Health News

Improved Understanding Of TREX Could See New Treatments For Cancer, Motor Neuron Disease, Myotonic Dystrophy

Date: Aug-15-2012
Decoded process could hold the key to future treatments for a wide range of chronic health problems including Motor Neuron Disease, myotonic dystrophy and a wide range of cancers, University of Sheffield scientists have revealed. Experts from the University's Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, collaborating with scientists from Harvard Medical School in the USA, have revealed how a complicated set of proteins called TREX act as a passport for the transfer of cell blueprints which create proteins that are essential for life...

More Successful Weight Loss With Online Obesity Programs

Date: Aug-15-2012
Computer and web-based weight management programmes may provide a cost effective way of addressing the growing problem of obesity, according to a team of seven researchers who undertook a Cochrane systematic review. The researchers, from Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, USA, found that delivering weight loss or weight maintenance programmes online or by computer helped overweight and obese patients lose and/or maintain weight...

Heart Disease Risk May Be Influenced By Blood Type

Date: Aug-15-2012
People with blood type A, B, or AB had a higher risk for coronary heart disease when compared to those with blood type O, according to new research published in Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology, an American Heart Association journal. People in this study with the rarest blood type - AB, found in about 7 percent of the U.S. population - had the highest increased heart disease risk at 23 percent. Those with type B had an 11 percent increased risk, and those with type A had a 5 percent increased risk. About 43 percent of Americans have type O blood...

Larger Babies Often Born To Overweight And Obese Women

Date: Aug-15-2012
Among pregnant women who did not develop gestational diabetes, overweight women were 65 percent more likely, and obese women 163 percent more likely, to have overly large babies than their healthy weight counterparts. In this study, an overly large infant was identified based on having a birth weight over the 90th percentile for their gestational age at delivery and gender. Gaining excess weight during pregnancy also contributed to having a large for gestational age baby, regardless of maternal weight or whether she developed gestational diabetes...

New Approaches For Evaluating Benefits And Risks Of Obesity Drugs Outlined By GWU Consensus Report

Date: Aug-15-2012
The George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services (GW) has released a report representing consensus findings from a cross-section of stakeholders that could help transform the process used to evaluate interventions to treat obesity, a public health crisis that now affects one in three adults. The report, "Obesity Drug Outcome Measures," results from a stakeholder dialogue group convened by GW that, over a period of nine months, explored why development and approval of obesity drugs have proven so difficult...

Studies Of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder And Tourette Syndrome Published

Date: Aug-15-2012
Two papers that will appear in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, both receiving advance online release, may help identify gene variants that contribute to the risks of developing obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) or Tourette syndrome (TS). Both multi-institutional studies were led by Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators, and both are the first genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in the largest groups of individuals affected by the conditions...

Heart Attack Test Gives Diagnosis In 1 Hour

Date: Aug-15-2012
A more sensitive test for heart attack may cut the diagnosis time to one hour, removing the need for prolonged monitoring in 3 out of 4 patients who  present to the Emergency Department (ED) with chest pains, according to a new US study published this week...

Potential New Blood Test To Guide Treatment For Kidney Cancer

Date: Aug-15-2012
A common enzyme that is easily detected in blood may predict how well patients with advanced kidney cancer will respond to a specific treatment, according to doctors at Duke Cancer Institute. The finding, published online Monday, Aug. 13, 2012, in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, could lead to the first blood test to determine the best treatment for late-stage kidney cancer. "Being able to direct these patients to a treatment we know will help them would be a major advancement in their care," said Andrew Armstrong, M.D...

How Anti-Aging Costmetics Work

Date: Aug-15-2012
A team of investigators from UC Davis and Peking University have discovered a mechanism that may explain how alpha hydroxyl acids (AHAs) -- the key ingredient in cosmetic chemical peels and wrinkle-reducing creams - work to enhance skin appearance. An understanding of the underlying process may lead to better cosmetic formulations as well as have medical applications. The findings were published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry in an article entitled "Intracellular proton-mediated activation of TRPV3 channels accounts for exfoliation effect of alpha hydroxyl acids on keratinocytes...

For Atherosclerosis Risk, Egg Yolk Consumption Almost As Bad As Smoking

Date: Aug-15-2012
Newly published research led by Dr. David Spence of Western University, Canada, shows that eating egg yolks accelerates atherosclerosis in a manner similar to smoking cigarettes. Surveying more than 1200 patients, Dr. Spence found regular consumption of egg yolks is about two-thirds as bad as smoking when it comes to increased build-up of carotid plaque, a risk factor for stroke and heart attack. The research is published online in the journal Atherosclerosis...