Health News

In South Africa harvested rainwater harbors pathogens

Date: Mar-01-2014
South Africa has been financing domestic rainwater harvesting tanks in informal low-income settlements and rural areas in five of that nation's nine provinces. But pathogens inhabit such harvested rainwater, potentially posing a public health hazard, especially for children and immunocompromised individuals, according to a team from the University of Stellenbosch. The research was published ahead of print in Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

Prenatal screening for fetal aneuploidy by testing mothers blood at 10 weeks of pregnancy

Date: Mar-01-2014
A study in the New England Journal of Medicine potentially has significant implications for prenatal testing for major fetal chromosome abnormalities. The study found that in a head-to-head comparison of noninvasive prenatal testing using cell free DNA (cfDNA) to standard screening methods, cfDNA testing (verifi® prenatal test, Illumina, Inc.) significantly reduced the rate of false positive results and had significantly higher positive predictive values for the detection of fetal trisomies 21 and 18.A team of scientists, led by Diana W.

Garlic sprouted for five days has improved antioxidant potential

Date: Mar-01-2014
"Sprouted" garlic - old garlic bulbs with bright green shoots emerging from the cloves - is considered to be past its prime and usually ends up in the garbage can. But scientists are reporting in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry that this type of garlic has even more heart-healthy antioxidant activity than its fresher counterparts.Jong-Sang Kim and colleagues note that people have used garlic for medicinal purposes for thousands of years. Today, people still celebrate its healthful benefits.

Fighting cancer with caffeine-based gold compound

Date: Mar-01-2014
The side effects of ingesting too much caffeine - restlessness, increased heart rate, having trouble sleeping - are well known, but recent research has shown that the stimulant also has a good side. It can kill cancer cells. Now, researchers report in the ACS journal Inorganic Chemistry that combining a caffeine-based compound with a small amount of gold could someday be used as an anticancer agent.Angela Casini, Michel Picquet and colleagues note that caffeine and certain caffeine-based compounds have recently been in the spotlight as possible anticancer treatments.

Patients with painful facial nerve disorder benefit from nonsurgical Gamma Knife stereotactic radiosurgery

Date: Mar-01-2014
Research by Beaumont Health System radiation oncologists and neurosurgeons found that symptoms of trigeminal neuralgia, or TN, a nerve disorder causing severe facial pain, were reduced in those treated with Gamma Knife stereotactic radiosurgery. The results were published recently in the journal Clinical Neurology and Neurosurgery.TN is a disorder of the trigeminal nerve, which is responsible for feeling in the face. In most cases, the facial pain is caused by a blood vessel pressing on the nerve.

Can you really die of a broken heart?

Date: Mar-01-2014
Losing a loved one can be heartbreaking. But a new study shows that this can be more than just symbolic, as the chances of experiencing a stroke or heart attack after a partner's death doubles within the first 30 days.The researchers, from St. George's University of London in the UK, have published the results of their study in JAMA.They note that, sometimes, grief can lead to extra physical stress and can also make people lose interest or forget to take their medication.

Re-thinking personalized medicine

Date: Mar-01-2014
As the price for decoding a person's DNA keeps dropping, expectations for personalized medicine based on specific genetic profiling rise. But translating an individual's genetic data into finely tailored medical treatments still faces major challenges, explains a new article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly magazine of the American Chemical Society.Rick Mullin, senior editor at C&EN, notes that advances in DNA sequencing have allowed researchers to design some therapies, particularly in the cancer realm, for patients with certain genetic traits.

Could Google Glass be used to predict disease outbreaks?

Date: Feb-28-2014
Experts at the University of California, Los Angeles, have developed a Google Glass app that they claim could help stop emerging public health threats around the world.Glass is a pioneering "wearable computer" designed by the software and computing corporation Google. It takes the form of a pair of eyeglasses with a small transparent computer screen in the right eye and a touchpad built into the right arm of the frame.

Viruses in 700-year-old human feces have antibiotic resistance genes

Date: Feb-28-2014
Though digging through a latrine from the 14th century is not the most glamorous of tasks, scientists have found viruses that contain genes for antibiotic resistance in fossilized human feces from ancient Belgium.The feces are from a time long before antibiotics were used, and the investigators say it provides evidence that the human gut has remained unchanged after centuries.They publish the results of their study in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.But how does one find fecal samples from 700 years ago?

Dark chocolate 'good for the heart,' study suggests

Date: Feb-28-2014
Nutritionists have long said that eating dark chocolate in moderation can be good for our health. Now, researchers have discovered why. It may reduce the risk of atherosclerosis - thickening and hardening of the arteries - by restoring flexibility of the arteries and preventing white blood cells from sticking to the blood vessel walls.The research team, including Prof. Diederik Esser of the Top Institute Food and Nutrition and the Division of Human Nutrition at Wageningen University, both in the Netherlands, published the study in The FASEB Journal.