Health News

Patient Outcomes Improved, Health Care Costs Reduced By Hospital At Home Program

Date: Jun-06-2012
Using a Johns Hopkins-developed program that allows medical professionals to provide acute hospital-level care within a patient's home, a New Mexico health system was able to reduce costs by roughly 20 percent and provide equal or better outcomes than hospital inpatients, according to new research. "Hospital at Home is an excellent model of care that can be implemented in a practical way by health delivery systems across the country and can have dramatic positive clinical and economic outcomes for patients and systems," says Bruce Leff, M.D...

Predicting Heart Failure

Date: Jun-06-2012
Medical scientist Howard Young's research has taken a dramatic, unexpected turn in the last few months, thanks to a serendipitous chain of events that could lead to a genetic test that can predict heart failure in certain people before it happens. It started when members of his team, Delaine Ceholski and Cathy Trieber, discovered a new mutation in a protein called phospholamban, which they predicted would cause the heart to be less responsive to changes in the body and eventually lead to heart failure...

Safe, Effective, And Inexpensive Way Of Identifying Healthy Eggs For IVF

Date: Jun-06-2012
In a groundbreaking study, Yale School of Medicine researchers and colleagues at the University of Oxford have identified the chromosomal make-up of a human egg. This discovery may soon allow them to avoid using abnormal - or aneuploid - eggs during infertility treatments, and instead to pick eggs that are healthy enough for a successful in vitro fertilization (IVF) cycle. The results are published in the journal Human Reproduction. Only a few oocytes (eggs) per IVF treatment cycle are able to produce a pregnancy because many eggs have the wrong number of chromosomes...

Special Ultrasound Detects Heart Problems In Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients

Date: Jun-06-2012
A special type of ultrasound - speckle-tracking echocardiography - can detect potentially fatal heart complications in rheumatoid arthritis patients, researchers from the Mayo Clinic, USA, reported at the European League Against Rheumatism annual meeting in Berlin, Germany. The researchers explained that individuals with rheumatoid arthritis have a higher chance of developing heart disease, and for them early intervention is vital. However, risk assessment tools currently used by doctors tend to underestimate the danger. Senior researcher, Sherine Gabriel, M.D...

Teenagers, Cigarettes And Alcohol: Survey Finds Usage By American Kids Lower Than In Europe

Date: Jun-06-2012
The U.S. had the second-lowest proportion of students who used tobacco and alcohol compared to their counterparts in 36 European countries, a new report indicates. The results originate from coordinated school surveys about substance use from more than 100,000 students in some of the largest countries in Europe like Germany, France and Italy, as well as many smaller ones from both Eastern and Western Europe. Because the methods and measures are largely modeled after the University of Michigan's Monitoring the Future surveys in this country, comparisons are possible between the U.S...

Study Puts Some Data Behind Conventional Wisdom On Altitude Training

Date: Jun-06-2012
Altitude training is a popular technique among athletes preparing for a competition, especially expert runners. Much research has been conducted on how to do it, at what altitude to train, how to modify workouts and how long to stay at altitude. However, a major unanswered question is when should an athlete return from altitude to compete? Coaches of elite runners generally take one of two sides...

Health And Development Benefits Of Algal Polyunsaturated Omega-3 Fatty Acid During Pregnancy, Infancy

Date: Jun-06-2012
Positive results from clinical trials exploring algal DHA supplementation during pregnancy and infancy were presented at the 10th Congress of the International Society for the Study of Fatty Acids and Lipids (ISSFAL) - an international scientific society focused on research of dietary fats, oils and lipids.  Benefits of Algal DHA During Pregnancy Research presented by Susan E...

Lean People With Type 2 Diabetes Have Greater Genetic Predisposition To The Disease

Date: Jun-06-2012
Type 2 diabetes is popularly associated with obesity and a sedentary lifestyle. However, just as there are obese people without type 2 diabetes, there are lean people with the disease. It has long been hypothesised that type 2 diabetes in lean people is more 'genetically driven'...

First Complete Atlas Of RNA-Binding Proteins Could Point To Function Of Genes Linked To Diseases

Date: Jun-06-2012
In one of the most famous faux pas of exploration, Columbus set sail for India and instead 'discovered' America. Similarly, when scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, set out to find enzymes - the proteins that carry out chemical reactions inside cells - that bind to RNA, they too found more than they expected: 300 proteins previously unknown to bind to RNA - more than half as many as were already known to do so...

The Difficulty Of Tracing The Origins Of Food Poisoning Outbreaks

Date: Jun-06-2012
As illustrated by the 2011 E. coli outbreak in Germany in 2011, any delay in identifying the source of food poisoning outbreaks can cost lives and cause considerable political and economical damage. An international multidisciplinary team of scientists have shown that difficulties in finding the sources of contamination behind food poisoning cases are inevitable due to the increasing complexity of a global food traffic network where food products are constantly crossing country borders, generating a worldwide network...