Health News

Gazing at electronic health records diverts doctors' attention from patients

Date: Jan-28-2014
When physicians spend too much time looking at the computer screen in the exam room, nonverbal cues may get overlooked and affect doctors' ability to pay attention and communicate with patients, according to a Northwestern Medicine® study.Published online in the International Journal of Medical Informatics, the study found that doctors who use electronic health records (EHR) in the exam room spend about a third of their visits looking at a computer screen.

Many internists don't feel equipped to manage care of adults who had cancer as children

Date: Jan-28-2014
A recent study shows that many internists feel ill-equipped to care for adult patients who are childhood cancer survivors. Eugene Suh, MD, assistant professor in the division of Pediatric Hematology & Oncology at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, was first author of the study that was conducted the University of Chicago with Tara Henderson, MD, MPH.As technologies and treatments advance, the number of childhood cancer survivors is growing. In fact, it is estimated that there are more than 350,000 survivors in the U.S.

Workshop identifies the opportunities to reduce primary cesareans

Date: Jan-28-2014
A recently published article, based on a workshop, Preventing the First Cesarean Delivery: Summary of a Joint Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists Workshop, outlines a collaboration of specialists providing obstetrical care in helping to identify opportunities to reduce unnecessary first cesarean deliveries.

New prostate cancer model, known as RapidCaP, reveals a cancer-gene 'switch' that drives metastasis

Date: Jan-28-2014
Prostate cancer is the most common form of cancer in men. Affecting about 1 in 6 men, it is the second deadliest cancer. Research has been stymied by imperfect animal models of the disease, which are costly, take considerable time to develop, and fail to mimic the most lethal aspects of the illness. Now, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) scientists have developed a new method to rapidly create much better mouse models for metastatic prostate cancer. This discovery allows scientists to investigate the causes of the disease while at the same time testing new therapeutics to treat it.

Patients benefit from health information exchanges between hospitals

Date: Jan-28-2014
As hospitals and doctors' offices across the country race to join online systems that let them share medical information securely, a new study suggests that these systems may already be helping cut unnecessary care.Fewer emergency patients got repeated medical scans when they went to a hospital that takes part in a health information exchange, or HIE, according to new findings by University of Michigan researchers published online in the journal Medical Care.

Findings suggest novel target for seizure-blocking medicines

Date: Jan-28-2014
Researchers in the biomedical engineering department at Case Western Reserve University have found that epileptic activity can spread through a part of the brain in a new way, suggesting a possible novel target for seizure-blocking medicines.Evidence from a series of experiments and computer modeling strongly suggests individual cells in a part of the brain, known as the hippocampus, use a small electrical field to stimulate and synchronize neighboring cells, spreading the activity layer by layer.The scientists report the discovery in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Scientists identify cause of joint, skeletal and skin problems in children and adults: Leri's pleonosteosis

Date: Jan-28-2014
Scientists from The University of Manchester and Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust have identified the cause of a rare condition called Leri's pleonosteosis (LP).Dr Sid Banka from the Manchester Centre for Genomic Medicine at The University of Manchester, led a team of researchers on the study which is published in Annals of Rheumatic Diseases journal. LP is an inherited condition in which children are born with contractures of multiple joints and then develop difficulty of joint movements that progress in severity with age.

Our ability to form spatial memories is damaged by infections

Date: Jan-28-2014
Increased inflammation following an infection impairs the brain's ability to form spatial memories - according to new research. The impairment results from a decrease in glucose metabolism in the brain's memory centre, disrupting the neural circuits involved in learning and memory.Inflammation has long been linked to disorders of memory like Alzheimer's disease. Severe infections can also impair cognitive function in healthy elderly individuals.

The genome of a 7,000-year-old individual from the Mesolithic site of La Brana-Arintero has been recovered

Date: Jan-28-2014
La Brana 1, name used to baptize a 7,000 years old individual from the Mesolithic Period, whose remains were recovered at La Brana-Arintero site in Valdelugueros (Leon, Spain) had blue eyes and dark skin. These details are the result of a study conducted by Carles Lalueza-Fox, researcher from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), in collaboration with the Centre for GeoGenetics (Denmark). La Braña 1 represents the first recovered genome of an European hunter-gatherer. The research is published in Nature.

Specificity of CRISPR-Cas nucleases markedly improved by shortening guide RNA

Date: Jan-28-2014
A simple adjustment to a powerful gene-editing tool may be able to improve its specificity. In a report receiving advance online publication in Nature Biotechnology, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators describe how adjusting the length of the the guide RNA (gRNA) component of the synthetic enzymes called CRISPR-Cas RNA-guided nucleases (RGNs) can substantially reduce the occurrence of DNA mutations at sites other than the intended target, a limitation the team had previously described just last year.