Health News

Finding ways to detect and treat Alzheimer's disease

Date: Feb-19-2014
Alzheimer's disease has long been marked by progress -- but not the kind of progress the medical community seeks. It is the most common form of dementia among older Americans, and its risk increases with increasing age; for those living with the disease, its ravages get worse over time; and as we move into the 21st century, it will place a greater and greater burden on society. The number of Americans living with Alzheimer's has doubled since 1980 and is expected to triple again by 2050.

Risk of hospitalization for respiratory problems can be reduced by a daily walk of just 3km

Date: Feb-19-2014
New research in Respirology shows that sufferers of Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) can reduce their risk of being hospitalized with severe attacks, by maintaining an exercise regime of walking between three to six kilometers a day.COPD, a term which includes chronic bronchitis and emphysema, results in breathing difficulties due to long-term lung damage. Severe symptoms (eCOPD), caused by a sudden loss of lung function, can be life threatening.

In pregnant African women, malnutrition decreases effectiveness of HIV treatment

Date: Feb-19-2014
In Uganda the prescription of three antiretroviral (ARV) drugs, which aim to suppress the virus to prevent disease progression, have resulted in huge reductions in HIV mortality rates. However, disease is not the only scourge in Uganda, and a new study in The Journal of Clinical Pharmacology explores the impact food insecurity may have on treating pregnant women.A U.S-Ugandan research team explored the affect pregnancy and malnutrition can have on the administration of lopinavir/ritonavir (LPV/r) and efavirenz (EFV) drugs among HIV-infected women in Tororo, Uganda.

Mother's voice improves hospitalization and feeding in preemies

Date: Feb-19-2014
Premature babies who receive an interventional therapy combining their mother's voice and a pacifier-activated music player learn to eat more efficiently and have their feeding tubes removed sooner than other preemies, according to a Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt study published in Pediatrics.The randomized clinical trial performed in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Children's Hospital tested 94 premature babies, pairing their mother's voice singing a lullaby with a pacifier-activated music player.

Tips for managing over-stressed lives help mothers of children on life-sustaining devices

Date: Feb-19-2014
Many mothers with children on life-sustaining medical devices, such as ventilators and breathing or feeding tubes, suffer physical and psychological distress from the stress of juggling treatments, appointments, therapies and daily family pressures.But researchers from the Case Western Reserve University nursing school found that an intervention, called "Resourcefulness," which teaches moms how to better cope, bolsters the mother's wellbeing and, in turn, benefits the whole family.

Search interface allows for more efficient, faster searches to find information on internet and hand-held devices

Date: Feb-19-2014
Computer scientists at Case Western Reserve University have developed a new tool to search and fetch electronic files that saves users time by more quickly identifying and retrieving the most relevant information on their computers and hand-held devices.Anonymous testers recruited through crowdsourcing preferred the new search tool nearly two-to-one over a keyword-based lookup interface and the most commonly available lookup search interface using Google.

New drug 'selectively kills dormant cancer cells'

Date: Feb-19-2014
New research published in Nature Communications details the discovery of a potential new drug that selectively kills dormant cancer cells in tumors by inducing mitochondrial dysfunction.The research team, led by Prof. Stig Linder of the Karolinska Institutet and Uppsala University, both in Sweden, says a small molecule called VLX600 has been proven effective in killing dormant colon cancer cells in a variety of in vivo and in vitro models.

Predicting presence of breast cancer through small non-coding RNAs

Date: Feb-19-2014
Small non-coding RNAs can be used to predict if individuals have breast cancer conclude researchers who contribute to The Cancer Genome Atlas project. The results, which are published in EMBO Reports, indicate that differences in the levels of specific types of non-coding RNAs can be used to distinguish between cancerous and non-cancerous tissues. These RNAs can also be used to classify cancer patients into subgroups of individuals that have different survival outcomes.

WHO smoking controls could prevent 13 million deaths in China by 2050

Date: Feb-19-2014
A report in the BMJ finds that if China implements World Health Organization guidelines on smoking, then almost 13 million smoking-related deaths will be avoided by 2050.China is the most populated nation in the world and accounts for about a third of the world's smokers - more than half of all Chinese men smoke. China's largely government-owned tobacco industry is also the world's biggest producer of tobacco. But a reduction of smoking in China would have a huge impact on global public health.

Planners need to think carefully about costs and benefits to outsmart nature during disasters

Date: Feb-19-2014
The dramatic images of natural disasters in recent years, including hurricanes Katrina and Sandy and the Tohoku, Japan, earthquake and tsunami, show that nature, not the people preparing for hazards, often wins the high-stakes game of chance."We're playing a high-stakes game against nature without thinking about what we're doing," geophysicist Seth Stein of Northwestern University said. "We're mostly winging it instead of carefully thinking through the costs and benefits of different strategies. Sometimes we overprepare, and sometimes we underprepare.