Health News

The Lungs Perceive Hospital Ventilators As Infections

Date: Jul-20-2012
When hospital patients need assistance breathing and are placed on a mechanical ventilator for days at a time, their lungs react to the pressure generated by the ventilator with an out-of-control immune response that can lead to excessive inflammation, new research suggests. While learning that lungs perceive the ventilation as an infection, researchers also discovered potential drug targets that might reduce the resulting inflammation - a tiny piece of RNA and two proteins that have roles in the immune response...

Potential Key To New Treatment For Mantle Cell Lymphoma (MCL)

Date: Jul-20-2012
Researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center and colleagues have demonstrated that the inhibition of signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) in mouse models of mantle cell lymphoma (MCL), an aggressive and incurable subtype of B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma that becomes resistant to treatment, can harness the immune system to eradicate residual malignant cells responsible for disease relapse. Their study appears in a recent issue of Cancer Research, published by the American Association for Cancer Research...

Report Highlights Alarming Data Showing Disproportionately High Rates Of HIV Infections And Deaths From AIDS Among Black MSM

Date: Jul-20-2012
Black AIDS Institute releases report on the AIDS crisis among black gay men Today, the Black AIDS Institute released its latest report, Back of the Line: The State of AIDS Among Black Gay Men in America. The landmark report highlights alarming data that show disproportionately high rates of HIV infections and deaths from AIDS among Black MSM, why the disparities persist and are growing worse, and the urgent need for local and national leadership to immediately address the devastating health crisis...

Focusing On Sustainability Of Infectious Disease Surveillance

Date: Jul-20-2012
Just as the globalization of trade and travel is rapidly evolving, so is the globalization of infectious diseases and the need for cooperative approaches to detect, prevent and control them, according to Dr. David Dausey, chair of the Mercyhurst University Public Health Department. The outbreaks of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and avian influenza H5N1 in recent years showed how infectious diseases can significantly impact national economies and exposed the need for cooperation in detecting and controlling disease to protect populations and economies...

Animal Model That Replicates Human Immune Response Against HIV Could Simplify Vaccine Trials

Date: Jul-20-2012
One of the challenges to HIV vaccine development has been the lack of an animal model that accurately reflects the human immune response to the virus and how the virus evolves to evade that response. In Science Translational Medicine, researchers from the Ragon Institute of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), MIT and Harvard report that a model created by transplanting elements of the human immune system into an immunodeficient mouse addresses these key issues and has the potential to reduce significantly the time and costs required to test candidate vaccines...

The Ancients Knew A Thing Or Two About Plants' Healing Qualities

Date: Jul-20-2012
An international team of researchers, led by the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona and the University of York, has provided the first molecular evidence that Neanderthals not only ate a range of cooked plant foods, but also understood its nutritional and medicinal qualities. Until recently Neanderthals, who disappeared between 30,000 and 24,000 years ago, were thought to be predominantly meat-eaters. However, evidence of dietary breadth is growing as more sophisticated analyses are undertaken...

Maternal Mortality From Malaria Dramatically Reduced By Frequent Antenatal Screening

Date: Jul-20-2012
Frequent antenatal screening has allowed doctors to detect and treat malaria in its early stages on the border of Thailand and Myanmar, dramatically reducing the number of deaths amongst pregnant women. In an analysis of 25 years' worth of data, in 50,981 women, from antenatal clinics at the Shoklo Malaria Research Unit, researchers found that the number of deaths from Plasmodium falciparum malaria fell from an estimated 1,000 deaths per 100,000 pregnant women before the introduction of screening to zero in 2005...

Father-Infant Interactions Linked To Child's Behavior

Date: Jul-20-2012
Children whose fathers are more positively engaged with them at age three months have fewer behavioural problems at age twelve months, according to new research funded by the Wellcome Trust. The study suggests that interventions aimed at improving parent-child interaction in the early post-natal period may be beneficial to the child's behaviour later on in life. Behavioural disorders are the commonest psychological problem affecting children...

Brain Development Not Affected By Long-Term ADHD Drug

Date: Jul-20-2012
Drugs used to treat Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) do not appear to have long-term effects on the brain, according to new animal research from Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. As many as five to seven percent of elementary school children are diagnosed with ADHD, a behavioral disorder that causes problems with inattentiveness, over-activity, impulsivity, or a combination of these traits...

Work-Related Stress Associated With Increased Cardiovascular Risk For Women

Date: Jul-20-2012
Women with high job strain are 67% more likely to experience a heart attack and 38% more likely to have a cardiovascular event than their counterparts in low strain jobs, according to a study published in the open access journal PLoS ONE. The researchers, led by Dr. Michelle A. Albert of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, did not find any correlation between job insecurity and long-term cardiovascular disease risk. Dr...