Health News

Reporting Of Hospital Infection Rates And Burden Of C. difficile, Canada

Date: Jul-18-2012
A new study published in PLoS Medicine re-evaluates the role of public reporting of hospital-acquired infection data. The study, conducted by Nick Daneman and colleagues, used data from all 180 acute care hospitals in Ontario, Canada. The investigators compared the rates of infection of Clostridium difficile colitis prior to, and after, the introduction of public reporting of hospital performance; public reporting was associated with a 26% reduction in C. difficile cases...

Patients May Not Benefit From Trials Involving Switching HIV Drugs

Date: Jul-18-2012
An increasingly used type of HIV study which involves switching patients on one type of antiretroviral therapy (ART) to another, to see whether the new drug is as good at preventing replication of the HIV virus, may be unethical, according to a new essay published in this week's PLoS Medicine...

Lives And Money Saved When Physicians Focus On Risks For Stroke And Dementia

Date: Jul-18-2012
Fewer people died or needed expensive long-term care when their physicians focused on the top risk factors for stroke and dementia, according to research reported in the Journal of the American Heart Association (JAHA). The primary care doctors in the German study focused on high blood pressure, smoking, high cholesterol, diabetes, irregular heartbeat (atrial fibrillation) and depression. The researchers found that during a five-year period, the need for long-term care was cut 10 percent in women and 9.6 percent in men...

Social Entrepreneurship For Sexual Health

Date: Jul-18-2012
In this week's PLoS Medicine, Joseph Tucker from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA and colleagues lay out a social entrepreneurship for sexual health (SESH) approach that focuses on decentralized community delivery, multisectoral networks, and horizontal collaboration (business, technology, and academia)...

Liver Cancer Risk May Be Reduced By Vitamin E

Date: Jul-18-2012
High consumption of vitamin E either from diet or vitamin supplements may lower the risk of liver cancer, according to a study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Liver cancer is the third most common cause of cancer mortality in the world, the fifth most common cancer found in men and the seventh most common in women. Approximately 85% of liver cancers occur in developing nations, with 54% in China alone. Some epidemiological studies have been done to examine the relationship between vitamin E intake and liver cancer; however, the results have been inconsistent...

Preventing Cancer Metastasis To Bone: Could It Be Something As Simple As A Beta Blocker?

Date: Jul-18-2012
Stress can promote breast cancer cell colonization of bone, Vanderbilt Center for Bone Biology investigators have discovered. The studies, reported in PLoS Biology, demonstrate in mice that activation of the sympathetic nervous system - the "fight-or-flight" response to stress - primes the bone environment for breast cancer cell metastasis. The researchers were able to prevent breast cancer cell lesions in bone using propranolol, a cardiovascular medicine that inhibits sympathetic nervous system signals...

In Swedish Study, Mammography Screening Shows Limited Effect On Breast Cancer Mortality

Date: Jul-18-2012
Breast cancer mortality statistics in Sweden are consistent with studies that have reported that screening has limited or no impact on breast cancer mortality among women aged 40-69, according to a study published July 17 in the Journal of The National Cancer Institute. Since 1974, Swedish women aged 40-69 have increasingly been offered mammography screening, with nationwide coverage peaking in 1997. Researchers set out to determine if mortality trends would be reflected accordingly. In order to determine this, Philippe Autier, M.D...

How Exercise Improves Heart Function In Diabetics: Study

Date: Jul-18-2012
A detailed study of heart muscle function in mice has uncovered evidence to explain why exercise is beneficial for heart function in type 2 diabetes. The research team, led by scientists at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, found that greater amounts of fatty acids used by the heart during stressful conditions like exercise can counteract the detrimental effects of excess glucose and improve the diabetic heart's pumping ability in several ways...

Cells Changing Identity May Trigger Deadly Liver Cancer

Date: Jul-18-2012
A rare type of cancer thought to derive from cells in the bile ducts of the liver may actually develop when one type of liver cell morphs into a totally different type, a process scientists used to consider all but impossible. UCSF researchers triggered this kind of cellular transformation - and caused tumors to form in mice - by activating just two genes. Their discovery suggests that drugs that are able to target those genes may provide a way to treat the deadly cancer, known as cholangiocarcinoma...

2 Biological Risk Factors For Schizophrenia Linked

Date: Jul-18-2012
Johns Hopkins researchers say they have discovered a cause-and-effect relationship between two well-established biological risk factors for schizophrenia previously believed to be independent of one another. The findings could eventually lead researchers to develop better drugs to treat the cognitive dysfunction associated with schizophrenia and possibly other mental illnesses...