Health News

Upper-airway electronic stimulation effective for obstructive sleep apnea

Date: Jan-11-2014
Results published in a new study in the Jan. 9 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine report that mild electronic stimulation therapy to the upper airway during sleep is effective in reducing obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).In the Stimulation Therapy for Apnea Reduction (The STAR Trial) study, researchers tested an implantable electronic stimulation device called Inspire™ Upper Airway Stimulation (UAS) therapy, designed to significantly reduce the burden of obstructive sleep apnea by delivering stimulation to the hypoglossal nerve timed to each breathing cycle.

Discovery improves understanding of tendon injury

Date: Jan-11-2014
Research led by Queen Mary University of London has discovered a specific mechanism that is crucial to effective tendon function, which could reveal why older people are more prone to tendon injury.Tendons, such as the Achilles, connect muscle to bone, and are loaded repeatedly during movement. When exposed to particularly high loads, this can cause injury in some individuals. The risk of injury increases with age, but scientists have never fully understood why.

Link discovered between bacteria and premature breaking of waters during pregnancy

Date: Jan-11-2014
A high presence of bacteria at the site where fetal membranes rupture may be the key to understanding why some pregnant women experience their "water breaking" prematurely, researchers at Duke Medicine report.The findings, published online in the journal PLOS ONE, suggest that the bacterial presence is associated with thinning of the fetal membranes. More research is needed to understand whether bacterial presence is a cause or consequence of fetal membrane weakening.

Patchwork patterns of X chromosome silencing in female brains revealed by color-coded cells

Date: Jan-11-2014
Producing brightly speckled red and green snapshots of many different tissues, Johns Hopkins researchers have color-coded cells in female mice to display which of their two X chromosomes has been made inactive, or "silenced."Scientists have long known that the silencing of one X chromosome in females - who have two X chromosomes in every cell - is a normal occurrence whose consequences can be significant, especially if one X chromosome carries a normal copy of a gene and the other X chromosome carries a mutated copy.

New method for efficiently transporting antibodies across the blood-brain barrier in preclinical mouse models of Alzheimer's disease

Date: Jan-11-2014
The scientific journal Neuron has published results on the Roche-designed Brain Shuttle technology that efficiently transfers investigational antibodies from the blood through the blood-brain barrier (BBB) into the brain in preclinical models1. Roche Pharma Early Research and Development (pRED) scientists found that such enhanced transfer of antibodies through the BBB was associated with a marked improvement in amyloid reduction in the brain of a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease.

Practice may not make perfect after all, study suggests

Date: Jan-11-2014
We are all familiar with the saying "practice makes perfect." But new research from psychologists at the University of Sheffield in the UK suggests that when it comes to learning new skills, the way one practices is more important than the frequency of practice.To reach their findings, published in the journal Psychological Science, the research team analyzed data from 854,064 players of an online computer game called Axon.

Data suggest need for new heart-size matching strategy to improve heart transplant outcomes

Date: Jan-11-2014
Current protocols for matching donor hearts to recipients foster sex mismatching and heart size disparities, according to a first-of-its kind analysis by physicians at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Matching by donor heart size may provide better outcomes for recipients, who already face a scarcity of resources as they await a transplant.

New imaging method 'could speed up cancer diagnosis'

Date: Jan-11-2014
Scientists have found a way to make sense of the large amounts of data yielded by a new tissue imaging technique that could improve the power of cancer diagnosis - which currently takes weeks because samples must be interpreted by the histologist's eye in the pathology lab.Mass spectrometry imaging (MSI), the technique used by the researchers from the UK's Imperial College London, measures the way hundreds or thousands of chemical components are distributed in a tissue sample.

Bed bugs grow faster in groups

Date: Jan-11-2014
Researchers have previously observed that certain insects -- especially crickets, cockroaches and grasshoppers -- tend to grow faster when they live in groups. However, no research has ever been done on group living among bed bugs until now.A new study published in the January 2014 issue of the Journal of Medical Entomology called "Group Living Accelerates Bed Bug (Hemiptera: Cimicidae) Development" is the first ever to document the effects of aggregation on bed bug development. Researchers from North Carolina State University found that bed bug nymphs developed 2.

Researchers dispel the myth that coffee consumption can cause dehydration

Date: Jan-10-2014
New research1, published in the PLOS ONE, has found no evidence for a link between moderate coffee consumption and dehydration. The research, conducted by researchers at the University of Birmingham School of Sport and Exercise Sciences, UK, found that drinking moderate amounts of coffee does not result in dehydration and contributes to daily fluid requirements in regular coffee drinkers just as other fluids do.