Health News

Tropical plant inspires super-slippery coating for medical use

Date: Jan-05-2014
Chemical engineers have turned to exotic meat-eating plant life for inspiration in creating materials that have potential for use as a coating on medical devices.The pitcher plant - which is carnivorous by trapping and digesting animals in leaves that resemble trumpets or small pitchers - has a highly slippery surface that stops its prey from escaping. This surface can repel liquids and contaminants, the scientists from Harvard University found, and it has self-healing properties when scratched.

Anticancer properties of novel compound 'confirmed'

Date: Jan-05-2014
A study has detailed new findings that researchers say confirm the anticancer properties of a newly discovered agent called FL118. The investigators say their findings are "promising" and open doors for further research into the compound.Their results were published in the journal Molecular Pharmaceutics.The research team, led by Dr. Fengzhi Li of Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, first identified FL118 as a potential anticancer agent in 2012.

Doxorubicin-associated mitochondrial iron accumulation promotes cardiotoxicity

Date: Jan-05-2014
Doxorubicin is a widely used as a component of chemotherapy regimes; however, the use of doxorubicin is associated with severe cardiotoxicity. It is unclear exactly how doxorubicin promotes cardiotoxicity, but it has been proposed that doxorubicin-associated cardiomyopathy develops as the result of reactive oxygen species (ROS) production and iron accumulation.

Insight into likelihood of retinal detachment following open globe injury

Date: Jan-05-2014
Ocular trauma causing open globe injury, or a breach in the wall of the eye, remains an important cause of vision loss, with more than 200,000 open globe injuries occurring worldwide each year. In many cases, retinal detachment follows the traumatic injury, causing significant vision loss or blindness.

Detailed analysis reveals real-life dangers of driver distraction

Date: Jan-05-2014
The dangers of being distracted while driving have been quantified by researchers who found that newly licensed teenagers were most likely to be involved in an accident or near-miss incident because of, for example, texting at the wheel.Using data from black-box telematics devices and video cameras installed in cars, one of the studies analyzed 42 newly licensed teenage drivers during their first 18 months of independent driving from 16 years of age.

Diffusion tensor MRI-based tractography in evaluation of nerve root function

Date: Jan-04-2014
If bulging or protruding intervertebral discs occupies the intervertebral foramen, and nerve roots are compressed. The cross-sectional area of nerve root fibers is reduced, fiber bundles gathered together and interrupted at the affected side, with no branching. Dr. Xin Tian and colleagues from the Second Hospital of Hebei Medical University in China was the first to use diffusion tensor tractography to reveal spinal nerve root function.

Researchers say fructose does not impact emerging indicator for cardiovascular disease

Date: Jan-04-2014
Fructose, the sugar often blamed for the obesity epidemic, does not itself have any impact on an emerging marker for the risk of cardiovascular disease known as postprandial triglycerides, new research has found.However, overconsumption of calories from fructose can have substantial adverse effects on health, said Dr. John Sievenpiper, a researcher in the Clinical Nutrition and Risk Factor Modification Centre of St. Michael's Hospital."This is more evidence that fructose has adverse effects only insofar as it contributes to excess calories," said Dr. Sievenpiper.

Contralateral needling at unblocked collaterals for post-stroke hemiplegia

Date: Jan-04-2014
Hemiplegia caused by stroke indicates the dysfunctions of the neurological network between the brain and limbs. Under this condition, conventional acupuncture at the acupoints on the affected side can not transmit stimulus signal to the brain. Contralateral needling at unblocked collaterals can transmit signal into the brain and then regulate the affected limb. However, there is little well-designed and controlled clinical evidence for this practice. Prof.

First location of melatonin in caudal spinal trigeminal nucleus

Date: Jan-04-2014
Accumulating research indicates that melatonin has a major role in pain transmission and has an ultra-sensitizing effect. Dr. Fang Huang and colleagues from Sun Yat-sen University in China for the first time located the distribution of melatonin receptor 1 in the caudal spinal trigeminal nucleus. Their results, published in the Neural Regeneration Research (Vol. 8, No. 32, 2013), showed that when melatonin receptor 1 expression in the caudal spinal nucleus is significantly reduced, melatonin's regulatory effect on pain is attenuated.

Genetic background of sporadic amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in the Chinese Han population

Date: Jan-04-2014
A previous study of European Caucasian patients with sporadic amyotrophic lateral sclerosis demonstrated that a polymorphism in the microtubule-associated protein Tau (MAPT) gene was significantly associated with sporadic amyotrophic lateral sclerosis pathogenesis. To examine this in a different population, Daojun Hong and colleagues from Nanchang University further investigated the association of the MAPT gene with sporadic amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in the Chinese Han population.