Health News

New app measures battery life for brain stimulation patients

Date: Dec-13-2013
For people with neurological disorders who use deep brain stimulators, a low battery can mean the return of mentally and physically crippling symptoms. Fortunately for some of these people, now there's an app to assist with that. In fact, help is now just a smartphone away. The UF Health Center for Movement Disorders and Neurorestoration has developed an iPhone and Android app for patients who use deep brain stimulators, or DBS. The app, released this month, enables clinicians and patients to measure the battery life left in their DBS devices.

United Health Foundation's America's health rankings finds Americans are making considerable progress in key health measures

Date: Dec-13-2013
Americans are making considerable progress in their overall health, according to United Health Foundation's 2013 America's Health Rankings®: A Call to Action for Individuals & Their Communities. Nationwide, Americans improved in more than two-thirds of the measures captured by the Rankings. The most notable gains came in key behavioral measures, including smoking, which dropped from 21.2 percent of the adult population to 19.6 percent. Seventeen states had significant drops in smoking, with the largest seen in Nevada, Maryland, Oklahoma, Kansas and Vermont.

MRI assessment of rectal cancer provides crucial prognostic information to improve survival for patients

Date: Dec-13-2013
Research published in this month's Journal of Clinical Oncology found that pre-op MRI assessment is crucial in helping to inform a more advanced treatment approach for rectal patients by predicting local recurrence and disease-free survival.Rectal cancer currently accounts for one third of all colorectal cancers and is a leading cause of cancer death in the Western World. The 5 year study was conducted across 11 hospitals and research institutes across the UK1, following-up on 374 patients diagnosed and being treated for rectal cancer.

Hundreds of millions of Chinese men could die from tobacco related diseases

Date: Dec-13-2013
More than 50 per cent of Chinese men smoke cigarettes, placing hundreds of millions at serious risk for heart disease, cancer, other lung diseases, and many more serious illnesses, according to the American Cancer Society (ACS) and World Lung Foundation (WLF), co-publishers of The Tobacco Atlas - 4th Edition Representatives from China Centers for Disease Control, the World Health Organization and the Chinese Association on Tobacco Control joined WLF and ACS in the release of the Chinese version of the Atlas. The Tobacco Atlas, and its companion website, TobaccoAtlas.

What can a graphene sandwich reveal about proteins?

Date: Dec-13-2013
Scientists at The University of Manchester and the SuperSTEM facility, which is located at STFC's Daresbury Laboratory and funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), have discovered that the most fragile, microscopic materials can be protected from the harmful effects of radiation when under the microscope if they are 'sandwiched' between two sheets of graphene.

How Wagner's operas held secrets of his disabling migraines and headaches

Date: Dec-13-2013
In a paper published in the Christmas edition of The BMJ, researchers have looked at how German composer Richard Wagner's disabling migraines and headaches influenced his operas.As a composer of frequently performed operas worldwide, Wagner's medical problems have been investigated in numerous accounts and he even described his headaches and symptoms as the "main plague of his life".Researchers in Germany therefore wanted to show how Wagner used his suffering to compose his operas, using Siegfried as an example.

Temperature-sensitive gelling scaffolds developed to regenerate craniofacial bone

Date: Dec-13-2013
Rice University bioengineers have developed a hydrogel scaffold for craniofacial bone tissue regeneration that starts as a liquid, solidifies into a gel in the body and liquefies again for removal.The material developed in the Rice lab of bioengineer Antonios Mikos is a soluble liquid at room temperature that can be injected to the point of need. At body temperature, the material turns instantly into a gel to help direct the formation of new bone to replace that damaged by injury or disease.

Highly effective treatment option identified for patients with HER2-positive breast cancer

Date: Dec-13-2013
Combining the chemotherapy drugs docetaxel and carboplatin with the HER2-targeted therapy trastuzumab was identified to be an ideal postsurgery treatment option for patients with HER2-positive breast cancer, regardless of tumor size and whether or not disease has spread to the lymph nodes, according to results from the BETH study presented at the 2013 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, held Dec. 10-14.

Nonconcussion head impacts in contact sports linked to brain changes and lower test scores

Date: Dec-13-2013
Repeated blows to the head during a season of contact sports may cause changes in the brain's white matter and affect cognitive abilities even if none of the impacts resulted in a concussion, according to a study published in the journal Neurology.Using a form of magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, researchers at the Indiana University School of Medicine and the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College found significant differences in brain white matter of varsity football and hockey players compared with a group of noncontact-sport athletes following one season of competition.

Pediatric obesity patients like telehealth services

Date: Dec-13-2013
For youth dealing with obesity who need extra help losing weight, experts suggest a multidisciplinary approach in which care is provided by several health specialists. However, the logistics of traveling to multiple appointments, even if just across town, can be a barrier to receiving care, especially for low-income families.