Health News

Testing For Alzheimer's Disease Risk Without Treatment Options Creates Individual, Societal Conundrum

Date: Jul-18-2012
Diagnostic tests are increasingly capable of identifying plaques and tangles present in Alzheimer's disease, yet the disease remains untreatable. Questions remain about how these tests can be used in research studies examining potential interventions to treat and prevent Alzheimer's disease. Experts from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania participated in a panel at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference 2012 (AAIC 2012) discussing ways to ethically disclose and provide information about test results to asymptomatic older adults...

If RDA For Vitamin C Is Increased, Incidence Of Heart Disease, Stroke, Cancer May Be Reduced

Date: Jul-18-2012
The recommended dietary allowance, or RDA, of vitamin C is less than half what it should be, scientists argue in a recent report, because medical experts insist on evaluating this natural, but critical nutrient in the same way they do pharmaceutical drugs and reach faulty conclusions as a result. The researchers, in Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, say there's compelling evidence that the RDA of vitamin C should be raised to 200 milligrams per day for adults, up from its current levels in the United States of 75 milligrams for women and 90 for men...

What Is Fatigue? What Causes Fatigue?

Date: Jul-18-2012
Fatigue, also referred to as tiredness, exhaustion, lethargy, and listlessness, describes a physical and/or mental state of being tired and weak. Although physical and mental fatigue are different, the two often exist together - if a person is physically exhausted for long enough, they will also be mentally tired. When somebody experiences physical fatigue, it means they cannot continue functioning at their normal levels of physical ability. Mental fatigue, however, is more slanted towards feeling sleepy and being unable to concentrate properly. Fatigue is a symptom, rather than a sign...

Disability In Multiple Sclerosis Linked To Sodium Buildup In Brain

Date: Jul-18-2012
A buildup of sodium in the brain detected by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) may be a biomarker for the degeneration of nerve cells that occurs in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS), according to a new study published online in the journal Radiology. The study found that patients with early-stage MS showed sodium accumulation in specific brain regions, while patients with more advanced disease showed sodium accumulation throughout the whole brain. Sodium buildup in motor areas of the brain correlated directly to the degree of disability seen in the advanced-stage patients...

Explosive Leg Strength And Waist Size In Kids Predicted By Hours Watching TV

Date: Jul-18-2012
Researchers at the University of Montreal and Saint Justine Mother and Child University Hospital conducted a world-first study and found that every hour a two to four year old child watches television contributes to his or her waist circumference by the end of 4th grade and his or her skill in sports. Lead author Dr. Caroline Fitzpatrick and senior author Dr. Linda Pagani published their study in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity...

Serious Cases Of Child Physical Abuse Increase During Recession

Date: Jul-18-2012
In the largest study to examine the impact of the recession on child abuse, researchers at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia's (CHOP) PolicyLab detected a significant increase in children admitted to the nation's largest children's hospitals due to serious physical abuse over the last decade. The study, published in the journal Pediatrics, found a strong relationship between the rate of child physical abuse and local mortgage foreclosures, which have been a hallmark of the recent recession...

Mechanism For Organ Placement Shared By Human Cells, Plants, Worms And Frogs

Date: Jul-18-2012
As organisms develop, their internal organs arrange in a consistent asymmetrical pattern - heart and stomach to the left, liver and appendix to the right. But how does this happen? Biologists at Tufts University have produced the first evidence that a class of proteins that make up a cell's skeleton - tubulin proteins - drives asymmetrical patterning across a broad spectrum of species, including plants, nematode worms, frogs, and human cells, at their earliest stages of development...

Why Do Some People Exercise And Others Don't?

Date: Jul-18-2012
The question of why certain people are more physically active than others is examined by an international research team in the second paper in The Lancet Series on physical activity. The researchers say more studies need to be done in low and middle income countries where 80% of non-communicable diseases exist; because even though they have made substantial profess in the past two decades, the research has been focusing on individual level factors (sex, age, socioeconomic status) in high-income countries alone...

Cell-Based Model Of Alzheimer's Disease Developed By Reprogramming Skin Cells Of Alzheimer's Patients To Become Brain Cells Affected In AD

Date: Jul-18-2012
A team of scientists at The New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF) Laboratory led by Scott Noggle, PhD, NYSCF-Charles Evans Senior Research Fellow for Alzheimer's Disease, has developed the first cell-based model of Alzheimer's disease (AD) by reprogramming skin cells of Alzheimer's patients to become brain cells that are affected in Alzheimer's. This will allow researchers to work directly on living brain cells suffering from Alzheimer's, which until now had not been possible. Andrew Sproul, PhD, a postdoctoral associate in Dr...

Survey Confirms The Value Of Marriage

Date: Jul-18-2012
Poor people hold more traditional values toward marriage and divorce than people with moderate and higher incomes, UCLA psychologists report in the current issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family. The findings are based on a large survey about marriage, relationships and values, analyzed across income groups. They raise questions about how effectively some $1billion in government spending to promote the value of marriage among the poor is being spent...