Health News

Drugs May Help To Diagnose Undetectable Prostate Cancer

Date: Aug-12-2012
Researchers have successfully developed and tested a new prostate cancer screening method that uses the combined power of a novel drug therapy and changes in PSA levels over time to identify men with a high PSA who are more likely to have aggressive prostate cancer despite negative biopsies...

'Burdens Of Place' Plague Urban Poor; Often Lead To Weight Gain, Obesity

Date: Aug-12-2012
Most of America's urban cores were designed for walking but offer little in the way of supermarkets, healthy restaurants and other amenities for residents to walk to, according to a study led by a Michigan State University scholar. The study is one of the first to show that poor residents living in declining urban neighborhoods want healthy food choices - evidenced by their willingness to travel long distances to find them. Past research has generally assumed that poor people will shop at whatever store is closest...

Bariatric Patients With OSA Fail To Show Symptoms, Have Greater Risk For Heart Disease, Stroke, Depression And Post-Operative Complications

Date: Aug-12-2012
A Rhode Island Hospital researcher has found that the majority of bariatric surgery patients being treated for obesity have clinically significant obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), but report fewer symptoms than other sleep disorders patients. The study by Katherine M. Sharkey, M.D., Ph.D., of the department of medicine, division of pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine at Rhode Island Hospital, and University Medicine, is published online in advance of print in the journal Sleep and Breathing...

Sugar And High Fructose Corn Syrup Found To Perform Equally On A Reduced Calorie Diet

Date: Aug-12-2012
A new study published in Nutrition Journal shows that people can lose weight while consuming typical amounts of sugar or high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) if their overall caloric intake is reduced. "Our research debunks the vilification of high fructose corn syrup in the diet," said James M. Rippe, M.D., one of the study authors. "The results show that equally reduced-calorie diets caused similar weight loss regardless of the type or amount of added sugars. This lends further support to findings by our research group and others that table sugar and HFCS are metabolically equivalent...

Medicare Woes Mostly Rooted In Myth: Retirement Expert

Date: Aug-12-2012
Various misconceptions surrounding the continued viability of Medicare can be debunked or discredited, making it more important than ever for voters and policymakers to fully understand the program's existing contours and limitations, according to a paper published by a University of Illinois expert on retirement benefits. Law professor Richard L. Kaplan says Medicare has become one of the most controversial federal programs for numerous reasons, but misinformation has played a key role in fostering criticism of it...

The Journal Of The Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society Probes First Antibiotic Stewardship

Date: Aug-12-2012
The Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society (JPIDS) has released the largest and most rigorous evaluation to date of the impact on reducing the days of antibiotic therapy in a children's hospital using a prospective-audit-with-feedback antibiotic stewardship program (ASP). The study utilized a control group of the 25-member children's hospitals of the Child Health Corporation of America...

Using Targeted Inhibition Of Sphingosine Kinase To Treat Drug Resistant Breast Cancer

Date: Aug-12-2012
Scientists at Tulane University School of Medicine, led by Dr. James Antoon and Dr. Barbara Beckman, have characterized two drugs targeting sphingosine kinase (SK), an enzyme involved in cancer growth and metastasis. New treatments specifically attacking cancer cells, but not normal ones, are critical in the fight against cancer. The results, which appeared recently in Experimental Biology and Medicine, demonstrate the role of SK in drug resistance and therapeutic potential of SK inhibitors. "Sphingosine kinase is a relatively new molecular target," says Dr...

Metabolism Of Certain Drugs Varies Between Genders And May Be Reflected In Anti-HIV Drug Efficacy

Date: Aug-12-2012
Women comprise nearly half of the HIV-infected population worldwide, but these 15.5 million women tend to be under-represented in clinical trials of anti-HIV drug therapies. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has created a database from 40 clinical studies to assess gender differences in the efficacy of antiretroviral treatments. The results of this study are presented in an article in AIDS Patient Care and STDs, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the AIDS Patient Care and STDs website...

To Support Lab On A Chip Commercialization, NIST Focuses On Testing Standards

Date: Aug-12-2012
Lab on a chip (LOC) devices - microchip-size systems that can prepare and analyze tiny fluid samples with volumes ranging from a few microliters (millionth of a liter) to sub-nanoliters (less than a billionth of a liter) - are envisioned to one day revolutionize how laboratory tasks such as diagnosing diseases and investigating forensic evidence are performed. However, a recent paper* from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) argues that before LOC technology can be fully commercialized, testing standards need to be developed and implemented...

Enhanced Anti-HIV Activity Discovered In Potential Drug Molecule

Date: Aug-12-2012
Researchers from Munich and Naples have shown that minimal modification of a synthetic peptide with anti-HIV activity results in a new compound with more than two orders of magnitude higher binding affinity to the chemokine receptor CXCR4 and greatly improved anti-HIV activity. This could be a step toward the design of new, more effective drugs against AIDS, inflammatory diseases, and some forms of cancer. Different strains of HIV-1 use either the chemokine receptor CCR5 or CXCR4 for entry into immune cells...