Health News

Higher Levels Of Public Reimbursement Positively Influence National Birth Rates And Reduce Unmet Needs In Subfertile Populations

Date: Jul-03-2012
The state funding of fertility treatment through public reimbursement policies has a direct influence on national birth rates. Lower levels of reimbursement are correlated with higher unmet needs for treatment, while more generous reimbursement policies increase access to treatment and may even make a measurable contribution to national birth rates. The findings come from a study reported at the annual meeting of ESHRE (European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology)...

Cell Therapy For Parkinson's Disease Generates Dopamine

Date: Jul-03-2012
In Parkinson's disease, the loss of dopamine-producing cells in the midbrain causes well-characterized motor symptoms. Though embryonic stem cells could potentially be used to replace dopaminergic (DA) neurons in Parkinson's disease patients, such cell therapy options must still overcome technical obstacles before the approach is ready for the clinic. Embryonic stem cell-based transplantation regimens carry a risk of introducing inappropriate cells or even cancer-prone cells. To develop cell purification strategies to minimize these risks, Dr...

Link Between Caffeinated Coffee Consumption And Reduced Risk Of Most Common Form Of Skin Cancer

Date: Jul-03-2012
Increasing the number of cups of caffeinated coffee you drink could lower your risk of developing the most common form of skin cancer, basal cell carcinoma, according to a study published in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. "Our data indicate that the more caffeinated coffee you consume, the lower your risk of developing basal cell carcinoma," said Jiali Han, Ph.D., associate professor at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School in Boston and Harvard School of Public Health...

Microwaves Offer Safer, Cheaper Detection Of Breast Tumors

Date: Jul-03-2012
A simple and cost effective imaging device for breast tumor detection based on a flexible and wearable antenna system has been developed by researchers at the Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis. The team based in the Integrated Nanosystems Development Institute (INDI) describes details in a forthcoming issue of the International Journal of Computer Aided Engineering and Technology and point out that their system holds the promise of much earlier detection than mammography...

Shedding Light On Human Sweet Perception, Metabolic Disorders With The Help Of Honey Bees

Date: Jul-03-2012
Scientists at Arizona State University have discovered that honey bees may teach us about basic connections between taste perception and metabolic disorders in humans. By experimenting with honey bee genetics, researchers have identified connections between sugar sensitivity, diabetic physiology and carbohydrate metabolism. Bees and humans may partially share these connections...

New Mums Suicide Risk Linked To Cat Litter Parasite Toxoplasma Gondii

Date: Jul-03-2012
Women carrying IgC antibodies to Toxoplasma gondii when giving birth have a higher risk of self-harm or suicide later on, especially if antibody levels are high, researchers from the Statens Serum Institut, Copenhagen, Denmark, and the University of Maryland, USA, reported in Archives of Psychiatry. Toxoplasma gondii is a common protozoa (parasite), which can migrate to the brain after being ingested - it can remain in the brain in a cystic form in neurons and glial cells...

Key Step Discovered In Immune System-Fueled Inflammation

Date: Jul-03-2012
Like detectives seeking footprints and other clues on a television "whodunit," science can also benefit from analyzing the tracks of important players in the body's molecular landscape. Klaus Ley, M.D., a scientist at the La Jolla Institute for Allergy & Immunology, has done just that and illuminated a key step in the journey of inflammation-producing immune cells. The finding provides powerful, previously unknown information about critical biological mechanisms underlying heart disease and many other disorders...

Animal Model Of Pancreatic Cancer Offers Potential Treatment Target

Date: Jul-03-2012
Detailed analysis of genes expressed in circulating tumor cells (CTCs) -- cells that break off from solid tumors and travel through the bloodstream -- has identified a potential treatment target in metastatic pancreatic cancer. In a report that will appear in Nature and has received advance online publication, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Cancer Center investigators describe finding increased expression of WNT2, a member of a known family of oncogenes, in CTCs from a mouse model of the deadly tumor and from human patients...

Living Tissues Improved With 3-D Printed Vascular Networks Made From Sugar

Date: Jul-03-2012
Researchers are hopeful that new advances in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine could one day make a replacement liver from a patient's own cells, or animal muscle tissue that could be cut into steaks without ever being inside a cow. Bioengineers can already make 2D structures out of many kinds of tissue, but one of the major roadblocks to making the jump to 3D is keeping the cells within large structures from suffocating; organs have complicated 3D blood vessel networks that are still impossible to recreate in the laboratory...

Miniaturized Ultrasonic Device Capable Of Capturing And Moving Single Cells And Tiny Living Creatures

Date: Jul-03-2012
A device about the size of a dime can manipulate living materials such as blood cells and entire small organisms, using sound waves, according to a team of bioengineers and biochemists from Penn State. The device, called acoustic tweezers, is the first technology capable of touchlessly trapping and manipulating Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans), a one millimeter long roundworm that is an important model system for studying diseases and development in humans...