Health News

BMJ investigation finds public health funds being raided to fill holes in local authority budgets

Date: Mar-27-2014
Ring-fenced funds to promote public health are being diverted to wider council services such as social care and housing to plug gaps caused by government cuts, finds a BMJ investigation.A year after responsibility for public health was transferred from the NHS to local authorities, the BMJ found numerous examples of councils disinvesting in a wide range of public health services, including those for substance misuse, sexual health, smoking cessation, obesity, and school nursing.

NHS data on patient experience is often ignored

Date: Mar-27-2014
The NHS has been collecting data on patients' experience of care for over 10 years but the information is often ignored. On bmj.com today, Angela Coulter, Associate Professor at Oxford University and colleagues argue that this is "unethical" and call for a coordinated approach to use the information to help improve services.

Plasma tool for destroying cancer cells

Date: Mar-27-2014
Inducing biological tissue damage with an atmospheric pressure plasma source could open the door to many applications in medicine.Plasma medicine is a new and rapidly developing area of medical technology. Specifically, understanding the interaction of so-called atmospheric pressure plasma jets with biological tissues could help to use them in medical practice.

Research produces strong evidence for a new class of antidepressant drugs

Date: Mar-27-2014
Scientists have shown for the first time that a chemical in the brain called galanin is involved in the risk of developing depression.And the research, undertaken by a European research team, points to a strong reason to develop drugs that modify galanin functioning as a new class of antidepressant drug.Galanin is a neuropeptide (a small protein) that was discovered and investigated over 30 years ago by various groups including the Swedish scientist Tomas Hokfelt. He is one of the senior authors of the paper published in the journal PNAS.

Genetics can explain why infections trigger onset of different types of rheumatoid arthritis

Date: Mar-27-2014
A new international study has revealed how genetics could explain why different environmental exposures can trigger the onset of different forms of rheumatoid arthritis. A team at the Arthritis Research UK Centre for Genetics and Genomics at The University of Manchester, part of a large international consortium involving scientists from across 15 academic institutions, believe their findings could have important implication for the way that rheumatoid arthritis is diagnosed and treated.

Where do you start when developing a new medicine? Novel scientific collaboration to use genomics and big data to drive drug discovery

Date: Mar-27-2014
A pioneering public-private research initiative between GSK, the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute is to harness the power of 'big data' and genome sequencing to improve the success rate for discovering new medicines. The new Centre for Therapeutic Target Validation (CTTV) will aim to address a wide range of human diseases and will share its data openly in the interests of accelerating drug discovery.

Researchers say gold-based drug shows promise for fighting bone cancer in people and pets

Date: Mar-27-2014
A gold-based drug currently used in human and veterinary medicine to manage certain immune diseases may prove useful in combating osteosarcoma, a devastating bone cancer that affects both dogs and people, University of Florida veterinary researchers report. By examining an aggressive bone cell line in both species, the researchers found that the drug, aurothiomalate, commonly known as gold salts, kept cancer cells from forming in the laboratory.

Prescribing errors reduced by electronic medication alerts designed with provider in mind

Date: Mar-27-2014
Changing how medication alerts are presented in electronic medical records resulted in safer prescribing, increased efficiency and reduced workload for health care providers who placed drug orders in a study published online in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association."The VA electronic medical record system is one of the most widely used and respected EMR systems in the country," said Alissa L. Russ, Ph.D., a human factors engineer who led the study. "This EMR is used by providers at over 150 VA hospitals.

New mathematical model uses gene expression data to predict where neurons are located throughout the brain

Date: Mar-27-2014
Throughout the world, there are many different types of people, and their identity can tell a lot about where they live. The type of job they work, the kind of car they drive, and the foods they eat can all be used to predict the country, the state, or maybe even the city a person lives in.The brain is no different. There are many types of neurons, defined largely by the patterns of genes they use, and they "live" in numerous distinct brain regions. But researchers do not yet have a comprehensive understanding of these neuronal types and how they are distributed in the brain.

Mouse study may lead to a way to end recurrent urinary tract infections

Date: Mar-27-2014
Millions of people worldwide - mostly women - suffer from recurrent urinary tract infections (UTIs) that seriously degrade their health and quality of life. Antibiotics treat individual infections, but preventing recurrent ones largely has been unattainable because of the way bacteria lodge in the inner layers of the bladder and quietly hide from drugs that can kill them.