Health News

Many Hurdles To Leap To Win The Race In Personalized Genomic Medicine

Date: Jul-13-2012
When the human genome project was completed in 2003, some expected it to herald a new age of personalized genomic medicine, but the resulting single "reference" sequence has significant shortcomings for these applications and does not account for the actual variability in the human population, as reported in a study published in the open access journal PLoS ONE...

More Than Just Lunch?

Date: Jul-13-2012
Sharing a meal with a former romantic partner is more likely than other, non-food-related activities to make your current partner jealous, according to a study published in the open access journal PLoS ONE. The authors, led by Kevin Kniffin of Cornell University, asked undergraduate students to rate their jealousy in response to hypothetical scenarios involving their romantic partner engaging with a former partner, either by email, phone, coffee, or a meal...

Hormone Replacement Therapy Associated With Increased Blood Pressure In Women

Date: Jul-13-2012
Menopausal hormone therapy use is associated with higher odds of high blood pressure, according to research published in the open access journal PLoS ONE. Longer hormone use was associated with further increased odds of high blood pressure, although this association decreased with subjects' ages. The authors of the study, led by Joanne Lind of the University of Western Sydney, included 43,405 postmenopausal women in their study to identify the association. As Dr. Lind explains, the study shows that "longer use of menopausal hormone therapy is associated with having high blood pressure...

Alzheimer's Disease Onset Begins Years Before First Signs Appear: Researchers Establish First Detailed Timeline

Date: Jul-13-2012
Scientists have assembled the most detailed chronology to date of the human brain's long, slow slide into full-blown Alzheimer's disease. The timeline, developed through research led by scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, appears in The New England Journal of Medicine...

Blue Cross Blue Shield Alternative Quality Contract Provides A Viable Model For Moving Beyond Fee-For-Service

Date: Jul-13-2012
A new study suggests that global budgets for health care, an alternative to the traditional fee-for-service model of reimbursement, can slow the growth of medical spending and improve the quality of care for patients. Researchers from Harvard Medical School's Department of Health Care Policy have analyzed claims data from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts's Alternative Quality Contract (AQC), a global budget program in which 11 health care provider organizations were given a budget to care for patients who use BCBSMA insurance...

How Effective Are Electric Fans In Heatwaves?

Date: Jul-13-2012
A new Cochrane systematic review of the effects of electric fans in heatwaves has found no high quality evidence to guide future national and international policies. The review outlines the type of study that would help resolve the uncertainty which is spelt out in a podcast and an editorial all published in The Cochrane Library. Heatwaves in Europe and the USA have led to increasing interest in health protection measures to reduce the impacts of such extreme weather events on human health...

Inability To Experience Pleasure During Major Depression Could Lead To Novel Treatment

Date: Jul-13-2012
Stanford University School of Medicine scientists have laid bare a novel molecular mechanism responsible for the most important symptom of major depression: anhedonia, the loss of the ability to experience pleasure. While their study was conducted in mice, the brain circuit involved in this newly elucidated pathway is largely identical between rodents and humans, upping the odds that the findings point toward new therapies for depression and other disorders...

Our Genes May Be The Reason Why Our Immune Systems Decline With Age

Date: Jul-13-2012
Important insights that explain why our ability to ward off infection declines with age are published in a new research report in the July 2012 issue of the Genetics Society of America's journal, GENETICS*. A team of U.S. scientists identified genes responsible for this decline by examining fruit flies - a model organism often used to study human biology in an experimentally tractable system - at different stages of their lives. They found that a completely different set of genes is responsible for warding off infection at middle age than during youth...

Accelerated Aging, Anxiety And Shortened Telomeres Linked

Date: Jul-13-2012
Is anxiety related to premature aging? A new study by researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) shows that a common form of anxiety, known as phobic anxiety, was associated with shorter telomeres in middle-aged and older women. The study suggests that phobic anxiety is a possible risk factor for accelerated aging. The study was electronically published in PLoS ONE. Telomeres are DNA-protein complexes at the ends of chromosomes. They protect chromosomes from deteriorating and guard the genetic information at the ends of chromosomes during cell division...

Initial Data Suggests Alzheimer's Plaques In PET Brain Scans Could Identify Future Cognitive Decline

Date: Jul-13-2012
Among patients with mild or no cognitive impairment, brain scans using a new radioactive dye can detect early evidence of Alzheimer's disease that may predict future decline, according to a multi-center study led by researchers at Duke University Medical Center. The finding is published online in the journal Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. It expands on smaller studies demonstrating that early detection of tell-tale plaques could be a predictive tool to help guide care and treatment decisions for patients with Alzheimer's disease...