Health News

The Government And Private Payers Responsible For Most Occupational Injury And Illness Costs Rather Than Workers' Compensation Insurance

Date: May-29-2012
UC Davis researchers have found that workers' compensation insurance is not used nearly as much as it should be to cover the nation's multi-billion dollar price tag for workplace illnesses and injuries. Instead, almost 80 percent of these costs are paid by employer-provided health insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and other disability funds, employees and other payers...

Overactive Leukemia Gene May Be Explained By Inherited DNA Change

Date: May-29-2012
A small inherited change in DNA is largely responsible for overactivating a gene linked to poor treatment response in people with acute leukemia.  The study by researchers at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center - Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC - James) focused on a gene called BAALC. This gene is often overactive, or overexpressed, in people with acute myeloid or acute lymphoblastic leukemia, and it indicates that the disease is likely to respond poorly to standard therapy...

New Plan To Increase Global Access To Vaccines Endorsed By World Health Assembly

Date: May-29-2012
Ministers of Health from 194 countries at the Sixty-fifth World Health Assembly have endorsed a landmark Global Vaccine Action Plan (GVAP), a roadmap to prevent millions of deaths by 2020 through more equitable access to existing vaccines for people in all communities. The GVAP was coordinated by the Decade of Vaccines Collaboration, a group of leading international vaccine experts, and represents the collective vision of hundreds of global health stakeholders to extend the full benefits of immunization to all people, regardless of where they are born, who they are, or where they live...

Findings Suggest Cancer Cells May Grow More Easily Than Researchers And Clinicians Had Hoped

Date: May-29-2012
Chromosomal deletions in DNA often involve just one of two gene copies inherited from either parent. But scientists haven't known how a deletion in one gene from one parent, called a "hemizygous" deletion, can contribute to cancer. A research team led by Stephen Elledge, a professor in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, and his post-doctoral fellow Nicole Solimini, has now provided an answer...

In The Immune System, T Cells 'Hunt' Parasites Like Animal Predators Seeking Prey

Date: May-29-2012
By pairing an intimate knowledge of immune-system function with a deep understanding of statistical physics, a cross-disciplinary team at the University of Pennsylvania has arrived at a surprising finding: T cells use a movement strategy to track down parasites that is similar to strategies that predators such as monkeys, sharks and blue-fin tuna use to hunt their prey...

Earlier Detection Of Diseases Likely With New Super-Sensitive Tests

Date: May-29-2012
Scientists have developed an ultra-sensitive test that should enable them to detect signs of a disease in its earliest stages, in research published in the journal Nature Materials. The scientists, from Imperial College London and the University of Vigo, have created a test to detect particular molecules that indicate the presence of disease, even when these are in very low concentrations. There are already tests available for some diseases that look for such biomarkers using biological sensors or 'biosensors'...

Does A Safe Suntan Exist? Apparently Not

Date: May-29-2012
Dermatologists from Penn State University say that a safe tan does not exist. The incidence of melanoma, a fatal form of skin cancer, was eight times higher among women and four times higher among men in 2009 compared to 1970. Sixty thousand people are diagnosed with melanoma each year in the USA - one American dies every hour from the disease. The American Cancer Society says that among 25 to 29 year olds, melanoma is the most common form of cancer - it is the second most common form among 15 to 29 year-olds...

The Immune System May Protect Against Alzheimer's Changes In Humans

Date: May-29-2012
Recent work in mice suggested that the immune system is involved in removing beta-amyloid, the main Alzheimer's-causing substance in the brain. Researchers have now shown for the first time that this may apply in humans. Researchers at the Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Exeter with colleagues in the National Institute on Aging in the USA and in Italy screened the expression levels of thousands of genes in blood samples from nearly 700 people...

Different Antimicrobial Metals Evaluated For Use In Water Filters

Date: May-29-2012
Porous ceramic water filters are often coated with colloidal silver, which prevents the growth of microbes trapped in the micro- and nano-scale pores of the filter. Other metals such as copper and zinc have also been shown to exhibit anti-microbial activity. Researchers from Princeton University in New Jersey used atomic force microscopy (AFM) measurements to study the adhesion interaction between Escherichia coli (E...

For Pediatric Crohn's Disease, Measurement Of Bone Age Should Be Included In Routine Care

Date: May-29-2012
Measuring bone age should be a standard practice of care for pediatric patients with Crohn's disease, in order to properly interpret growth status and improve treatment, according to a new study from the UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital. "Not only is bone age helpful in predicting a child's remaining growth potential, our study demonstrates that bone age is necessary to correctly interpret a patient's growth status in pediatric Crohn's disease," said lead study researcher Neera Gupta, MD, MAS, a pediatric gastroenterologist at the UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital...