Health News

Study Finds Risks Associated With Shift Work In Law Enforcement

Date: Jul-20-2012
Forget bad guys and gunfire: Being a police officer can be hazardous to your health in other ways. Researchers at the University of Iowa have found that police officers who sleep fewer than six hours per night are more susceptible to chronic fatigue and health problems, such as being overweight or obese, and contracting diabetes or heart disease. The study found that officers working the evening or night shifts were 14 times more likely to get less restful sleep than day-shift officers, and also were subjected to more back-to-back shifts, exacerbating their sleep deficit...

Research Needed Into Herbal Remedies For Managing Insomnia

Date: Jul-20-2012
Approximately 1 in 3 Americans suffers from chronic sleep deprivation and another 10-15% of the population has chronic insomnia. Sleep disorders can profoundly affect a person's whole life and have been linked to a range of diseases, including obesity, depression, anxiety, and inflammatory disorders. Over-the-counter herbal remedies are often used to treat insomnia, but surprisingly, very little research has been done to study their efficacy, according to an article in Alternative and Complementary Therapies, published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers...

First-Year College Women Increasingly Taking Up Hookah Smoking

Date: Jul-20-2012
Nearly a quarter of college women try smoking tobacco with a hookah, or water pipe, for the first time during their freshman year, according to new research from The Miriam Hospital's Center for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine. The study, published online by Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, suggests a possible link to alcohol and marijuana use. Researchers found the more alcohol women consumed, the more likely they were to experiment with hookah smoking, while women who used marijuana engaged in hookah smoking more frequently than their peers...

Novel Way To Monitor Neurodegenerative Disorders In Live Animal Models Of Parkinson's Disease

Date: Jul-20-2012
Using a two-photon microscope capable of peering deep within living tissue, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have found new evidence that alpha-synuclein protein build-up inside neurons causes them to not only become "leaky," but also to misfire due to calcium fluxes...

Non-Invasive Thermal Imaging Joins The Fight Against Obesity

Date: Jul-20-2012
Scientists at The University of Nottingham believe they've found a way of fighting obesity - with a pioneering technique which uses thermal imaging. This heat-seeking technology is being used to trace our reserves of brown fat - the body's 'good fat' - which plays a key role in how quickly our body can burn calories as energy. This special tissue known as Brown Adipose Tissue, or brown fat, produces 300 times more heat than any other tissue in the body. Potentially the more brown fat we have the less likely we are to lay down excess energy or food as white fat...

Safety, Tolerability Study To Enroll MSM To Test Maraviroc-Based Drug Regimens For HIV Prevention

Date: Jul-20-2012
Scientists are launching the first clinical trial to test whether drug regimens containing maraviroc, a medication currently approved to treat HIV infection, are also safe and tolerable when taken once daily by HIV-uninfected individuals at increased risk for acquiring HIV infection. The eventual goal is to see if the drug regimens can reduce the risk of infection. The trial involves a strategy known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, in which HIV-uninfected individuals who are at risk for contracting the virus take one or two HIV drugs routinely in an effort to prevent infection...

Risk Of PTSD May Be Reduced By Sleep Deprivation Immediately Following Traumatic Event

Date: Jul-20-2012
Sleep deprivation in the first few hours after exposure to a significantly stressful threat actually reduces the risk of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), according to a study by researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) and Tel Aviv University. The new study was published in the international scientific journal, Neuropsychopharmacology. It revealed in a series of experiments that sleep deprivation of approximately six hours immediately after exposure to a traumatic event reduces the development of post trauma-like behavioral responses...

Discovery Could Expedite The Use Of Embryonic Stem Cells In Cell Therapy And Regenerative Medicine

Date: Jul-20-2012
New research at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem sheds light on pluripotency - the ability of embryonic stem cells to renew themselves indefinitely and to differentiate into all types of mature cells. Solving this problem, which is a major challenge in modern biology, could expedite the use of embryonic stem cells in cell therapy and regenerative medicine...

CONFIRM Study Results Point To A Doubling Of Success In Treating Heart Rhythm Disorder

Date: Jul-20-2012
Researchers from UC San Diego, the University of California Los Angeles and Indiana University report having found, for the first time, that atrial fibrillation or irregular heart rhythms is caused by small electrical sources within the heart, in the form of electrical spinning tops ("rotors") or focal beats. Importantly, they found a way of detecting these key sources, then precisely targeting them for therapy that can shut them down in minutes with long lasting results...

Patients With Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis May Benefit From OHSU Discovery

Date: Jul-20-2012
Researchers at Oregon Health & Science University School of Dentistry have discovered that TDP-43, a protein strongly linked to ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) and other neurodegenerative diseases, appears to activate a variety of different molecular pathways when genetically manipulated. The findings have implications for understanding and possibly treating ALS and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. ALS affects two in 100,000 adults in the United States annually and the prognosis for patients is grim...