Health News

Infected Tasmanian Devils reveal how cancer cells evolve in response to humans

Date: Feb-19-2014
Tasmanian Devil Facial Tumour Disease (DFTD) has ravaged the world's largest carnivorous marsupial since it emerged in 1996, resulting in a population decline of over 90%. Conservation work to defeat the disease has including removing infected individuals from the population and new research in Evolutionary Applications explains how this gives us a unique opportunity to understand how human selection alters the evolution of cancerous cells.

New scientific paper finds link between 'ecstasy' deaths in the UK and Canada

Date: Feb-19-2014
Recent deaths in both Canada and the UK linked to PMA/PMMA in ecstasy pills has brought public scrutiny to this little known drug. With Canadian producing most of the ecstasy in the North American market, this timely paper (Ecstasy, legal highs and designer drug use: A Canadian perspective) published this week in Drug Science Policy and Law looks at trends in ecstasy adulteration, the facts around PMA/PMMA-linked deaths and explores alternatives to the endless banning of new drugs.

Discrimination evident in health care services for transgender patients

Date: Feb-19-2014
Discrimination against transgender people - as many as one million Americans identify themselves as transgender - should immediately be addressed by the medical establishment, backed by policy change at the national level to provide equal access to quality health care.That is the primary recommendation of a study by Daphna Stroumsa, M.D., MPH, an obstetrics and gynecology resident at Henry Ford Hospital, whose research was recently published online ahead of print in the American Journal of Public Health.

Drinking water with a relatively high concentration of magnesium protects against hip fractures

Date: Feb-19-2014
There are considerable variations in the quality of drinking water in Norway. The researchers studied variations in magnesium and calcium levels in drinking water between different areas, as these are assumed to have a role in the development of bone strength. They wanted to examine whether there was a correlation between magnesium and calcium concentrations in drinking water and the incidence of hip fracture.The study results show that magnesium protects against hip fracture for both men and women. The researchers found no independent protective effect of calcium.

Technology to link patient records between hospitals, medical flight crews

Date: Feb-19-2014
Although trauma, heart and stroke patients benefit from being transferred from a local hospital to a higher-level care facility, it's unclear why patients transferred with non-urgent medical conditions show at least a 30 percent higher death rate than had they stayed put, according to researchers from Case Western Reserve University's nursing school.

Teaching our brains to see better in life and baseball

Date: Feb-19-2014
With a little practice on a computer or iPad - 25 minutes a day, 4 days a week, for 2 months - our brains can learn to see better, according to a study of University of California, Riverside baseball players reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology. The new evidence also shows that a visual training program can sometimes make the difference between winning and losing.The study is the first, as far as the researchers know, to show that perceptual learning can produce improvements in vision in normally seeing individuals."The demonstration that seven players reached 20/7.

Discovery may advance development of vaccines to fight dengue virus

Date: Feb-19-2014
Dengue fever, an infectious tropical disease caused by a mosquito-borne virus, afflicts millions of people each year, causing fever, headache, muscle and joint pains and a characteristic skin rash. In some people the disease progresses to a severe, often fatal, form known as dengue hemorrhagic fever. Despite its heavy toll, the prevention and clinical treatment of dengue infection has been a "dramatic failure in public health compared to other infectious diseases like HIV," said Ping Liu of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Novel study first to demonstrate the effect of laminin-5 gamma-2 on cells affected by anaplastic thyroid carcinoma

Date: Feb-19-2014
Anaplastic thyroid carcinoma (ATC) is an aggressive type of cancer with a poor prognosis for which there is currently no effective treatment. Researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have discovered for the first time that an epithelial basement membrane protein, called laminin-5 gamma-2 (LAMC2), has the potential to be an ideal target for the treatment of ATC.Led by Professor H.

An important role in delayed language development played by gender and genes

Date: Feb-19-2014
Boys are at greater risk for delayed language development than girls, according to a new study using data from the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study. The researchers also found that reading and writing difficulties in the family gave an increased risk. "We show for the first time that reading and writing difficulties in the family can be the main reason why a child has a speech delay that first begins between three to five years of age," says Eivind Ystrøm, senior researcher at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.

Slim, attractive men have less nasal bacteria than heavy men

Date: Feb-19-2014
Do attractive traits tell us anything about a person's reproductive health? New research in the American Journal of Human Biology reveals a link between Body Mass Index (BMI) and the amount of bacteria colonizing noses. The results show that heavier men harbor more potentially pathogenic species of bacteria in their nose, compared with slimmer, more traditionally attractive men."According to an evolutionary point of view, traits related to attractiveness are supposed to be honest signals of biological quality," said Dr. Boguslaw Pawlowski.