Health News

Parents Can Improve Their Child's Asthma Treatment Via Website

Date: Jun-15-2012
Asthma is the most common chronic illness in adolescents and children, affecting an estimated seven million children up to the age of 17 in the United States. The burden of asthma on children is substantial: kids with asthma have a three-fold greater risk of school absence than children without asthma, and asthma is the third leading cause of hospitalization among children under the age of 15. Some parents of children with asthma have a tough time complying with treatment guidelines...

When Fighting Viruses, Timing And Duration Of Biochemical Bugle Call Critical

Date: Jun-15-2012
Researchers have identified the primary player of the biochemical bugle call that musters the body's defenders against viral infection. Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have shown that a key molecule, MDA5, is essential for producing enough interferon (the bugle call) to rally virus-fighting cells during certain viral infections. In mice, the lack of MDA5 forces the immune system to rely on less effective defenders, which may give the virus opportunities to establish or expand a chronic infection...

Bigger Health System Changes Needed For Productivity Gains From Health IT

Date: Jun-15-2012
Productivity gains that can be achieved by widely adopting health information technology are likely to come from the reengineering of health care and may require new measurement tools to accurately gauge their impact, according to a new analysis from RAND Corporation researchers. While debate remains about whether electronic health records and other health IT investments will deliver promised improvements, RAND researchers suggest that existing administrative data used to measure productivity gains may be unable to detect the effects of health IT...

Single Drugs That 'Target' Tumor Cells Unlikely, In The Long Term, To Benefit Patients With Advanced Cancers

Date: Jun-15-2012
Targeted cancer cell therapies using man-made proteins dramatically shrink many tumors in the first few months of treatment, but new research from Johns Hopkins scientists finds why the cells all too often become resistant, the treatment stops working, and the disease returns...

Cancer Patient Attitudes To Clinical Trials Participation Changed By Multimedia Psychoeducational Intervention

Date: Jun-15-2012
Seeking ways to change cancer patients' perceptions and negative attitudes towards clinical trials participation, researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center conducted a study offering two different kinds of intervention to two groups of adults with cancer who had not previously been asked to participate in clinical trials. They found a multimedia psychoeducational intervention to be more effective in changing patients' perceptions and negative attitudes toward clinical trials than standard educational literature. The study was published in a recent issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology...

Videogamers No Better At Talking On The Phone While Driving

Date: Jun-15-2012
No matter how much time you've spent training your brain to multitask by playing "Call of Duty," you're probably no better at talking on the phone while driving than anybody else. A study by the Visual Cognition Laboratory at Duke University wanted to see whether gamers who have spent hours in front of a screen simultaneously watching the map, scanning doorways for bad guys and listening to the chatter of their fellow gamers could answer questions and drive at the same time. The finding: not so much...

Research Punctures 'Modern' Fathers Myth - Except For Nappies That Is..

Date: Jun-15-2012
'Modern' fathers have been around for far longer than we think, but they have only recently started to change nappies according to research from the University of Warwick. In a new paper published on the History & Policy website, Dr Laura King from the University of Warwick's Centre for the History of Medicine said the assumption that fathers have only become more involved in looking after their children over the past 20 years is not true. However, statistics show it has taken longer for dads to get to grips with dirty nappies...

Parenting Adversely Affected By Anxiety In Mouse Model

Date: Jun-15-2012
Normally, male California mice are surprisingly doting fathers, but new research published in the journal Physiological and Biochemical Zoology suggests that high anxiety can turn these good dads bad. Unlike most rodents, male and female California mice pair up for life with males providing extensive parental care, helping deliver the pups, lick them clean, and keep them warm during their first few weeks of life. Experienced fathers are so paternal that they'll even take care of pups that aren't theirs...

Pathway Determined For Origin Of Most Common Form Of Brain And Spinal Cord Tumor

Date: Jun-15-2012
Johns Hopkins researchers say they have discovered one of the most important cellular mechanisms driving the growth and progression of meningioma, the most common form of brain and spinal cord tumor. A report on the discovery, published in the journal Molecular Cancer Research, could lead the way to the discovery of better drugs to attack these crippling tumors, the scientists say. "We are one step closer to identifying genes that can be targeted for treatment," says study leader Gilson S. Baia, Ph.D...

New Skin Cancer Drug Hailed As 'Greatest Advance Yet' By New England Journal Of Medicine

Date: Jun-15-2012
Vismodegib, a new skin cancer drug for patients with advanced basal cell carcinoma tested by TGen, Virginia G. Piper Cancer Center at Scottsdale Healthcare and Mayo Clinic, is hailed as "the greatest advance in therapy yet seen" for advanced basal cell carcinoma in an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine. Vismodegib (marketed under the name Erivedge) was administered for the first time in the world on Jan. 23, 2007 in a Phase I clinical trial at Virginia G...