Health News

Teenagers With Type 2 Diabetes Benefit From Metformin And Rosiglitazone Combo

Date: May-01-2012
A combination of two diabetes drugs, metformin and rosiglitazone, was more effective in treating youth with recent-onset type 2 diabetes than metformin alone, a study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has found. Adding an intensive lifestyle intervention to metformin provided no more benefit than metformin therapy alone. The study also found that metformin therapy alone was not an effective treatment for many of these youth. In fact, metformin had a much higher failure rate in study participants than has been reported in studies of adults treated with metformin alone. The...

Association Between Breastfeeding And A Healthy Infant Gut

Date: May-01-2012
Early colonization of the gut by microbes in infants is critical for development of their intestinal tract and in immune development. A new study, published in BioMed Central's open access journal Genome Biology, shows that differences in bacterial colonization of formula-fed and breast-fed babies leads to changes in the infant's expression of genes involved in the immune system, and in defense against pathogens. The health of individuals can be influenced by the diversity of microbes colonizing the gut, and microbial colonization can be especially important in regulating both intestinal and...

Parental Example May Be Responsible For Some Violent Teen Behavior

Date: May-01-2012
While it may be cute when a 3-year-old imitates his parent's bad behavior, when adolescents do so, it's no longer a laughing matter. Teens who fight may be modeling what they see adult relatives do or have parents with pro-fighting attitudes, according to a study presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Boston. "Parents and other adults in the family have a substantial influence on adolescents' engagement in fighting," said Rashmi Shetgiri, MD, FAAP, lead author of the study. "Interventions to prevent fighting, therefore, should involve parents and teens." Dr....

Prototype Microphone Could Make Cochlear Implants More Convenient

Date: May-01-2012
Cochlear Implants More Convenient Main Category: Hearing / Deafness Also Included In: Medical Devices / Diagnostics;  Ear, Nose and Throat Article Date: 01 May 2012 - 1:00 PDT  email to a friend   printer friendly   opinions    rate article  Current ratings for: 'Prototype Microphone Could Make Cochlear Implants More Convenient' Patient / Public: Healthcare Prof: 4 (1 votes) Cochlear implants have restored basic hearing to some 220,000 deaf people, yet a microphone and related electronics must be worn outside the head, raising reliability issues, preventing patients...

Improved Resident Learning With Tablet-Based Case Conferences

Date: May-01-2012
Tablet based conference mirroring is giving residents an up close and personal look at images and making radiology case conferences a more interactive learning experience, a new study shows. Residents at Northwestern University in Chicago are using tablets and a free screen sharing software during case conferences to see and manipulate the images that are being presented. "The idea stems from the fact that I was used to having presentation slides directly in front of me during medical school lectures. I thought this would benefit radiology residents, especially in an image-detailed digital...

For Pediatric Crohn's Patients, MR Enterography As Good Or Better Than Standard Imaging Exams

Date: May-01-2012
MR enterography is superior to CT enterography in diagnosing fibrosis in pediatric patients with Crohn disease and equally as good as CT enterography in detecting active inflammation, and a new study shows. The study, conducted at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, found that MR enterography was 77.6% accurate in depicting fibrosis compared to 56.9% for CT enterography. MR enterography had an 82.1% accuracy rate versus 77.6% accuracy rate for CT enterography for detecting active inflammation, said Keith Quencer, MD, one of the authors of the study. The study included 23 pediatric...

Emphasis On Making Psychosocial Care Part Of Routine Cancer Care Pays Off For Patients

Date: May-01-2012
Researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center have placed new emphasis on gathering data on cancer patient quality of life during both treatment and survivorship. Their focus is on gathering and using that data to develop interventions to improve the quality of life for patients in treatment and for cancer survivors. Much of the quality of life and survivorship research is carried out by researchers in Moffitt's Department of Health Outcomes & Behavior. "Among the several research goals of the Department of Health Outcomes & Behaviors is the evaluation and improvement of quality of life and quality of...

Access To Medical Images For Patients And Physicians Anytime, Anywhere

Date: May-01-2012
Patients can successfully pull their medical images from the "cloud" making it faster for them to distribute them to their physicians regardless of where those physicians might be, according to a preliminary report of an image share project that involves five different academic institutions. The image share project includes the University of California, San Francisco, University of Chicago, Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, the University of Maryland in Baltimore, and the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, NY. "The patient can arrange with their radiologists' office to have their images and...

Bilingualism Fine-Tunes Hearing, Enhances Attention

Date: May-01-2012
A Northwestern University study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) provides the first biological evidence that bilinguals' rich experience with language in essence "fine-tunes" their auditory nervous system and helps them juggle linguistic input in ways that enhance attention and working memory. Northwestern bilingualism expert Viorica Marian teamed up with auditory neuroscientist Nina Kraus to investigate how bilingualism affects the brain. In particular, they looked at subcortical auditory regions that are bathed with input from cognitive brain areas. In...

News From The Annals Of Internal Medicine: May 1, 2012

Date: May-01-2012
1. For Younger Women at Increased Risk for Breast Cancer, Benefits of Mammography Screening Outweigh Harms According to two new studies being published in Annals of Internal Medicine, younger women at increased risk for breast cancer may benefit from biennial mammography screening beginning at age 40. Currently, major organizations with mammography screening guidelines do not have a consensus on whether to routinely screen all women in their 40s. These data have implications for risk-based screening programs. In the first study, researchers evaluated data from 66 published articles and from...