Health News

Cellular Energy May Be Depleted In Patients With Obesity And Diabetes By Increased Fructose Consumption

Date: May-04-2012
Obese people who consume increased amounts of fructose, a type of sugar that is found in particular in soft drinks and fruit juices, are at risk for nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NFALD) and more its more severe forms, fatty inflammation and scarring. Now researchers at Duke University Medical Center believe they better understand what mechanism may account for fructose-related liver injury. Chronic fructose consumption in a diet puts people at risk for depleting their store of critically important molecules called ATP, which provide liver cells (and other body cells) energy for important...

Surveillance And Prevention Of Dengue Fever Could Save $5 For Every $1 Invested

Date: May-04-2012
As public health experts warn that the spread of dengue fever could prove more costly globally and cause more sickness than even malaria, a new report published in the May issue of the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene finds each year dengue is inflicting a US$ 37.8 million burden on Puerto Rico and that every $1 invested in traditional surveillance and prevention could save $5 in costs of illness. The study by researchers at Brandeis University's Schneider Institutes for Health Policy is the first to look at who bears the cost - across households, governments, employers and...

Novel Method For Treating Sepsis

Date: May-04-2012
Margination, the natural phenomenon where bacteria and leukocytes (white blood cells) move toward the sides of blood vessels, is the inspiration for a novel method for treating sepsis, a systemic and often dangerous inflammatory response to microbial infection in the blood. A team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the National University of Singapore has designed a branchlike system of microfluidic channels, 20 micrometers (20 millionths of a meter, or about one-fifth the size of a grain of sand) high by 20 micrometers wide, that mimic the marginizing action of...

Incentives Improve Response To Blood Drives

Date: May-04-2012
It's called the gift of life. But more people will roll up their sleeves to donate blood if a gift card comes with it. That's according to a new study from the University of Toronto. It shows a 15 to 20 percent rise in blood drive donations when incentives such as T-shirts, jackets, coupons or gift cards are thrown into the mix. "It's a pretty remarkable increase," says Nicola Lacetera, an assistant professor of strategic management at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management and University of Toronto - Mississauga who wrote the paper with fellow investigators Mario Macis of...

Researcher Developing Therapy To Halt Symptoms In Parkinson's Patients

Date: May-04-2012
Parkinson's disease, a disorder which affects movement and cognition, affects over a million Americans, including actor Michael J. Fox, who first brought it to the attention of many TV-watching Americans. It's characterized by a gradual loss of neurons that produce dopamine. Mutations in the gene known as DJ-1 lead to accelerated loss of dopaminergic neurons and result in the onset of Parkinson's symptoms at a young age. The ability to modify the activity of DJ-1 could change the progress of the disease, says Dr. Nirit Lev, a researcher at Tel Aviv University's Sackler Faculty of Medicine and...

Study Addresses Long-Standing Debate About Funding Imbalances For Global Diseases

Date: May-04-2012
While the battle against HIV/AIDS attracts more donor funding globally than all other diseases combined, it has not diverted attention from fighting unrelated afflictions - such as malaria, measles and malnutrition - and may be improving health services overall in targeted countries, according to a study on Rwanda published in the May 2012 edition of the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. A six-year investigation of health clinics in Rwanda by researchers at Brandeis University infuses fresh evidence into a long-standing debate about whether the intensive focus on HIV/AIDS,...

Neuronal Avalanches And Learning

Date: May-04-2012
The brain's neurons are coupled together into vast and complex networks called circuits. Yet despite their complexity, these circuits are capable of displaying striking examples of collective behavior such as the phenomenon known as "neuronal avalanches," brief bursts of activity in a group of interconnected neurons that set off a cascade of increasing excitation. In a paper published in the American Institute of Physics' journal Chaos, an international team of researchers from China, Hong Kong, and Australia explores connections between neuronal avalanches and a model of learning - a rule for...

Decade-Long Study Of HIV Patients Finds Gene Therapy Safe, Lasting

Date: May-04-2012
HIV patients treated with genetically modified T cells remain healthy up to 11 years after initial therapy, researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania report in the new issue of Science Translational Medicine. The results provide a framework for the use of this type of gene therapy as a powerful weapon in the treatment of HIV, cancer, and a wide variety of other diseases. "We have 43 patients and they are all healthy," says senior author Carl June, MD, a professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Penn Medicine. "And out of those, 41 patients show...

Exposing Fetus To Plant Estrogen May Lead To Infertility In Women

Date: May-04-2012
A paper published in Biology of Reproduction's Papers-in-Press describes the effects of brief prenatal exposure to plant estrogens on the mouse oviduct, modeling the effects of soy-based baby formula on human infants. The results suggest that exposure to estrogenic chemicals in the womb or during childhood has the potential to affect a woman's fertility as an adult, possibly providing the mechanistic basis for some cases of unexplained female infertility. Earlier research suggested that neonatal exposure to plant estrogens or other environmental estrogens (synthetic substances that function...

Cardiovascular Risk From NSAIDs

Date: May-04-2012
After nearly 13 years of study and intense debate, a pair of new papers from the Perelman School of Medicine, at the University of Pennsylvania have confirmed exactly how a once-popular class of anti-inflammatory drugs leads to cardiovascular risk for people taking it. It has been almost eight years since Vioxx® was withdrawn by Merck from the market, provoking an intense controversy about the role inhibitors of the enzyme COX-2 play in causing heart attacks and strokes. Since then, other drugs in the class from Pfizer, Novartis, and Merck have been withdrawn (Bextra®); have failed to...