Health News

RNA-Based Nanotechnology Promising For Overcoming Endocrine-Resistant Breast Cancer

Date: Nov-06-2012
A University of Cincinnati (UC) cancer biology team reports breakthrough findings about specific cellular mechanisms that may help overcome endocrine (hormone) therapy-resistance in patients with estrogen-positive breast cancers, combating a widespread problem in effective medical management of the disease. Xiaoting Zhang, PhD, and his colleagues have identified a specific estrogen receptor co-activator - known as MED1 - as playing a central role in mediating tamoxifen resistance in human breast cancer...

Studies Investigate Health Concerns Related To Kidney Donation And Racial Disparities Faced By Children Needing Transplants

Date: Nov-06-2012
Three studies presented during the American Society of Nephrology's Annual Kidney Week provide new information related to kidney transplantation - specifically, the post-transplant health of kidney donors and the racial disparities faced by children in need of transplants. Recent studies suggest that hypertension and diabetes are more prevalent in black versus white donors, but no comparisons have been made to healthy non-donors, so the risk attributable to donation remains unknown...

New Light Shed On Nerve Fibres In The Brain By MRI Research

Date: Nov-06-2012
World-leading experts in Magnetic Resonance Imaging from The University of Nottingham's Sir Peter Mansfield Magnetic Resonance Centre have made a key discovery which could give the medical world a new tool for the improved diagnosis and monitoring of neuro-degenerative diseases like multiple sclerosis. The new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, reveals why images of the brain produced using the latest MRI techniques are so sensitive to the direction in which nerve fibres run...

Fatal Heart Disease Risk More Common For African American Men And Women

Date: Nov-06-2012
Although treatments have progressed for coronary heart disease within the last 20 years, African-American men and women continue to have twice the risk of fatal coronary heart disease in comparison to Caucasian men and women, suggests a new study in the November issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. This variance may be because of a larger amount of risk factors present among African-Americans, such as diabetes, hypertension, and smoking, implying that this risk could be terminated with better risk factor control. Rates of coronary heart disease in the U.S...

Developmental Bait And Switch

Date: Nov-06-2012
During the early developmental stages of vertebrates - animals that have a backbone and spinal column, including humans - cells undergo extensive rearrangements, and some cells migrate over large distances to populate particular areas and assume novel roles as differentiated cell types. Understanding how and when such cells switch their purpose in an embryo is an important and complex goal for developmental biologists...

First Pharmaceutical Agent Developed For Homozygous Familial Hypercholesterolemia

Date: Nov-06-2012
An international effort led by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has resulted in positive phase 3 clinical trial results for a new medicine to treat patients suffering from a rare and deadly cholesterol disorder. Penn researchers report in The Lancet that lomitapide, a first-in-class microsomal triglyceride transfer protein (MTP) inhibitor, substantially and stably reduced LDL cholesterol (the "bad" cholesterol) in patients with the orphan disease homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia (HoFH)...

Employment-Based Insurance And Health Care Reform

Date: Nov-06-2012
Men with employment-contingent health insurance (ECHI) who suffer a health shock, such as a cancer diagnosis or hospitalization, are more likely to feel "locked" into remaining at work and are at greater risk for losing their insurance during this critical time as compared to men who are on their spouse's insurance plan or on private insurance plans, according to a new study by Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center. Published in the International Journal of Health Care and Economics, the study was led by Cathy J. Bradley, M.P.A, Ph.D...

Brain's Code For Visual Working Memory Deciphered In Monkeys

Date: Nov-06-2012
The brain holds in mind what has just been seen by synchronizing brain waves in a working memory circuit, an animal study supported by the National Institutes of Health suggests. The more in-sync such electrical signals of neurons were in two key hubs of the circuit, the more those cells held the short-term memory of a just-seen object. Charles Gray, Ph.D., of Montana State University, Bozeman, a grantee of NIH's National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), and colleagues, reported their findings online in the journal Science Express...

Assessing The Cost Of The Affordable Care Act And Expanding Medicaid

Date: Nov-06-2012
Extending Medicaid coverage to currently uninsured adults is likely to increase the cost of the program, according to health policy researchers, because those patients are prone to have more expensive health problems than nondisabled adults currently enrolled in Medicaid. The Affordable Care Act gives individual states the option to expand their Medicaid programs to cover many who are uninsured. A study by Penn State and Wake Forest University researchers is among the first to quantify the potential financial impact of this option...

American Heart Association's Stand On Limiting Sodium Reinforced By New Studies

Date: Nov-06-2012
New studies support limiting daily sodium consumption to less than 1,500 milligrams, according to a new American Heart Association presidential advisory. The advisory, published in the American Heart Association's journal Circulation, is based on a thorough review of recent laboratory, animal, observational and clinical studies that reaffirm the association's 2011 advisory that limiting sodium (salt) to less than 1,500 mg per day is linked to a decreased risk of high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease, including stroke...