Health News

Both Obesity And Under-Nutrition Affect Long-Term Refugee Populations

Date: Oct-04-2012
Both obesity and under-nutrition are common in women and children from the Western Sahara living in refugee camps in Algeria, highlighting the need to balance both obesity prevention and management with interventions to tackle under-nutrition in this population, according to a study by international researchers published in this week's PLOS Medicine...

New Findings On The Workings Of The Inner Ear

Date: Oct-04-2012
The sensory cells of the inner ear have tiny hairs called stereocilia that play a critical part in hearing. It has long been known that these stereocilia move sideways back and forth in a wave-like motion when stimulated by a sound wave. After having designed a microscope to observe these movements, a research team at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden has discovered that the hairs not only move sideways but also change in length...

St. Jude Medical's Peripheral Nerve Stimulation Study Confirms Benefit For Chronic Migraine Patients

Date: Oct-04-2012
St. Jude Medical, Inc. (NYSE:STJ), a global medical device company, has announced publication of results from the first large-scale study of peripheral nerve stimulation (PNS) of the occipital nerves in patients suffering from chronic migraine. The study results, published online by Cephalalgia the journal of the International Headache Society, show a significant reduction in pain, headache days and migraine-related disability. Conducted at 15 medical centers in the U.S., the study followed 157 participants who, on average, suffered from headache approximately 21 days per month...

Is Your Job Making You Wheezy? GPs Failing To Diagnose 75% Of Patients With Occupational Asthma In The UK

Date: Oct-04-2012
A new report published today in the scientific journal, Occupational Medicine, finds that many people who develop work related asthma are not correctly diagnosed by GPs. Work related factors cause one in ten cases of asthma in adults but an audit of patient records suggests that GPs do not recognise this in three quarters of patients. Every year up to 3000 people develop asthma because they are exposed to materials at work...

Cedars-Sinai Study Sheds Light On Bone Marrow Stem Cell Therapy For Pancreatic Recovery In Insulin-Dependent Diabetes

Date: Oct-04-2012
Researchers at Cedars-Sinai's Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute have found that a blood vessel-building gene boosts the ability of human bone marrow stem cells to sustain pancreatic recovery in a laboratory mouse model of insulin-dependent diabetes. The findings, published in a PLoS ONE article of the Public Library of Science, offer new insights on mechanisms involved in regeneration of insulin-producing cells and provide new evidence that a diabetic's own bone marrow one day may be a source of treatment...

Allergy Expert Warns Airlines Are 'Risking Lives'

Date: Oct-04-2012
A top doctor has warned airlines are putting lives at risk by showing a lack of interest in catering for the needs of passengers with nut allergies. Dr Jane Lucas, a respiratory and allergy specialist at Southampton General Hospital, said flights were a particular danger to sufferers due to inconsistent information provided by companies and called on them to take responsibility for their customers...

Noven's Investigational Nonhormonal Menopause Drug Shows Positive Phase 3 Results

Date: Oct-04-2012
Noven Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hisamitsu Pharmaceutical Co., Inc., have announced positive results from two multicenter, double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled Phase 3 clinical studies evaluating low-dose mesylate salt of paroxetine (LDMP; 7.5 mg/day) for the treatment of moderate to severe vasomotor symptoms (VMS) associated with menopause. Menopausal VMS, which comprise hot flashes and night sweats, affect up to 80 percent of women experiencing menopause, and many women report them as the most bothersome symptoms related to the condition...

Cardiac Medication May Help Reduce Stiffness Caused By Nondystrophic Myotonias

Date: Oct-04-2012
Preliminary research finds that for patients with nondystrophic myotonias (NDMs), rare diseases that affect the skeletal muscle and cause functionally limiting stiffness and pain, use of the anti-arrhythmic medication mexiletine resulted in improvement in patient-reported stiffness, according to a preliminary study in the October 3 issue of JAMA. Data on treatment of NDMs are largely anecdotal, consisting of case series and a single-blind, controlled trials of several medications including mexiletine, according to background information in the article. Jeffrey M. Statland, M.D...

Early Response To Treatment For Head And Neck Cancer Patients Predicted By PET

Date: Oct-04-2012
Determining the optimal treatment course and predicting outcomes may get easier in the future for patients with head and neck sqaumous cell carcinomas (HNSCCs) with the use of an investigational imaging agent. Research published in the October issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine shows that positron emission tomography (PET) imaging with3'-deoxy-3'F-18-fluorothymidine (18-F-FLT) during treatment and early follow-up has the potential to predict therapeutic responses andidentify patients needingclose follow-up to detect persistent or recurring disease...

MRI Images Transplanted Islet Cells With Help Of Positively Charged Nanoparticles

Date: Oct-04-2012
In a study to investigate the detection by MRI of six kinds of positively-charged magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles designed to help monitor transplanted islet cells, a team of Japanese researchers found that the charged nanoparticles they developed transduced into cells and could be visualized by MRI while three kinds of commercially available nanoparticles used for controls could not. The study is published in a recent special issue of Cell Medicine [3(1)], now freely available on-line...