Health News

How Religion Promotes Confidence About Paternity

Date: Jun-06-2012
Religious practices that strongly control female sexuality are more successful at promoting certainty about paternity, according to a study published in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study analyzed genetic data on 1,706 father-son pairs in a traditional African population - the Dogon people of Mali, West Africa - in which Islam, two types of Christianity, and an indigenous, monotheistic religion are practiced in the same families and villages...

First Atomic-Level Images Of The Circadian CLOCK Complex

Date: Jun-06-2012
UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have taken a major step toward understanding the cellular clock, mapping for the first time the atomic-level architecture of a key component of the timekeeper that governs the body's daily rhythms. The daily, or circadian, cycles guided by the body's clocks affect our ability to get a good night's sleep, how fast we recover from jet lag, and even the best time to give cancer treatments, said Dr. Joseph Takahashi, senior author of the Science study published online and a pioneer in the study of circadian rhythms...

Hospice Care Would Improve Quality Of Life For Ill, Older Patients And Lower Costs

Date: Jun-06-2012
Half of adults over age 65 made at least one emergency department (ED) visit in the last month of life, in a study led by a physician at the San Francisco VA Medical Center (SFVAMC) and UCSF. Three quarters of ED visits led to hospital admissions, and more than two-thirds of those admitted to the hospital died there. In contrast, the 10 percent of study subjects who had enrolled in hospice care at least one month before death were much less likely to have made an ED visit or died in the hospital...

Novel Way To Treat Drug-Resistant Brain Tumor Cells

Date: Jun-06-2012
New research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison explains why the incurable brain cancer, glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), is highly resistant to current chemotherapies. The study, from the brain-tumor research lab of Dr. John Kuo, assistant professor of neurological surgery and human oncology at UW School of Medicine and Public Health, also reports success for a combination therapy that knocks out signaling of multiple members of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) family in brain-cancer cells. The late U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy died of GBM in 2009...

neural rhythms found to drive physical movement

Date: Jun-06-2012
A new model for understanding how nerve cells in the brain control movement may help unlock the secrets of the motor cortex, a critical region that has long resisted scientists' efforts to understand it, researchers report in Nature. Scientists at Washington University in St. Louis, Stanford University and Columbia University have shown that the motor cortex's effects on movement can be much more easily understood by looking at groups of motor cortex neurons instead of individual nerve cells...

Trastuzumab Emtansine, An Investigational Breast Cancer Drug, Halts Tumor Growth Better Than Standard Therapy

Date: Jun-06-2012
A new cancer treatment that links chemotherapy with an agent that homes in on specific breast cancer cells was significantly better than the current drug regimen at keeping patients' advanced tumors from progressing, according to results from a Phase III clinical trial led by Kimberly Blackwell, M.D., of the Duke Cancer Institute. Participants with invasive breast cancer who took the investigational drug, called trastuzumab emtansine, or T-DM1, also had fewer and less harsh side effects than study participants who received a standard treatment...

Cancer Patients Fight Fatigue With Ginseng

Date: Jun-06-2012
High doses of the herb American ginseng (Panax quinquefolius) over two months reduced cancer-related fatigue in patients more effectively than a placebo, a Mayo Clinic-led study found. Sixty percent of patients studied had breast cancer. The findings were presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology's annual meeting. Researchers studied 340 patients who had completed cancer treatment or were being treated for cancer at one of 40 community medical centers...

Newly Diagnosed Myeloma Patients Benefit From Drug Combination

Date: Jun-06-2012
A three-drug treatment for the blood cancer multiple myeloma provided rapid, deep and potentially durable responses, researchers report online in Blood, the Journal of the American Society of Hematology, and at the American Society of Clinical Oncology's Annual Meeting in Chicago, IL, USA. The researchers, led by Andrzej J. Jakubowiak, M.D., Ph.D...

Structure Of A Retrovirus At A Potentially Vulnerable Stage

Date: Jun-06-2012
Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, have for the first time uncovered the detailed structure of the shell that surrounds the genetic material of retroviruses, such as HIV, at a crucial and potentially vulnerable stage in their life cycle: when they are still being formed. The study, published online in Nature, provides information on a part of the virus that may be a potential future drug target. Retroviruses essentially consist of genetic material encased in a protein shell, which is in turn surrounded by a membrane...

Computer-Designed Proteins Programmed To Disarm Variety Of Flu Viruses

Date: Jun-06-2012
Computer-designed proteins are under construction to fight the flu. Researchers are demonstrating that proteins found in nature, but that do not normally bind the flu, can be engineered to act as broad-spectrum antiviral agents against a variety of flu virus strains, including H1N1 pandemic influenza. "One of these engineered proteins has a flu-fighting potency that rivals that of several human monoclonal antibodies," said Dr. David Baker, professor of biochemistry at the University of Washington, in a report in Nature Biotechnology...