Health News

Discovery Of Mutations Linked To Relapse Of Childhood Leukemia

Date: Feb-06-2013
After an intensive three-year hunt through the genome, medical researchers have pinpointed mutations that lead to drug resistance and relapse in the most common type of childhood cancer - the first time anyone has linked the disease's reemergence to specific genetic anomalies. The discovery, co-lead by William L. Carroll, MD, director of NYU Langone Medical Center's Cancer Institute, is reported in a study published online in Nature Genetics...

Potential Diagnostic Test For Genetic Predisposition To Abnormal Blood Clotting

Date: Feb-06-2013
The non-O ABO blood type is the most important risk factor for venous thromboembolism (blood clots in veins), making up 20% of attributable risk for the condition, according to a new study in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). This finding has implications for genetic screening for thrombophilia, a genetic predisposition to abnormal blood clotting. Danish researchers looked at data on 66 001 people who had been followed for 33 years from 1977 through 2010 to determine whether ABO blood type is associated with an increased risk of venous blood clots in the general population...

Researchers Reveal Mechanism To Halt Cancer Cell Growth, Discover Potential Therapy

Date: Feb-06-2013
University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI) researchers have uncovered a technique to halt the growth of cancer cells, a discovery that led them to a potential new anti-cancer therapy. When deprived of a key protein, some cancer cells are unable to properly divide, a finding described in the cover story of the February issue of the Journal of Cell Science. This research is supported in part by a grant from the National Institutes of Health...

New Way Discovered To Treat Common Life-Threatening Infection In Children

Date: Feb-06-2013
Researchers at Imperial College London have discovered a new way in which a very common childhood disease could be treated. In the first year of life, 65 per cent of babies get infected by Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV). This causes bronchiolitis, and is thought to kill nearly 200,000 children every year worldwide. In 1966 and 1967, vaccines were tested for RSV. These had disastrous effects on the immune response, leading to a worsening of the disease and, in many cases, death...

Outcomes For Recovering Alcoholics May Be Predicted By Body Language

Date: Feb-06-2013
To predict whether a problem drinker will hit the bottle again, ignore what they say and watch their body language for displays of shame, a University of British Columbia study finds. The study, which explored drinking and health outcomes in newly sober recovering alcoholics, is the first to show that physical manifestations of shame - from slumped shoulders to narrow chests - can directly predict a relapse in people who struggle with substances...

Hope For New Gene-Based Therapies For Human Disease

Date: Feb-06-2013
By reproducing in the laboratory the complex interactions that cause human genes to turn on inside cells, Duke University bioengineers have created a system they believe can benefit gene therapy research and the burgeoning field of synthetic biology. This new approach should help basic scientists as they tease out the effects of "turning on" or "turning off" many different genes, as well as clinicians seeking to develop new gene-based therapies for human disease. "We know that human genes are not just turned on or off, but can be activated to any level over a wide range...

Don't Go Sledging At Night, Especially After Drinking, Warn Doctors

Date: Feb-05-2013
In this week's BMJ, doctors highlight the dangers of sledging and recommend that "it is avoided in poor light and after drinking alcohol." The recent snowfall "seriously affected the running of our general hospital service," say Dr Alice Clarke and colleagues at Worcestershire Royal Hospital. As well as staffing problems and poor clinic attendance rates, the icy weather also brought the expected increased number of falls causing fractures, bruises, and strains, they write...

Mentally Ill People Smoke A Lot More Than People Without Mental Illness

Date: Feb-05-2013
American adults with mental illness smoke a lot more than adults without any mental illness, with a smoking rate close to 70 percent higher.  The finding comes from a report published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in collaboration with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Smoking is one of the leading causes of death in the world, it causes around 443,000 deaths per year in the United States alone...

Some Cancer Mutations Slow Or Stop Tumor Growth

Date: Feb-05-2013
Just as some mutations in the genome of cancer cells actively spur tumor growth, it would appear there are also some that do the reverse, and act to slow it down or even stop it, according to a new US study led by MIT. Senior author, Leonid Mirny, an associate professor of physics and health sciences and technology at MIT,and colleagues, write about this surprise finding in a paper to be published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences...

Baby Boomers: Live Longer, But Not Healthier

Date: Feb-05-2013
As each generation gets older they like to think that they are healthier than the previous generation, however, the baby boomers are now unable to confidently make this claim. The new findings were published in JAMA Internal Medicine, in a study conducted by a group of researchers from the West Virginia University School of Medicine. The study revealed that a portion of the baby boomer generation, specifically the 78 million Americans who were born in the post-war baby boom from 1946 to 1964, were less healthy than most of their parents. As of 2010, the baby boomers made up 26...