Health News

Chemotherapy side effects may be reduced by metal implants

Date: Feb-16-2014
Cancer patients could one day experience fewer side effects from chemotherapy following a discovery that opens the door for more targeted treatments.Researchers have identified a possible way of treating tumours that would see doctors place harmless metal implants at the cancer site.The discovery could make treatment more targeted than existing therapies, avoiding unwanted side effects, such as hair loss, tiredness and nausea. These occur when chemotherapy drugs carried in the blood kill healthy cells as well as cancer cells.

Women's stroke risk reduced by moderate exercise

Date: Feb-16-2014
Women don't need to run marathons or do intense aerobics to reduce their stroke risk. Moderate-intensity exercise - such as brisk walking or playing tennis - may do the trick, according to research presented at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference 2014."I was surprised that moderate physical activity was most strongly associated with a reduced risk of stroke," said Sophia Wang, Ph.D., the study's lead author and professor in the department of population sciences within the Beckman Research Institute at the City of Hope in Duarte, Calif.

Changing expectations and rising inequality make today's best marriages better than ever, while undermining today's average marriages

Date: Feb-16-2014
Today Americans are looking to their marriages to fulfill different goals than in the past - and although the fulfillment of these goals requires especially large investments of time and energy in the marital relationship, on average Americans are actually making smaller investments in their marital relationship than in the past, according to new research from Northwestern University.

Self-harm an increased risk for those with diabetes, epilepsy and asthma

Date: Feb-16-2014
New research quantifying the risk of admission to hospital for self-harm has identified a raised risk of self-harm among groups of patients with certain physical illnesses. While it is known that psychiatric illnesses are associated with a greatly elevated risk of self-harm, a moderately elevated risk was seen with common physical illnesses such as diabetes, epilepsy and asthma. The research, published by the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, investigated the risk of self-harm comparing people with different psychiatric and physical disorders in England.

Living near fast food outlets increases risk for childhood obesity

Date: Feb-16-2014
Children living in areas surrounded by fast food outlets are more likely to be overweight or obese according to new research from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the Centre for Diet and Activity Research (CEDAR).New research just published looked at weight data from more than a million children and compared it with the availability of unhealthy food from outlets including fish and chip shops, burger bars, pizza places, and sweet shops.

Health and fitness habits 'influence health over next two decades'

Date: Feb-16-2014
New research from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany suggests that our health and fitness habits can predict the outcome of our overall fitness and health almost 20 years later. This is according to a study published in the journal Psychology of Sport and Exercise.The researchers, in collaboration with investigators from Technische Universität München, and the universities of Konstanz and Bayreuth, all in Germany, analyzed 243 women and 252 men who were an average age of 45 at study baseline.The participants were followed-up from 1992 to 2010.

Stress can make the brain more susceptible to mental illness

Date: Feb-16-2014
Experts already know that people suffering from chronic stress are prone to experiencing mental health problems - such as anxiety and mood disorders - later in life. Now, a new study from researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, explains why.Previous research has shown that people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other stress-related conditions have abnormalities in the brain.

Infection with HIV 4 times more likely in mental health patients

Date: Feb-16-2014
People receiving mental health care are up to four times more likely to be infected with HIV than the general population, according to a new study published in the American Journal of Public Health from researchers at Penn Medicine and other institutions who tested over 1,000 patients in care in Philadelphia and Baltimore. Of that group, several new HIV cases were detected, suggesting that not all patients are getting tested in mental health care settings, despite recommendations to do so from the CDC and the Institute of Medicine.

Restless leg syndrome effectively treated with pregabalin, which also reduces risk of symptom worsening

Date: Feb-16-2014
A report in the New England Journal of Medicine confirms previous studies suggesting that long-term treatment with the type of drugs commonly prescribed to treat restless leg syndrome (RLS) can cause a serious worsening of the condition in some patients.

HPV not eradicated by popular disinfectants

Date: Feb-15-2014
Commonly used disinfectants do not kill human papillomavirus (HPV) that makes possible non-sexual transmission of the virus, thus creating a need for hospital policy changes, according to researchers from Penn State College of Medicine and Brigham Young University."Because it is difficult to produce infectious HPV particles for research, little has been known about HPV susceptibility to disinfection," said Craig Meyers, Distinguished Professor of Microbiology and Immunology, Penn State College of Medicine.