Health News

Harnessing Anticancer Drugs For The Future Fight Against Influenza

Date: Sep-09-2012
Medical Systems Virology group at the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM) at the University of Helsinki, together with its national and international collaborators, developed a new cell screening method that can be used to identify potential anti-influenza drugs. The researchers were able to identify two novel compounds with anti-influenza activity, obatoclax and gemcitabine and prove the efficacy of a previously known drug saliphenylhalamide. The study was recently accepted for publication in the Journal of Biological Chemistry and is now available online...

Researchers Observe Modified Methylation Patterns In A Group Of Prostate Cancers

Date: Sep-09-2012
In about half of all prostate tumours, there are two genetic areas that are fused with one another. When this is not the case, the exact way cancer cells originate in prostate tumours was not clear until now. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin, in cooperation with a team of international researchers, were able to show that the genesis of this fusion-negative prostate cancer has epigenetic causes: methyl groups are distributed differently over the DNA in the cancer cells than in healthy cells...

Animal Study Finds Anti-HIV Vaginal Ring Can Prevent Virus Transmission

Date: Sep-09-2012
Population Council scientists have found that a vaginal ring releasing an anti-HIV drug can prevent the transmission of SHIV in macaques. This study provides the first efficacy data on the delivery of a microbicide from a vaginal ring, and indicates strong potential for the success of such rings in women. Microbicides are compounds that can be applied inside the vagina or rectum to protect against sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HIV...

NFL Players May Be At Higher Risk Of Death From Alzheimer's And ALS

Date: Sep-09-2012
New research shows that professional football players may be at a higher risk of death from diseases that damage the cells in the brain, such as Alzheimer's disease and ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig's disease), compared to the general U.S. population. The study is published in the September 5, 2012, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study included 3,439 players with an average age of 57 from the National Football League with at least five playing seasons from 1959-1988...

Marital Happiness And Coping Mechanisms Help Pregnant Moms

Date: Sep-09-2012
Pregnant women commonly develop post-traumatic stress, anxiety, and depression when they learn from prenatal diagnosis that they are carrying a fetus with a congenital heart defect (CHD). The intense stress can be reduced by a healthy relationship with their spouse and positive coping mechanisms, reported experts from the Cardiac Center of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia in The Journal of Pediatrics. Jack Rychik, M.D...

Study Uncovers Simple Way Of Predicting Severe Pain Following Breast Cancer Surgery

Date: Sep-09-2012
Women having surgery for breast cancer are up to three times more likely to have severe pain in the first week after surgery if they suffer from other painful conditions, such as arthritis, low back pain and migraine, according to a Cancer Research UK study published recently (Wednesday 5th) in the British Journal of Cancer. Of the women surveyed, 41 per cent reported moderate to severe pain at rest, and 50 per cent on movement, one week after their surgery. Most patients having breast cancer surgery are discharged home by this time...

London Olympics Anti-Doping Labs Set For First-Of-A-Kind Repurposing

Date: Sep-08-2012
The United Kingdom is preparing to convert the London 2012 Olympics anti-doping center, which conducted more than 6,000 drug tests on athletes during the Olympic and Paralympic Games, into a facility that could help revolutionize 21st century health care. That new facility - the world's first national "phenome center" - is the topic of a story in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN). C&EN is the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society...

Applying Algorithm To Social Networks Can Reveal Hidden Connections Criminals Use To Commit Fraud, Says UAlberta Researcher

Date: Sep-08-2012
Fraudsters beware: the more your social networks connect you and your accomplices to the crime, the easier it will be to shake you from the tree. The Steiner tree, that is. In an article recently published in the journal Computer Fraud and Security, University of Alberta researcher Ray Patterson and colleagues from the University of Connecticut and University of California - Merced outlined the connection linking fraud cases and the algorithm designed by Swiss mathematician Jakob Steiner...

Youths With Autism Are Targets For Bullying

Date: Sep-08-2012
According to a new study published in the American Medical Association's Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, 46.3 percent of youths with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have been victims of bullying. This study was part of a pioneering program of research on teens and adults with autism led by Paul T. Shattuck, PhD, and assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. As more children are diagnosed with autism, research needs to be done to see what life is like for teens and adults with this condition...

Stress Can Cause People To Retain As Much Salt As Eating French Fries.

Date: Sep-08-2012
A recent study, which will be presented at the Behavioral Economics, Hypertension Session of the Psychogenic Cardiovascular Disease Conference in Prato, Italy, has revealed that around 30% of African Americans retain too much sodium, about the same amount we would consume from eating a small order of french fries. Dr...