Health News

Children's preferences for sweeter and saltier tastes are linked to each other

Date: Mar-19-2014
Scientists from the Monell Chemical Senses Center have found that children who most prefer high levels of sweet tastes also most prefer high levels of salt taste and that, in general, children prefer sweeter and saltier tastes than do adults. These preferences relate not only to food intake but also to measures of growth and can have important implications for efforts to change children's diets.Many illnesses of modern society are related to poor food choices.

Colonoscopy leads to huge reduction in colon cancer incidence in older Americans

Date: Mar-19-2014
Colon cancer incidence rates have dropped 30 percent in the U.S. in the last 10 years among adults 50 and older due to the widespread uptake of colonoscopy, with the largest decrease in people over age 65. Colonoscopy use has almost tripled among adults ages 50 to 75, from 19 percent in 2000 to 55 percent in 2010.The findings come from Colorectal Cancer Statistics, 2014, published in the March/April issue of CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians.

Simple blood test could one day detect early stomach cancer

Date: Mar-19-2014
University of Adelaide research has provided new hope for the early detection of stomach cancer with the identification of four new biomarkers in the blood of human cancer patients.Stomach or gastric cancer is the fourth most common cancer in the world and the second leading cause of death due to cancer."Stomach cancer is typically without symptoms in the early stages so most cancers are not diagnosed until the later stages, and the survival rates are therefore low," says Associate Professor Peter Hoffmann, project leader and Director of the University's Adelaide Proteomics Centre.

Specific bacterial infection linked to poor pregnancy outcomes

Date: Mar-19-2014
New research published in JAMA has found that pregnant women are more susceptible to infection with the bacterium Haemophilus influenzae, which may put them at increased risk of fetal loss, preterm birth and stillbirth.H. influenzae is a bacterium that can cause a number of serious illnesses, such as pneumonia, meningitis and septic arthritis.According to the research team, led by Sarah Collins of Public Health England in the UK, past studies have suggested that women may have an increased risk of invasive H.

The soluble fiber in oats helps lower total and LDL cholesterol but the cardiovascular health benefits of oats goes beyond fiber

Date: Mar-19-2014
Eleven top scientists from around the globe presented the latest findings on the powerful compounds found in oats in a scientific session titled, Physicochemical Properties and Biological Functionality of Oats, at the 247th Annual Conference of the American Chemical Society in Dallas, TX. Scientists described research on the diverse health benefits of oats and emphasized the growing evidence that the type of phenolic compound avenanthramide (AVE) - found only in oats - may possess antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-itch and anti-cancer properties.

Most men with early prostate cancer do not benefit from primary androgen deprivation therapy

Date: Mar-19-2014
A study of more than 15,000 men with early stage prostate cancer finds that those who received androgen deprivation as their primary treatment instead of surgery or radiation did not live any longer than those who received no treatment.

Engineered bacteria sense, remember, and report on their experience in the gut

Date: Mar-19-2014
It's a jungle in there. In the tightly woven ecosystem of the human gut, trillions of bacteria compete with each other on a daily basis while they sense and react to signals from the immune system, ingested food, and other bacteria.Problems arise when bad gut bugs overtake friendly ones, or when the immune system is thrown off balance, as in Crohn's disease, celiac disease, and colorectal cancer. Doctors have struggled to diagnose these conditions early and accurately. But now a new engineered strain of E.

Biomarkers provide potential for improved understanding of preeclampsia

Date: Mar-19-2014
Identifying biomarkers could lead to earlier detection of preeclampsia, which in turn can lead to healthier mothers and children, according to a collaborative study from the Centre of Molecular Inflammation Research (CEMIR) and the MR Cancer Group at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). Their findings, "Metabolomic Biomarkers in Serum and Urine in Women with Preeclampsia," was published in PLOS ONE."We have found that the metabolism in women who experience preeclampsia is clearly different from women with normal pregnancies.

Despite antiretroviral therapy, hepatitis C remains major problem for HIV patients

Date: Mar-19-2014
A new study led by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has found that the risk of hepatitis C-associated serious liver disease persists in HIV patients otherwise benefitting from antiretroviral therapy (ART) to treat HIV.It has been suggested that ART slows hepatitis C-associated liver fibrosis; however, whether rates of severe liver complications in patients co-infected with HIV and hepatitis C receiving ART were similar to those with just hepatitis C remained unclear.

Study of immune response could lead to development of new pharmacological strategies to treat chronic inflammatory diseases

Date: Mar-19-2014
A team of biologists and engineers at the University of California, San Diego has discovered that white blood cells, which repair damaged tissue as part of the body's immune response, move to inflamed sites by walking in a stepwise manner. The cells periodically form and break adhesions mainly under two "feet," and generate the traction forces that propel them forward by the coordinated action of contractile proteins.