Health News

Identifying Autism Risk In High Risk Siblings Of Children With ASD

Date: May-19-2012
By focusing on the identification of common genetic variants, researchers have identified 57 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that predict - with a high degree of certainty - the risk that siblings of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) will also develop the condition. The findings were presented at the International Meeting for Autism Research. ASD is among the most common form of severe developmental disability with prevalence rates up to 1 in 88 children. Boys are greater than four times more likely to be diagnosed with ASD, while recurrence risks for the sibling of a child...

New National Guidelines For Treatment Of Subarachnoid Hemorrhage

Date: May-19-2012
People with bleeding brain aneurysms have the best chance of survival and full recovery if they receive aggressive emergency treatment from a specialized team at a hospital that treats a large number of patients like them every year, according to new guidelines just published by the American Stroke Association. Diagnosing and immediately treating this kind of "bleeding stroke", and using advanced techniques to prevent re-bleeding and aneurysm recurrence, reduces the chance of immediate death and disability by 30 percent for patients with aneurysm-related subarachnoid hemorrhages (aSAH),...

Dieting During Pregnancy Is Safe And Helpful

Date: May-19-2012
A study in BMJ reports that the risk for serious complications, such as pre-eclampsia, diabetes and premature birth can be safely reduced even in overweight and obese pregnant women by following a healthy calorie controlled diet during pregnancy. Over half of the UK's female population of reproductive ages is overweight or obese, and up to 40% of European and American women gain more than the recommended weight in pregnancy, which has been associated with numerous serious health problems. Health professionals believe that a woman's pregnancy is the perfect time to discuss weight management,...

Genetic Discovery Will Revolutionize Understanding Of Gene Expression

Date: May-19-2012
Over the past decade, research in the field of epigenetics has revealed that chemically modified bases are abundant components of the human genome and has forced us to abandon the notion we've had since high school genetics that DNA consists of only four bases. Now, researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College have made a discovery that once again forces us to rewrite our textbooks. This time, however, the findings pertain to RNA, which like DNA carries information about our genes and how they are expressed. The researchers have identified a novel base modification in RNA which they say will...

Hunger Among Seniors In The USA Rose 78% In Ten Years

Date: May-18-2012
8.3 million (14.85%) seniors in the United States face the threat of hunger, say researchers at the University of Illinois. From 2001 to 2010, the incidence of hunger among seniors has risen by 78%, and by 34% since the onset of the recession in 2007. Craig Gundersen, University of Illinois associate professor of agricultural and consumer economics and executive director of the National Soybean Research Laboratory, said: "In 2005, we reported that one in nine seniors faced the threat of hunger. So, unlike the population as a whole, food insecurity among those 60 and older actually increased...

Anxiety Disorders And Cellular Metabolism Linked

Date: May-18-2012
Researchers at the University of Chicago have found an association between anxiety disorders and the gene that encodes Glyoxylase 1 (GLO1). However, the mechanism underlying this association is unclear.  The most prevalent psychiatric diseases in the United States are anxiety disorders, which range from post-traumatic stress disorder to social phobia. Using a mouse model, Margaret Distler and her team set out to determine whether the primary substrate of GlO1, methylglyoxal, might have unproven neurological effects. The normal role of GLO1 is to degrade cytotoxic byproducts of glycolysis, a...

Athlete's High Pain Threshold May Help Pain Management Research

Date: May-18-2012
Athletes are often seen to put on a 'brave face and carry on' when they sustain an injury, which supports the theory that they have a higher pain threshold than non-athletes, regardless of inconsistent and sometimes even contradictory evidence from previous studies on pain perception in athletes. The June issue of PAIN reports that researchers from Heidelberg University have discovered in a meta-analysis of previous research that athletes can in fact tolerate higher levels of pain than non-athletes, but there was no difference between athletes and non-athletes in terms of pain threshold, i.e....

Running Marathons - Death Risk Low, Higher Among Men

Date: May-18-2012
In recent years, the popularity of marathons has grown significantly and although the risk of dying during a marathon or soon after is extremely low - about 0.75 per 100,000 - men are two times more likely to die than women, say researchers at John Hopkins University School of Medicine. In addition, the number of individuals to complete grueling 26.2 mile marathons in the United States increased dramatically between 2000 and 2009, from 299,018 to 473,354. The study is published online in The American Journal of Sports Medicine. Julius Cuong Pham, M.D., Ph.D., an associate professor of...

Drug Approval Faster In US FDA Than Its European Or Canadian Counterparts

Date: May-18-2012
Although the drug approval process in the U.S. has been perceived as too slow, the nation approves new drug treatments faster and earlier than Europe and Canada, according to researchers at Yale School of Medicine.  The study, conducted by Nicholas Downing, a second-year medical student and Joseph S. Ross, M.D., assistant professor of internal medicine at Yale School of Medicine, found that the median total time to review was: 322 days at The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 366 days at The European Medicine Agency (EMA) 393 days at Health Canada The teams findings was published online...

Reducing Booze Consumption Better For Public Health And Economy, Australia

Date: May-18-2012
According to a new study in the American Journal of Public Health, Australia could yield economic and health benefits by reducing its overall national yearly alcohol consumption.  In 2008, researchers estimated the economic benefits Australia could achieve in health, production and leisure, if the annual per capita consumption of alcohol would be reduced to a designated average yearly target of 6.4 liters per capita. They discovered that reducing the annual per capita alcohol consumption by just 3.4 liters would save Australia's health sector $789 million. The saving would be the result of...