Health News

Health Practitioners Should Use Behavior-Change Tactics So Patients Take Medications As Prescribed

Date: Oct-17-2012
Nearly half of patients taking medications for chronic conditions do not strictly follow their prescribed medication regimens. Failure to use medications as directed increases patients' risk for side effects, hospitalizations, reduced quality of life and shortened lifespans. Now, a University of Missouri gerontological nursing expert says patients' poor adherence to prescribed medication regimens is connected to their beliefs about the necessity of prescriptions and concerns about long-term effects and dependency...

Animal Study Suggests That Social Contact May Ease Pain Related To Nerve Damage

Date: Oct-17-2012
Companionship has the potential to reduce pain linked to nerve damage, according to a new study. Mice that were paired with a cage-mate showed lower pain responses and fewer signs of inflammation in their nervous system after undergoing surgery that affected their nerves than did isolated mice, suggesting that the social contact had both behavioral and physiological influences. The social contact lowered the pain response and signs of inflammation even in animals that had experienced stress prior to the nerve injury...

Patients With Intestinal Failure Benefit From Prebiotic

Date: Oct-17-2012
Adding the right prebiotic to the diets of pediatric patients with intestinal failure could replace intravenous feeding, says a new University of Illinois study. "When we fed the carbohydrate fructooligosacharide (FOS) as a prebiotic, the gut grew and increased in function," said Kelly A. Tappenden, a U of I professor of nutrition and gastrointestinal physiology. "The study showed that using the correct pre- and probiotic in combination could enhance these results even more...

Risk Genes In Bipolar Disorder

Date: Oct-17-2012
One of the biggest challenges in psychiatric genetics has been to replicate findings across large studies. Scientists at King's College London, Institute of Psychiatry have now performed one of the largest ever genetic replication studies of bipolar affective disorder, with 28,000 subjects recruited from 36 different research centers. Their findings provide compelling evidence that the chromosome 3p21.1 locus contains a common genetic risk for bipolar disorder, the PBRM1 gene. The locus at 3p21.1 has also been previously associated with depression and schizophrenia...

For Hypertensive Men Soccer Could Be The Answer

Date: Oct-17-2012
Playing soccer (football) could be the best way for people with high blood pressure, known as hypertension, to improve their fitness, normalise their blood pressure and reduce their risk of stroke. Research from Universities of Exeter and Copenhagen, and Gentofte University Hospital in Denmark, published in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, suggests that soccer training prevents cardiovascular disease in middle-aged men with hypertension and is more effective than healthy lifestyle advice currently prescribed by GPs...

Stem Cell Model Developed For Hereditary Disease

Date: Oct-17-2012
A new method of using adult stem cells as a model for the hereditary condition Gaucher disease could help accelerate the discovery of new, more effective therapies for this and other conditions such as Parkinson's, according to new research from the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Scientists at the University of Maryland School of Medicine reprogrammed stem cells to develop into cells that are genetically similar to and react to drugs in a similar way as cells from patients with Gaucher disease...

New Radiation Treatment Significantly Increases Survival Rate

Date: Oct-17-2012
A novel drug that mimics a naturally occurring molecule found in coffee and blueberries has been developed to treat radiation exposure. Charles R. Yates, Pharm.D., Ph.D., and colleagues Duane Miller, Ph.D., and Waleed Gaber, Ph.D., from the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and Baylor College of Medicine, show that application of this drug, starting 24 hours after radiation exposure, increases survival in animal models by three-fold compared to placebo...

Obese Teen Boys Have Lower Testosterone Levels

Date: Oct-17-2012
Obese males between the ages of 14 and 20 reportedly have 50% less testosterone than their normal weight counterparts, which notably decreases their chances of being fertile when they are older. The study, published online in Clinical Endocrinology, was conducted by the same researchers, from the University at Buffalo's School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, who, in 2004, released a study regarding levels of low testosterone (hypogonadism) found in adult type 2 diabetic males...

Sea Slug Offers New Insights Into The Molecular Architecture Of Memory Formation

Date: Oct-17-2012
Neuroscientists from New York University and the University of California, Irvine have isolated the "when" and "where" of molecular activity that occurs in the formation of short-, intermediate-, and long-term memories. Their findings, which appear in the journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, offer new insights into the molecular architecture of memory formation and, with it, a better roadmap for developing therapeutic interventions for related afflictions...

Programs For Treating Addiction In Doctors Pose Ethical Issues

Date: Oct-17-2012
State physician health programs (PHPs) play a key role in helping doctors with substance abuse problems. But the current PHP system is inconsistent and prone to potential conflicts of interest and ethical issues, according to a review available as publish ahead of print content from the December 2012 issue of Journal of Addiction Medicine, the official journal of the American Society of Addiction Medicine. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part ofWolters Kluwer Health. In the article, Drs J. Wesley Boyd and John R...