Health News

Nutrition guidelines needed for full-service restaurant chains

Date: Jan-09-2014
According to a New Study in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior food prepared away from home is typically higher in calories and lower in nutrition than food prepared at home, but it now makes up more than one-third of all calories purchased in the United States. Consumers tend to view full-service restaurants as providing healthier, higher quality food than fast-food restaurants, but some studies have found much higher calorie, fat, and sodium levels in food at full-service restaurants.

People lacking insurance not likely to migrate to obtain Medicaid coverage

Date: Jan-09-2014
Amidst the patchwork nature of Medicaid expansion in the U.S. under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), some have worried that low-income adults in states without expanded coverage might move to states that have chosen to expand - thus placing a financial burden on those states. But a new Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) study finds little evidence of such cross-state migration."Though many states have not opted in to the ACA Medicaid expansion, they may decide to do so in the future.

Laying money on the line leads to healthier food choices over time

Date: Jan-09-2014
People are more likely to choose healthy options at the grocery store if they use the risk of losing their monthly healthy food discount as a motivational tool, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.The research adds to a body of work aimed at understanding which factors are most effective for increasing healthy behaviors, a growing concern for many different groups, from health insurance companies to public health agencies, according to researchers Janet Schwartz and Daniel Mochon of Tulane University.

At least 38 million Americans drink too much, says CDC

Date: Jan-09-2014
At least 38 million adults in the US drink too much, and most are not alcoholics, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in a push to increase use of alcohol screening and counseling by doctors, nurses and other health professionals.Only 1 in 6 Americans talk to their health professional about their drinking habits, says the federal agency.

U.S. army identifies 6 critical research targets for improving outcomes in traumatic brain injury

Date: Jan-09-2014
The U.S. Department of Defense funds more than 500 neurotrauma research projects totaling over $700 million. Yet there remains a large unmet medical need for effective treatments of traumatic brain injury (TBI), a major cause of disability and mortality. The U.S. Army's new strategic research plan for developing improved drug therapies for TBI is published in Journal of Neurotrauma, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available on the Journal of Neurotrauma website.The U.S.

New technique targets specific areas of cancer cells with different drugs

Date: Jan-09-2014
Researchers have developed a technique for creating nanoparticles that carry two different cancer-killing drugs into the body and deliver those drugs to separate parts of the cancer cell where they will be most effective. The technique was developed by researchers at North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill."In testing on laboratory mice, our technique resulted in significant improvement in breast cancer tumor reduction as compared to conventional treatment techniques," says Dr.

Researcher looks at race and bariatric surgery

Date: Jan-09-2014
While weight loss surgery offers one of the best opportunities to improve health and reduce obesity related illnesses, the nearly 100,000 Americans who undergo bariatric surgery each year represent only a small fraction of people who are medically eligible for the procedure. Among those who have surgery, Caucasian Americans are twice as likely as African Americans to have weight loss surgery. On the surface, the data appear to signal racial disparity, but when researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center dug deeper to ask why this variation exists, the answer was more complicated.

Tiny acts of microbe justice help reveal how nature fights freeloaders

Date: Jan-09-2014
The idea of everyone in a community pitching in is so universal that even bacteria have a system to prevent the layabouts of their kind from enjoying the fruit of others' hard work, Princeton University researchers have discovered.Groups of the bacteria Vibrio cholerae deny loafers their unjust desserts by keeping the food generated by the community's productive members away from V. cholerae that attempt to live on others' leftover nutrients, the researchers report in the journal Current Biology.

Costs for complications from cancer surgical care extremely high

Date: Jan-09-2014
Although complications from surgical care for cancer patients may seem infrequent, the costs associated with such outcomes are extremely high, according to researchers from Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Their findings were reported in the Dec. 30 online edition of the journal Cancer.

New compounds discovered that are hundreds of times more mutagenic

Date: Jan-09-2014
Researchers at Oregon State University have discovered novel compounds produced by certain types of chemical reactions - such as those found in vehicle exhaust or grilling meat - that are hundreds of times more mutagenic than their parent compounds which are known carcinogens.These compounds were not previously known to exist, and raise additional concerns about the health impacts of heavily-polluted urban air or dietary exposure. It's not yet been determined in what level the compounds might be present, and no health standards now exist for them.