Health News
Date: Oct-03-2012
Genetics may make some women more vulnerable to the pressure of being thin, a study published in the International Journal of Eating Disorders has found. From size-zero models to airbrushed film stars, thinness is portrayed as equaling beauty across Western culture, and it's an ideal often cited as a cause of eating disorder symptoms in young women. The researchers focused on the potential psychological impact of women buying into this perceived ideal of thinness...
Date: Oct-03-2012
Researchers in Argentina report that women with multiple sclerosis (MS) who undergo assisted reproduction technology (ART) infertility treatment are at risk for increased disease activity. Study findings published in Annals of Neurology, a journal of the American Neurological Association and Child Neurology Society, suggest reproductive hormones contribute to regulation of immune responses in autoimmune diseases such as MS. According to a 2006 report from the World Health Organization (WHO), MS affects 2.5 million individuals worldwide and is more common among women than men...
Date: Oct-03-2012
Drug resistance is a major problem when treating infections. This problem is multiplied when the infection, like HIV-1, is chronic. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Retrovirology has examined the genetic footprint that drug resistance causes in HIV and found compensatory polymorphisms that help the resistant virus to survive. Currently the strategy used to treat HIV-1 infection is to prevent viral replication, measured by the number of viral particles in the blood, and to repair the immune system, assessed using CD4 count...
Date: Oct-03-2012
Aspirin, the everyday drug taken by countless people around the world to ward off pain and reduce their risk of developing heart disease, may have a new trick up its sleeve - preventing cancer. A growing body of evidence suggests that taking aspirin may reduce an individual's chances of developing colorectal cancer and perhaps other malignancies, but whether that evidence is strong enough to outweigh the risks of prescribing it to millions of healthy people is the subject of debate...
Date: Oct-03-2012
Merck Serono, a division of Merck, Darmstadt, Germany, today announced new data from the randomized Phase III EXTREME trial of Erbitux® (cetuximab) in recurrent and/or metastatic squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (R/M SCCHN), presented at the ESMO 2012 Congress (European Society for Medical Oncology) in Vienna, Austria, September 28 - October 2, 2012...
Date: Oct-03-2012
A new molecule designed to treat Alzheimer's disease has significant promise and is potentially the safest to date, according to researchers. Purdue University professor Arun Ghosh designed the molecule, which is a highly potent beta-secretase inhibitor with unique features that ensure it goes only to its target and does not affect healthy physiological processes, he said. "This molecule maintains the disease-fighting properties of earlier beta-secretase inhibitors, but is much less likely to cause harmful side effects," said Ghosh, the Ian P...
Date: Oct-03-2012
The number of clinical trials enrolling children is far lower than for adults, and the scope of research is also narrower, according to an analysis of public-access data conducted by researchers at Duke University. The findings, reported online Oct. 1, 2012, in the journal Pediatrics, quantify an imbalance that has been observed in recent years and highlights an issue that has generated concern among health leaders and policymakers alike...
Date: Oct-03-2012
It is widely believed that adolescents engage in risky behaviors because of an innate tolerance for risks, but a study by researchers at New York University, Yale's School of Medicine, and Fordham University has found this is not the case. Their findings show adolescents appear to differ from their older peers in the taste for the uncertain. When faced with situations that have highly uncertain outcomes, most age groups react with distaste; adolescents, by contrast, often find these uncertain situations quite tolerable...
Date: Oct-03-2012
Home delivery of stroke rehabilitation improves care, eliminates waiting lists for treatment and saves hundreds of thousands of dollars annually in hospital costs, according to a quality improvement project presented at the Canadian Stroke Congress. Early Supported Discharge, introduced as a permanent part of the Calgary Stroke Program in 2011, has resulted in equally good or better cognition, communication and physical function for people who receive therapy in their own homes as opposed to in a hospital or facility...
Date: Oct-03-2012
As NASA's Curiosity rover scours the surface of Mars and beams pictures of the stark and desolate landscape back to Earth, we've begun to paint a picture of what living on the red planet might actually be like. In this month's Physics World, Ashley Dale, a PhD student at the University of Bristol, brings this image to life by giving his account of the two weeks he spent living in the Utah desert as part of a simulated Mars mission...