Health News

Severe Pain Not Treated in Victims of Sexual Assault

Date: Sep-12-2012
Most sexual assault victims suffer from serious pain soon after the crime, but less than a third of them don't take any pain medication. One in 5 American women experiences a sexual assault at some point in her life. Research from 2011 in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs suggests that girls who take up binge drinking in college have an increased risk of sexual assault. People who are sexually assaulted experience severe acute pain, similar to that from other physical trauma...

Ants Have An Exceptionally 'Hi-Def' Sense Of Smell

Date: Sep-12-2012
Ants have four to five times more odor receptors than most other insects, a team of researchers have discovered. The research team, led by Lawrence Zwiebel at Vanderbilt, recently completed the first full map of olfactory system that provides ants with their sense of taste and smell. They found the industrious insects have genes that make about 400 distinct odorant receptors, special proteins that detect different odors. By comparison, silk moths have 52, fruit flies have 61, mosquitoes range from 74 to 158 and honeybees have 174...

Double Drug Combo Could Shut Down Abnormal Blood Vessel Growth That Feeds Disease

Date: Sep-12-2012
New Study Shows Key Protein Works Together with VEGF to Stimulate Abnormal Blood Vessel Growth, Targeting Both Could More Effectively Treat Cancer and Other DiseasesA new study by researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College shows combining two already-FDA approved drugs may offer a new and potent punch against diseases in which blood vessel growth is abnormal -- such as cancer, diabetic retinopathy, macular degeneration and rheumatoid arthritis. Their study, published in the Sept...

University Of Maryland Study: Neonatal Heart Stem Cells May Help Mend Kids' Broken Hearts

Date: Sep-12-2012
Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, who are exploring novel ways to treat serious heart problems in children, have conducted the first direct comparison of the regenerative abilities of neonatal and adult-derived human cardiac stem cells. Among their findings: cardiac stem cells (CSCs) from newborns have a three-fold ability to restore heart function to nearly normal levels compared with adult CSCs. Further, in animal models of heart attack, hearts treated with neonatal stem cells pumped stronger than those given adult cells...

LifeSkills Training Helps Teens Manage Anger, Lower Blood Pressure

Date: Sep-12-2012
A 10-week program that fits easily into the high school curriculum could give students a lifetime of less anger and lower blood pressure, researchers report. Health and physical education teachers taught anger and stress management to 86 ninth graders in Augusta, Ga., and found their ability to control anger increased, their anxiety decreased and their blood pressures were generally lower over the course of a day compared to 73 of their peers who received no intervention, according to a study published in the journal Translational Behavioral Medicine...

Scientists Put A Pox On Dog Cancer

Date: Sep-12-2012
Researchers report that myxoma - a pox virus that afflicts rabbits but not humans, dogs or any other vertebrates so far studied - infects several different types of canine cancer cells in cell culture while sparing healthy cells. The study adds to the evidence that viruses or modified viruses will emerge as relatively benign cancer treatments to complement or replace standard cancer therapies. The new study, reported in the American Journal of Veterinary Research, is unique in that it focused on spontaneously occurring cancers in dogs...

Pain Drug Can Kill Resistant Tuberculosis

Date: Sep-12-2012
An off-patent anti-inflammatory drug that costs around two cents for a daily dose in developing countries has been found by researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College to kill both replicating and non-replicating drug resistant tuberculosis in the laboratory -- a feat few currently approved TB drugs can do, and resistance to those is spreading. Their findings, published online by the journal PNAS, point to a potential new therapy for the more than 500,000 people worldwide whose TB has become resistant to standard drug treatments...

'Humanized' Mice Developed At OHSU Enable Malaria Research Breakthrough At Seattle BioMed

Date: Sep-12-2012
A novel human liver-chimeric mouse model developed at Oregon Health & Science University and Yecuris Corporation has made possible a research breakthrough at Seattle Biomedical Research Institute that will greatly accelerate studies of the most lethal forms of human malaria. The study findings are published online in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. Study photos were selected to appear in "Scientific Show Stoppers" on the JCI blog...

Too Soon? Too Late? Psychological Distance Matters When It Comes To Humor

Date: Sep-12-2012
Joking around can land us in hot water. Even the professionals often shoot themselves comedically in the foot. Last month, comedian Jeffrey Ross's routine at a roast of Rosanne Barr was censored when he joked about the shooting in Aurora, Colorado. "Too soon!" everyone said. And yet, it's not quite as simple as certain topics being "too soon" to joke about. Two weeks after 9/11, The Onion was able to successfully publish a satirical issue about the terrorist attacks...

Case Western Reserve Researchers Create Short-Term Memories In-Vitro

Date: Sep-12-2012
Ben W. Strowbridge, PhD, Professor of Neurosciences and Physiology/Biophysics, and Robert A. Hyde, a fourth year MD/PhD student in the neurosciences graduate program at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, have discovered how to store diverse forms of artificial short-term memories in isolated brain tissue. "This is the first time anyone has found a way to store information over seconds about both temporal sequences and stimulus patterns directly in brain tissue," says Dr. Strowbridge...