Health News

Inappropriate Medications Often Prescribed To The Elderly

Date: Aug-24-2012
Approximately one in five prescriptions to elderly people is inappropriate, according to a study published in the open access journal PLOS ONE. The authors of the study, led by Dedan Opondo of the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam, conducted a systematic review of English-language studies of medication use in the elderly and found that the median rate of inappropriate prescriptions was 20.5%. Some of the medications with the highest rates of inappropriate use were the antihistamine diphenhydramine, the antidepressant amitriptyline, and the pain reliever propoxyphene...

River Blindness Research Looks At How The Parasite Thrives

Date: Aug-24-2012
Scientists at the University of Liverpool have found that the worm which causes River Blindness survives by using a bacterium to provide energy, as well as help 'trick' the body's immune system into thinking it is fighting a different kind of infection. River Blindness affects 37 million people, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, causing intense itching of the skin, visual impairment and in severe cases, irreversible blindness. It is caused by a parasitic worm that is transmitted by blood-feeding blackflies, which breed in fast-flowing rivers...

Mice With Dravet Syndrome Mutation Given Low-Dose Sedative Show Improvements In Autism-Like Behavior

Date: Aug-24-2012
A low dose of the sedative clonazepam alleviated autistic-like behavior in mice with a mutation that causes Dravet syndrome in humans, University of Washington researchers have shown. Dravet syndrome is an infant seizure disorder accompanied by developmental delays and behavioral symptoms that include autistic features. It usually originates spontaneously from a gene mutation in an affected child not found in either parent...

Link Between Potency Of Statins And Muscle Side Effects

Date: Aug-24-2012
A study from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, published online by PLoS ONE, reports that muscle problems reported by patients taking statins were related to the strength or potency of the given cholesterol-lowering drugs. Adverse effects such as muscle pain and weakness, reported to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) were related to a statin's potency, or the degree by which it typically lowers cholesterol at commonly prescribed doses...

Genome Sequencing Employed To Help Quell Bacterial Outbreak In Clinical Center

Date: Aug-24-2012
For six months last year, a deadly outbreak of antibiotic-resistant bacteria kept infection-control specialists at the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) Clinical Center in a state of high alert. A New York City patient carrying a multi-drug resistant strain of Klebsiella pneumoniae, a microbe frequently associated with hospital-borne infections, introduced the dangerous bacteria into the 243-bed research hospital while participating in a clinical study in the summer of 2011. Despite enhanced infection-control practices, including patient isolation, the K...

Framework Developed To Assess Risk Of Resistance For Antimalarial Compounds

Date: Aug-24-2012
Medicines for Malaria Venture has developed a framework to evaluate the risk of resistance for the antimalarial compounds in its portfolio. A paper based on this work: A framework for assessing the risk of resistance for antimalarials in development has been published in the Malaria Journal. Resistance defines the longevity of every anti-infective drug, so it is important when developing new medicines for malaria, to check how easily promising antimalarial compounds will select for resistance...

Molecule Reorganises Itself For New Functions

Date: Aug-24-2012
The discovery of a synthetic molecule, made up of 60 simple components that are able to reorganise themselves to produce new functions, will lead to better understanding of nature's processes. The incredibly complex structure of the pentagonal prismatic molecule was discovered when researchers working at The University of Queensland (UQ), The University of Cambridge, and Randolph-Macon College in the USA, formed the structure by transforming a tetrahedral molecule into a second structure - a barrel-like pentagonal prism...

Cancer Treatment And Prevention By Targeting Inflammation

Date: Aug-24-2012
Researchers at the Georgia Health Sciences University Cancer Center have identified a gene that disrupts the inflammatory process implicated in liver cancer. Laboratory mice bred without the gene lacked a pro-inflammatory protein called TREM-1 and protected them from developing liver cancer after exposure to carcinogens. The study, published in Cancer Research, a journal for the American Association for Cancer Research, could lead to drug therapies to target TREM-1, said Dr. Anatolij Horuzsko, an immunologist at the GHSU Cancer Center and principal investigator on the study...

Changing Epidemiology Of Rare Ameba-Related Disease Links Sinus Irrigation With Contaminated Tap Water And Two Deaths

Date: Aug-24-2012
Cases highlight importance of using appropriately treated water for nasal irrigation When water containing the Naegleria fowleri ameba, a single-celled organism, enters the nose, the organisms may migrate to the brain, causing primary amebic meningoencephalitis, a very rare - but usually fatal - disease. A new study published in Clinical Infectious Diseases describes the first reported cases in the United States implicating nasal irrigation using disinfected tap water in these infections...

The Complexities Of Self-Awareness In Humans

Date: Aug-24-2012
Ancient Greek philosophers considered the ability to "know thyself" as the pinnacle of humanity. Now, thousands of years later, neuroscientists are trying to decipher precisely how the human brain constructs our sense of self. Self-awareness is defined as being aware of oneself, including one's traits, feelings, and behaviors. Neuroscientists have believed that three brain regions are critical for self-awareness: the insular cortex, the anterior cingulate cortex, and the medial prefrontal cortex...