Health News

Study Shows Older People Guess Weights More Inaccurately Than Younger People

Date: Oct-26-2012
As we grow older, we are less capable of correctly estimating differences in the weights of objects we lift, according to a study published in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Jessica Holmin and Farley Norman from North Dakota State University and Western Kentucky University, respectively. Previous studies have shown that aging is frequently associated with a decrease in muscle mass and consequently strength, making it more difficult to lift objects. As a result, older adults often perceive weights they lift as being heavier than they actually are...

Improving Discussions About Dying, Palliative Care

Date: Oct-26-2012
In an editorial appearing in the New England Journal of Medicine, medical oncologists at Johns Hopkins and Brigham and Women's hospitals provide a four-point plan for integrating palliative care discussions throughout the treatment of patients with terminal illnesses. They write that better planning and communication may improve symptoms, stress, and survival time, as well as lower health care costs at the end of life. The two physicians suggest that their colleagues should discuss palliative care with patients during initial talks about prognosis at the first physician visit...

Bystander CPR Training Needs To Target 'High-Risk' Neighborhoods

Date: Oct-26-2012
Residents living in high-income white and high-income integrated neighborhoods were more likely to receive bystander CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) during an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest than arrest victims in low-income black neighborhoods, according to a publication in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). Arrest victims in low-income white, low-income integrated and high-income black neighborhoods were also less likely to receive bystander CPR...

Study Finds Advanced Cancer Patients Overoptimistic About Chemotherapy's Ability To Cure

Date: Oct-26-2012
Findings from a nationwide study led by researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute suggest that patients with advanced lung or colorectal cancer are frequently mistaken in their beliefs that chemotherapy can cure their disease. The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that 69 percent of patients with advanced lung cancer and 81 percent of patients with advanced colorectal cancer did not understand that the chemotherapy they were receiving was not at all likely to cure their disease...

New Pathway Revealed By Genome Analysis Of Pancreas Tumors

Date: Oct-26-2012
A Baylor College of Medicine physician-scientist was part of the local team that took part in the international effort. A report appears online in the journal Nature. "We now know every gene involved in pancreatic cancer," said Dr. William Fisher, professor of surgery and director of the Elkins Pancreas Center at BCM. "This study ushers in a whole new era of taking care of patients with pancreatic cancer. We will look back on this as a turning point in understanding and treating this disease." The study follows a five-year collaboration between the Michael E...

New Guidelines For Vitamin D Supplements

Date: Oct-26-2012
Nearly 80 million Americans would no longer need to take vitamin D supplements under new Institute of Medicine guidelines, according to a study by Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine researchers. Results were published in the journal PLOS ONE. The new guidelines advise that almost all people get sufficient vitamin D when their blood levels are at or above 20 nanograms per milliliter (ng/ml). Older guidelines said people needed vitamin D levels above 30 ng/ml...

News From The Journal Of Clinical Investigation: Oct. 24, 2012

Date: Oct-26-2012
Reaching the point of no return: early intervention in a mouse model of obesity Obesity is a chronic metabolic disorder that affects half a billion people worldwide. Managing obesity is difficult, as many patients rebound to their pre-treatment weight. There is a hypothesis that chronic weight gain causes the body to adopt a state that supports excess weight...

Reducing MRSA Infections Using Horizontal Infection Prevention Strategy

Date: Oct-26-2012
High compliance with hand hygiene and focusing on other simple infection control measures on medical, surgical and neuroscience intensive care units resulted in reduced rates of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection by 95 percent in a nine-year study, according to research findings by Virginia Commonwealth University physicians presented during IDWeek 2012. Most hospitals use vertical infection prevention strategies, which focus on culturing for patients harboring organisms such as MRSA and isolating those patients...

Menopause Symptoms May Return After Escitalopram Stopped

Date: Oct-26-2012
Hot flashes and night sweats can return after women stop using escitalopram - an antidepressant - to treat these menopause symptoms, according to a study published online this month in Menopause, the journal of the North American Menopause Society. This is typical of stopping hormone therapy as well. Not every woman who took escitalopram in this National Institutes of Health-supported study had her symptoms come back, however. Symptoms returned for only about one third of the women...

Discovery Of Potential Tumor And Metastasis Suppressor In Breast Cancer

Date: Oct-26-2012
A protein that is necessary for lactation in mammals inhibits the critical cellular transition that is an early indicator of breast cancer and metastasis, according to research conducted at the University at Buffalo and Princeton University and highlighted as the cover paper in November issue of Nature Cell Biology...