Health News

The cost of antibiotic drugs for children - a comparison between the U.K. and the U.S.

Date: Dec-30-2013
The 2009 costs of antibiotics covered by private insurance companies in the U.S. for children younger than 10 years old were estimated to be more than five times higher than the costs in the United Kingdom (U.K.), which are covered by a government universal health plan. These results, from Boston University's Boston Collaborative Drug Surveillance Program, are a follow up of an ongoing comparison of prescription drug costs between the U.S. and U.K. The initial results reported on relative drug costs in 2005. The current updated results appear online in the journal Pharmacotherapy.

Gladstone scientists discover how immune cells die during HIV infection; identify potential drug to block AIDS

Date: Dec-30-2013
Research led by scientists at the Gladstone Institutes has identified the precise chain of molecular events in the human body that drives the death of most of the immune system's CD4 T cells as an HIV infection leads to AIDS. Further, they have identified an existing anti-inflammatory drug that in laboratory tests blocks the death of these cells - and now are planning a Phase 2 clinical trial to determine if this drug or a similar drug can prevent HIV-infected people from developing AIDS and related conditions.

Nutrition influences metabolism through circadian rhythms, UCI study finds

Date: Dec-30-2013
A high-fat diet affects the molecular mechanism controlling the internal body clock that regulates metabolic functions in the liver, UC Irvine scientists have found. Disruption of these circadian rhythms may contribute to metabolic distress ailments, such as diabetes, obesity and high blood pressure.There's good news, though. The researchers also discovered that returning to a balanced, low-fat diet normalized the rhythms.

Physical inactivity after cardiac surgery linked with substantially higher risk of depression

Date: Dec-30-2013
New research indicates that inactive patients following cardiac surgery have a substantially higher risk of depression and that the number of patients suffering from depression after cardiac surgery is as high as 40%. Investigators recommend that cardiac patients should be assessed for depression and level of physical activity and remain as active as they safely can after surgery to minimize post-operative depression. The results were published in the December issue of the Canadian Journal of Cardiology.

Surgery 'better than chemotherapy' for tongue cancer

Date: Dec-30-2013
For the treatment of cancer, many would consider chemotherapy to be the best option. But for tongue cancer, new research suggests that surgery may be the most effective primary port of call. This is according to a study published in the journal JAMA Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery.According to the American Cancer Society, approximately 36,000 people will have been diagnosed with oral cavity or oropharyngeal cancers, which includes tongue cancer, in the US throughout 2013.

Breaking the cycle of obesity, inflammation and disease

Date: Dec-30-2013
Researchers at University of Michigan have illuminated an aspect of how the metabolic system breaks down in obesity. The findings provide additional evidence that a drug entering clinical trials at the university could reverse obesity, Type 2 diabetes and fatty liver disease in humans.In a paper published online in the journal eLife on Dec. 24, Alan Saltiel, the Mary Sue Coleman Director of the Life Sciences Institute, explains how, in obesity, fat cells stop responding to hormones known as catecholamines that trigger them to expend more energy.

Molecular researchers find new key to inflammatory diseases

Date: Dec-30-2013
Biologists have discovered genetic material that may help to explain part of how our immune defense is triggered. Dubbing it THRIL, they say it could be targeted in the development of treatments against inflammatory diseases such as Kawasaki disease, rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease.The researchers have discovered a new molecule that forms when the immune response is triggered by pathogens - disease-causing bacteria and viruses.

New evidence that computers change the way we learn

Date: Dec-30-2013
People who use computers regularly are constantly mapping the movements of their hand and computer mouse to the cursor on the screen. Now, researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology have shown that all that pointing and clicking (the average computer user performs an impressive 7,400 mouse clicks per week) changes the way the brain generalizes movements."Computers produce this problem that screens are of different sizes and mice have different gains," says Konrad Kording of Northwestern University and the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.

Most women on dialysis - even those who lack interest in sex - are satisfied with their sex lives

Date: Dec-30-2013
Among women on long-term hemodialysis, many are sexually inactive, but sexual dysfunction is considerably less common than previously reported, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN). The findings suggest that efforts to assess and treat sexual dysfunction among women on dialysis likely require one-on-one discussions between physicians and patients to identify those women who truly suffer from this problem and who wish to consider treatment options.

Cocaine, meth response differ between 2 substrains of 'Black 6' laboratory mouse

Date: Dec-30-2013
Researchers including Jackson Laboratory Professor Gary Churchill, Ph.D., have found a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) difference in cocaine and methamphetamine response between two substrains of the C57BL/6 or "Black 6" inbred laboratory mouse, pointing to Cyfip2 as a regulator of cocaine response with a possible role in addiction.The research team, led by Joseph Takahashi, Ph.D.