Health News

Study Opens A New Door To More Personalized Treatment Of Advanced Breast Cancer

Date: Oct-03-2012
For the first time, researchers have conducted a large trial in which they tested the entire genome of individual breast cancers to help personalize treatment. They released their findings at the ESMO 2012 Congress of the European Society for Medical Oncology in Vienna. In recent years, a number of drugs have been developed that target specific genetic alterations in cancer. To choose which of these drugs are suitable for individual patients, some genetic testing is performed...

Optimal Duration Of Trastuzumab Therapy For Women With HER2+ Early Breast Cancer: New Findings

Date: Oct-03-2012
New studies that advance understanding of the optimal duration of therapy with the targeted cancer drug trastuzumab were released at the ESMO 2012 Congress of the European Society for Medical Oncology in Vienna. "These long awaited results constitute a further milestone in the treatment of patients with early breast cancer over-expressing HER2/neu, corresponding to a population of about 12-15% of all cases of breast cancer," commented Prof Christoph Zielinski, Chairman of the Clinical Division of Oncology, at Medical University Vienna, Austria, who was not involved in the studies...

HPV4 Vaccine Sage For Adolescents And Young Women In Routine Clinical Care

Date: Oct-03-2012
A study of almost 200,000 young females who received the quadrivalent human papilloma virus (HPV4) vaccine found that immunization was associated only with same-day syncope (fainting) and skin infections in the two weeks after vaccination. These findings support the general safety of routine vaccination with HPV4 in a clinical care setting to prevent cervical and other genital and reproductive cancers...

Predicting The Spread Of Flu May Be Improved By Evolutionary Analysis

Date: Oct-03-2012
With flu season around the corner, getting a seasonal vaccine might be one of the best ways to prevent people from getting sick. These vaccines only work, however, if their developers have accurately predicted which strains of the virus are likely to be active in the coming season because vaccines must be developed in advance of the upcoming flu season. Recently, a team of scientists from Germany and the United Kingdom have improved the prediction methods used to determine which strains of the flu virus to include in the current season's vaccine...

Just Small Amounts Of Exercise Can Improve The Mental Well-Being Of Overweight Teens

Date: Oct-03-2012
Being obese at any age is commonly associated with a litany of health issues, ranging from diabetes and chronic fatigue to heart complications. Overweight adolescents are also at an increased risk of body dissatisfaction, social alienation and low self esteem, which is why Dr...

Association Between Use Of EHR And Improvements In Outcomes For Patients With Diabetes

Date: Oct-03-2012
Use of electronic health records was associated with improved drug-treatment intensification, monitoring, and risk-factor control among patients with diabetes, according to a new Kaiser Permanente study. In the study, which appears in the current issue of Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers also noted greater improvements among patients with poorer control of their diabetes and lipids...

Better Patient Care And Improved Recovery Offered By Stroke Rehabilitation Robots

Date: Oct-03-2012
When it comes to stroke rehabilitation, it takes a dedicated team to help a person regain as much independence as possible: physicians, nurses, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, speech-language pathologists, recreation therapists, caregivers and others. Now, a University of Calgary research team has added a robot to help identify and customize post-stroke therapy. Rehabilitation robots improve detection of post-stroke impairments and can enhance the type and intensity of therapy required for recovery, according to a study presented at the Canadian Stroke Congress...

Autoimmune Disease Myasthenia Gravis Halted In Mice

Date: Oct-03-2012
Working with mice, Johns Hopkins researchers say they have developed a gene-based therapy to stop the rodent equivalent of the autoimmune disease myasthenia gravis by specifically targeting the destructive immune response the disorder triggers in the body. The technique, the result of more than 10 years of work, holds promise for a highly specific therapy for the progressively debilitating muscle-weakening human disorder, one that avoids the need for long-term, systemic immunosuppressant drugs that control the disease but may create unwanted side effects...

People With Mild Cognitive Impairment Benefit From Eliminating Visual Clutter

Date: Oct-03-2012
A new study from Georgia Tech and the University of Toronto suggests that memory impairments for people diagnosed with early stage Alzheimer's disease may be due, in part, to problems in determining the differences between similar objects. The findings also support growing research indicating that a part of the brain once believed to support memory exclusively - the medial temporal lobe - also plays a role in object perception. The results are published in the October edition of Hippocampus...

Babies' Non-Verbal Communication Skills Can Help Predict Outcomes In Children At High Risk Of Developing Autism

Date: Oct-03-2012
Approximately 19 percent of children with a sibling diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) will develop Autism due to shared genetic and environmental vulnerabilities, according to previous studies. For that reason, University of Miami (UM) psychologists are developing ways to predict the occurrence of ASD in high-risk children, early in life, in hopes that early intervention will lead to better outcomes in the future. Their findings are published in the journal Infancy...