Health News

Tributyltin Exposure In The Womb Linked To Obesity In Offspring And Subsequent Generations

Date: Jan-29-2013
Exposing pregnant mice to low doses of the chemical tributyltin (TBT) - which was used in marine antifouling paints and is used as an antifungal agent in some paints, certain plastics and a variety of consumer products - can lead to obesity for multiple generations without subsequent exposure, a UC Irvine study has found...

Investigating Prostate Cancer Diagnoses And Treatment Delivery For Black Men Living In Ghana

Date: Jan-29-2013
Infectious diseases in Ghana tend to capture the most attention, but a quiet crisis may soon take over as the country's most threatening epidemic: cancer. A new study published in January in the journal BMC Cancer, led by Kosj Yamoah, M.D., Ph.D., a resident in the Department of Radiation Oncology at Thomas Jefferson University and Hospital, takes aim at the issue by investigating prostate cancer diagnoses and treatment delivery in black men living in the West African region, in order to devise research strategies to help improve health outcomes...

Patients Often Dissatisfied When Doctors Utilize Digital Diagnostic Tools

Date: Jan-29-2013
Health care practitioners now can access patients' data using electronic medical records, which often include information systems that assess individuals' medical histories and clinical research to facilitate doctors' diagnoses. A University of Missouri researcher says the increased use of computerized clinical decision support systems (CDSSs) leads to greater patient dissatisfaction and could increase noncompliance with preventative care and treatment recommendations...

Mobile, Fast, Low-Cost Device Uses The Cloud To Speed Up Diagnostic Testing For HIV And More

Date: Jan-29-2013
Samuel K. Sia, associate professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia Engineering, has taken his innovative lab-on-a-chip and developed a way to not only check a patient's HIV status anywhere in the world with just a finger prick, but also synchronize the results automatically and instantaneously with central health-care records -10 times faster, the researchers say, than the benchtop ELISA, a broadly used diagnostic technique. The device was field-tested in Rwanda by a collaborative team from the Sia lab and ICAP at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health...

Clues To Gender Disparity In Human Hearts Revealed By Genes

Date: Jan-29-2013
Healthy men and women show little difference in their hearts, except for small electrocardiographic disparities. But new genetic differences found by Washington University in St. Louis researchers in hearts with disease could ultimately lead to personalized treatment of various heart ailments. Generally, men are more susceptible to developing atrial fibrillation, an irregular, rapid heartbeat that may lead to stroke, while women are more likely to develop long-QT syndrome, a rhythm disorder that can cause rapid heartbeats and sudden cardiac death...

Blend Of Proteins Supplies Amino Acids To Muscles And Extends Growth And Repair

Date: Jan-29-2013
A new study published in The Journal of Nutrition demonstrates the benefits of consuming a protein blend for muscle protein synthesis after exercise. This study is a first-of-its-kind, conducted by researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch, and utilizes the proteins from soy, whey and casein consumed after an acute bout of resistance exercise. These proteins have complementary amino acid profiles and different digestion rates (amino acid release profiles)...

'Achilles Heel' Of Key HIV Replication Protein Discovered

Date: Jan-29-2013
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine may have found an "Achilles heel" in a key HIV protein. In findings published online in Chemistry and Biology, they showed that targeting this vulnerable spot could stop the virus from replicating, potentially thwarting HIV infection from progressing to full-blown AIDS. Previous research demonstrated that a small HIV protein called Nef interacts with many other proteins in infected cells to help the virus multiply and hide from the immune system...

Children Treated With Common Anti-Fever Medications At Increased Risk For Kidney Injury

Date: Jan-29-2013
Sick children, especially those with some dehydration from flu or other illnesses, risk significant kidney injury if given drugs such as ibuprofen and naproxen, Indiana University School of Medicine researchers said. In an article published online by the Journal of Pediatrics, Jason Misurac, M.D., and colleagues from IU and Butler University reported that nearly 3 percent of cases of pediatric acute kidney injury over a decade could be traced directly to having taken the common nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or NSAIDs...

Baby Survives With Heart Outside Of Chest

Date: Jan-28-2013
Audrina Cardenas has certainly defied odds as she was finally being discharged from Texas Children's Hospital. The 3 month old baby was born with an extremely rare condition called ectopia cordis, which means she was born with her heart outside of her chest. She received her life-saving surgery in October and is now at home.  Ectopia cordis is a very uncommon congenital malformation which results in the heart developing either partially or completely outside the body, it only affects approximately eight in every million babies...

Melanoma Genes Found In "Junk" DNA

Date: Jan-28-2013
US scientists have found two new mutations in non-coding (formerly dubbed "junk") DNA  that occur in 71% of malignant melanomas. They say the highly recurrent mutations may be the most common in this deadliest form of skin cancer, more common than the already well-known protein-coding BRAF gene, and may well offer an alternative target for treatment...