- thus accelerating cognitive decline by limiting oxygen-rich blood and nutrients. In their animal studies, the investigators reveal how amyloid-β accumulates in blood vessels and how such accumulation and damage might be ultimately prevented...

Cash Transfer Program For Reducing HIV Risk

Date: Feb-06-2013
With a goal to reduce HIV risk behaviors, researchers investigated whether gay men and male sex workers in Mexico City would participate in a conditional cash transfer program that encourages HIV prevention education and regular testing. A new study in the European Journal of Health Economics reports the price that would get more than 75-percent participation: $288 a year...

Facebook Unfriending Has Real Life Consequences; Many Avoid 'Unfrienders' In Real Life

Date: Feb-06-2013
Unfriending someone on Facebook may be as easy as clicking a button, but a new study from the University of Colorado Denver shows the repercussions often reach far beyond cyberspace. "People think social networks are just for fun," said study author Christopher Sibona, a doctoral student in the Computer Science and Information Systems program at the University of Colorado Denver Business School. "But in fact what you do on those sites can have real world consequences...

Research Aims Knockout Punch At Hepatitis B In A Fight To The Finish

Date: Feb-06-2013
In research published in the journal PLOS Pathogens, Saint Louis University investigators together with collaborators from the University of Missouri and the University of Pittsburgh report a breakthrough in the pursuit of new hepatitis B drugs that could help cure the virus. Researchers were able to measure and then block a previously unstudied enzyme to stop the virus from replicating, taking advantage of known similarities with another major pathogen, HIV. John Tavis, Ph.D...

New Study Contends Different Areas Of Brain Responsible For External Versus Internal Threats

Date: Feb-06-2013
When doctors at the University of Iowa prepared a patient to inhale a panic-inducing dose of carbon dioxide, she was fearless. But within seconds of breathing in the mixture, she cried for help, overwhelmed by the sensation that she was suffocating. The patient, a woman in her 40s known as SM, has an extremely rare condition called Urbach-Wiethe disease that has caused extensive damage to the amygdala, an almond-shaped area in the brain long known for its role in fear. She had not felt terror since getting the disease when she was an adolescent...

Epigenetic Marker 5hmC Opens The Door To Studying Its Role In Developmental Disorders And Disease

Date: Feb-06-2013
Nearly every cell in the human body carries a copy of the full human genome. So how is it that the cells that detect light in the human eye are so different from those of, say, the beating heart or the spleen? The answer, of course, is that each type of cell selectively expresses only a unique suite of genes, actively silencing those that are irrelevant to its function...

Physicians' Roles On The Front Line Of Climate Change

Date: Feb-06-2013
Physicians can and should help mitigate the negative health effects of climate change because they will be at the forefront of responding to the effects of global warming, argues an editorial in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). Doctors could use their political influence to lobby government on climate issues that are already affecting health and to become signatories to the Doha Declaration on Climate, Health and Wellbeing. They can also act at a professional level, by leading health institutions to cut back on greenhouse gases and reduce clinical waste...

New Light Shed On Gene Organization And Regulation By Paired Genes In Stem Cells

Date: Feb-06-2013
Whitehead Institute researchers have determined that DNA transcription, the process that produces messenger RNA (mRNA) templates used in protein production, also runs in the opposite direction along the DNA to create corresponding long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs). Moreover, the mRNAs and lncRNAs are transcribed coordinately as stem cells differentiate into other cell types. This surprising finding could redefine our understanding of gene organization and its regulation...

In Medical Decision-Making, A 'Nudge' Can Be The Ethical Choice

Date: Feb-06-2013
As patients and physicians share decision-making in choices among treatment options, decision aids such as videos, websites, pamphlets or books are coming to play an important role. However, in some cases, it may be ethical for the decision aids to provide a "nudge" toward a particular option, said researchers from Baylor College of Medicine, the Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in a report that appears in the journal Health Affairs...