Health News

Taking statins to lower cholesterol? New guidelines provide opportunity to discuss options with your doctor

Date: Feb-06-2014
Clinicians and patients should use shared decision-making to select individualized treatments based on the new guidelines to prevent cardiovascular disease, according to a commentary by three Mayo Clinic physicians published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.Shared decision-making is a collaborative process that allows patients and their clinicians to make health care decisions together, taking into account the best scientific evidence available, as well as the patient's values and preferences.

Scripps Research Institute scientists create potential vaccine ingredient for childhood respiratory disease

Date: Feb-06-2014
Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have invented a new method for designing artificial proteins, and have used it to make key ingredients for a candidate vaccine against a dangerous virus, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a significant cause of infant mortality. The virus has been resistant to current vaccine-design strategies.With the help of collaborating laboratories, the scientists were able to apply the new method, which uses a "rational design" approach to making vaccines focused on specific binding areas (epitopes) on the virus.

Data on more than 10,000 cancer genomes released by the International Cancer Genome Consortium

Date: Feb-06-2014
The International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) has announced that it has made available to the scientific community data from more than 10,000 cancer genomes. The data can be used by cancer researchers around the world to better understand the genomic basis of cancer, accelerate cancer research and aid in the development of more targeted treatments. "In 2012 an estimated 14 million people around the world were diagnosed with cancer and 8.2 million people died of the disease, according to GLOBOCAN.

Unique High throughput sequencing of RNA structure in human cells provide the first generation RNA architecture map

Date: Feb-06-2014
Scientists at A*STAR's Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS) and the US-based Stanford University's School of Medicine have successfully produced one of the first ever genome-wide views of Ribonucleic acid (RNA) shape patterns in humans. The visualisation of RNA shape paves the way for scientists to better understand the basis of human mutations, the impact of gene regulation and the causes of diseases. The study was reported in the 30th January 2014 issue of the scientific journal, Nature.RNA is one of the major molecules in the cell that functions by folding into complex shapes.

Is this the next vaccine revolution?

Date: Feb-06-2014
Vaccines are the safest, cheapest and most effective way to protect against infectious diseases. But to make a good one is still a challenge, and traditional approaches are now stretched to the limit while fatal diseases, like HIV and malaria, remain without vaccine. But a major breakthrough that turns vaccine design on its head is being published in Nature; a computational method that, from the protective antibodies of patients designs the vaccine specific to induce them (and protect against the disease).

Being mindful online shown to dramatically reduce stress, anxiety and depression

Date: Feb-06-2014
Practicing mindfulness online reduces stress, anxiety and depression, finds the University of Oxford in partnership with the Mental Health Foundation. Research published in BMJ Open reveals participants saw a 58% reduction in anxiety, 57% in depression and 40% in perceived stress.There was a further decrease in stress, anxiety and depression levels one month after completing the course, suggesting continued practice of the skills learnt.

Date: Feb-06-2014
Justice blindly trusts human memory. Every year throughout the world hundreds of thousands of court cases are heard based solely on the testimony of somebody who swears that they are reproducing exactly an event that they witnessed in a more or less not too distant past. Nevertheless, various recent studies in cognitive neuroscience indicate both the strengths and weaknesses in this ability of recall of the human brain.Memory is a cognitive process which is intrinsically linked to language.

Brain updates memory with current experience

Date: Feb-06-2014
A new study suggests the process of memory rewrites what is stored to bring it in line with new experiences. Writing in The Journal of Neuroscience, researchers describe how they pinpointed the hippocampus as the place where this editing occurs.Lead author Dr.

Violent video games delay the development of moral judgement in teens

Date: Feb-06-2014
Mirjana Bajovic of Brock University set out to discover whether there was a link between the types of video games teens played, how long they played them, and the teens' levels of moral reasoning: their ability to take the perspective of others into account.She quizzed a group of eighth-graders (aged 13-14) about their playing habits and patterns, as well as determined their stage of moral reasoning using an established scale of one to four.

Early treatment with AED reduces duration of febrile seizures

Date: Feb-06-2014
New research shows that children with febrile status epilepticus (FSE) who receive earlier treatment with antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) experience a reduction in the duration of the seizure. The study published in Epilepsia, a journal of the International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE), suggests that a standard Emergency Medical Services (EMS) treatment protocol for FSE is needed in the U.S.