Health News

Scientists In Germany Study Cancer Survival After The Fall Of The Iron Curtain

Date: Aug-26-2012
Data from the 1970s and 1980s show that people affected by cancer survived significantly longer in West Germany than cancer patients behind the Iron Curtain. Looking at a diagnosis period from 1984 to 1985 in the former German Democratic Republic, 28 percent of colorectal cancer patients, 46 percent of prostate cancer patients, and 52 percent of breast cancer patients survived the first five years after diagnosis. By contrast, 5-year survival rates for people in West Germany affected by these types of cancer were 44 percent, 68 percent, and 68 percent in the years from 1979 to 1983 already...

New Model Shows How Human Lungs Brush Out Intruders

Date: Aug-26-2012
A runny nose and a wet cough caused by a cold or an allergy may not feel very good. But human airways rely on sticky mucus to expel foreign matter, including toxic and infectious agents, from the body. Now, a study by Brian Button and colleagues from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC, helps to explain how human airways clear such mucus out of the lungs. The findings may give researchers a better understanding of what goes wrong in many human lung diseases, such as cystic fibrosis (CF), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma...

Completely New Way To Fight Bacterial Infections Using 'Naked Darth Vader' Approach

Date: Aug-26-2012
Rather than trying to kill bacteria outright with drugs, Universite de Montreal researchers have discovered a way to disarm bacteria that may allow the body's own defense mechanisms to destroy them. "To understand this strategy one could imagine harmful bacteria being like Darth Vader, and the anti-virulence drug would take away his armor and lightsaber," explained Dr. Christian Baron, the study's lead author and Professor at the Department of Biochemistry...

Catheter-Related Infections May Be Treated At Source Using 'Smart Catheters'

Date: Aug-26-2012
A new "smart catheter" that senses the start of an infection, and automatically releases an anti-bacterial substance, is being developed to combat the problem of catheter-related blood and urinary tract infections, scientists reported at the 244th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society. Dipankar Koley, Ph.D., who delivered the report, said the "smart catheter" technology is being developed for both catheters inserted into blood vessels and the urinary tract. "About 1...

Strong, Sustained Growth In Research Spending In Asian Nations Contrasts With US Cuts And Short-Term Approach - A 'Brain Drain' Could Result

Date: Aug-26-2012
Medical research saves lives, suffering and dollars - while also creating jobs and economic activity. The United States has long led the world, with hundreds of thousands of jobs and marketable discoveries generated by government research funding every year. Top students from around the world come here for training -- and often stay to help fuel medical innovation. Now, warns a team of researchers in the New England Journal of Medicine, the U.S. risks losing out to Asia as the hub of medical discovery...

News From The Journals Of The American Society For Microbiology: August 2012

Date: Aug-26-2012
Boost for Efforts to Prevent Microbial Stowaways on Interplanetary Spacecraft Efforts to expunge micro-organisms from spacecraft assembly cleanrooms, and the spacecraft themselves, inadvertently select for the organisms that are often the most fit to survive long journeys in space. This has the risk of thwarting the goal of avoiding contaminating other celestial bodies, as well as samples brought back to earth, according to Myron La Duc of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), California Institute of Technology, and his collaborators...

Waiting To Treat Patients After Transplant Surgery Is The Way To Go

Date: Aug-25-2012
A new study, published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN), reveals that Cytomegalovirus (CMV), which is the most common virus to infect organ transplant patients, should not be treated immediately after surgery - and waiting until the patients reach a certain point of recovery is better than prophylactically treating every patient. CMV is the most common infection among organ transplant patients...

Rewired Visual Input To Sound-Processing Part Of The Brain Leads To Compromised Hearing

Date: Aug-25-2012
Scientists at Georgia State University have found that the ability to hear is lessened when, as a result of injury, a region of the brain responsible for processing sounds receives both visual and auditory inputs. Yu-Ting Mao, a former graduate student under Sarah L. Pallas, professor of neuroscience, explored how the brain's ability to change, or neuroplasticity, affected the brain's ability to process sounds when both visual and auditory information is sent to the auditory thalamus. The study was published in the Journal of Neuroscience...

In Australia, General Practitioners In Training Spend Less Time With Pediatric Patients Than With Adults

Date: Aug-25-2012
Australian doctors-in-training spend significantly less time consulting with pediatric patients than they do with adults, according to a new study published in the journal Australian Family Physician. The study found that the proportion of longer consultations - more than 20 minutes - for children was significantly less than that for adults and seniors among general practice registrars, says Gary Freed, M.D., M.P.H...

Brain Structure Altered By Intense Prep For Law School Admission Test

Date: Aug-25-2012
Intensive preparation for the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) actually changes the microscopic structure of the brain, physically bolstering the connections between areas of the brain important for reasoning, according to neuroscientists at the University of California, Berkeley. The results suggest that training people in reasoning skills - the main focus of LSAT prep courses - can reinforce the brain's circuits involved in thinking and reasoning and could even up people's IQ scores. "The fact that performance on the LSAT can be improved with practice is not new...