Health News

Three Type 2 Diabetes Pills From Takeda Approved By FDA

Date: Jan-27-2013
Nesina (alogliptin) tablets, Oseni (alogliptin and pioglitazone) tablets, and Kazano (alogliptin and metformin hydrochloride) tablets, for the treatment of type 2 diabetes, for use along with diet and exercise, have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. They are designed to improve blood sugar control. The active ingredients pioglitazone and metformin hydrochloride are already approved by the FDA for type 2 diabetes management - Alogliptin is new...

Artificial Muscle Created By Controlled Crumpling Of Graphene

Date: Jan-27-2013
Duke University engineers are layering atom-thick lattices of carbon with polymers to create unique materials with a broad range of applications, including artificial muscles. The lattice, known as graphene, is made of pure carbon and appears under magnification like chicken wire. Because of its unique optical, electrical and mechanical properties, graphene is used in electronics, energy storage, composite materials and biomedicine. However, graphene is extremely difficult to handle in that it easily "crumples...

Following The Chemical Trail Of Plastics

Date: Jan-27-2013
Plastics have transformed modern society, providing attractive benefits but also befouling waterways and aquifers, depleting petroleum supplies and disrupting human health. Rolf Halden, a researcher at Arizona State University's Biodesign Institute has been following the chemical trail of plastics, quantifying their impact on human health and the environment...

Multiple Myeloma Patients May Benefit From New Research

Date: Jan-27-2013
A study led by Robert G. Hawley, Ph.D., professor and chair of the department of anatomy and regenerative biology at the George Washington University (GW) School of Medicine and Health Sciences (SMHS), may help predict which patients with multiple myeloma will respond better to certain treatments. The study, titled "Identification of an ABCB1 (P-glycoprotein)-positive carfilzomib-resistant myeloma subpopulation by the pluripotent stem cell fluorescent dye CDy1," was published in the American Journal of Hematology and is available online...

Tooth Root Formation Requires Beta-Catenin Molecule

Date: Jan-27-2013
Today, the International and American Associations for Dental Research (IADR/AADR) published a paper titled "�-catenin is Required in Odontoblasts for Tooth Root Formation." The paper, written by lead authors Tak-Heun Kim and Cheol-Hyeon Bae, Chonbuk National University Korea School of Dentistry, Laboratory for Craniofacial Biology, is published in the IADR/AADR Journal of Dental Research. The tooth root, together with the surrounding periodontium, maintains the tooth in the jaw. The root develops after the crown forms, a process called morphogenesis...

In Rat Model, Social Isolation Leads To Greater Vulnerability To Addiction

Date: Jan-27-2013
Rats that are socially isolated during a critical period of adolescence are more vulnerable to addiction to amphetamine and alcohol, found researchers at The University of Texas at Austin. Amphetamine addiction is also harder to extinguish in the socially isolated rats. These effects, which are described this week in the journal Neuron, persist even after the rats are reintroduced into the community of other rats. "Basically the animals become more manipulatable," said Hitoshi Morikawa, associate professor of neurobiology in the College of Natural Sciences...

SNPs Associated With Breast Cancer Risk Alter Binding Affinity For Pioneer Factor FOXA1

Date: Jan-27-2013
Dartmouth scientists showed that more than half of all the SNPs associated with breast cancer risk are located in distant regions and bound by FOXA1, a protein required for estrogen receptor-α (ER) function according to a paper published in the journal Nature Genetics...

Mycobacterial Disease A Greater Risk For Tall, Thin Women

Date: Jan-27-2013
Tall, thin women face a greater risk of infection with nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM), cousins of the organism that causes tuberculosis, according to researchers at National Jewish Health. Women with NTM infections also showed a weakened immune response associated with their fat cells, in a paper published in The American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care. "Nontuberculous mycobacteria are widespread in the environment, yet only some people develop infections," said Edward Chan, MD, senior author and professor of medicine at National Jewish Health...

Hospitals More Likely To Be Able To Fight Infections When They Plan For Bacteria In Cancer Patients

Date: Jan-27-2013
What cancerous conditions lead to what kinds of bacterial infections? If doctors knew, they could predict which patients would likely benefit from pre-treatment with certain kinds of antibiotics. A University of Colorado Cancer Center study published in this month's issue of the International Journal of Infectious Diseases shows the answer: E. coliand Klebsiella pneumoniae are especially prevalent in patients with lung and GI cancers, more so for Klebsiella if these patients have been treated previously with aminopenicillins. "These are really dangerous infections...

Hastings Center Special Report Aims To 'Provoke A National Conversation' On Ethics Oversight Of Research

Date: Jan-27-2013
The longstanding ethical framework for protecting human volunteers in medical research needs to be replaced because it is outdated and can impede efforts to improve health care quality, assert leaders in bioethics, medicine, and health policy in two companion articles in a Hastings Center Report special report, "Ethical Oversight of Learning Health Care Systems." One of the authors calling for a new approach is the main architect of the current ethical framework...