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 Back to Eurekalert Medical and Health News Archives
Eurekalert Medical and Health News: 12-09-2004
New easier-to-read road signs based on Penn State research are appearing across the U.S. and Canada.
Scientists have found a "molecular Achilles heel" in the organism that causes pneumonia, providing a target for the development of a new class of antibiotics that could eventually eradicate the disease. Their report is scheduled to appear in the Dec. 28 edition of Biochemistry, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Chemical Society.
In an effort to expand the supply of flu vaccine available in the United States in the future, a clinical trial of an influenza vaccine widely used in Europe has begun recruiting participants at four sites nationwide. Funding for the study comes from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, which is collaborating with the vaccine's manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals of Rixensart, Belgium, to conduct the study.
Persistence pays off - for bacteria as well as people. Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Rockefeller University in New York have demonstrated the constant presence of antibiotic-tolerant "persistent cells" within bacteria colonies and have shown, through mathematical modeling, how these cells develop into "normal" cells following their survival of even heavy dosages of antibiotics.
For more than 150 years dental amalgam has been used as a restorative material for dental cavities. It has stirred controversy due to its mercury content. Some claim that mercury release from dental amalgam leads to a variety of health problems. A new report concludes that the scientific and medical literature published since 1996 shows there is little evidence of a link between dental mercury and health problems, except in rare instances of allergic reactions.
UC San Diego experts in bioinformatics have co-authored with other scientists the first large-scale comparison of mammal and bird genomes, published in the December 9 edition of Nature. The journal's cover story includes a draft sequence of the chicken genome assembled and analyzed by members of the International Chicken Genome Sequencing Consortium.
Results of a study, led by a Columbia University scientist, to resolve the long-held controversy about when Parkinson's disease patients should begin treatment with levodopa, the most powerful drug available to treat the symptoms of Parkinson's. Some worried that the medicine itself might cause further damage to the brain cells that are impaired in this disease. Results found that levodopa does not appear to worsen the disease, and also that it may actually slow its progression.
In a study to determine the prevalence of a range of symptoms among older persons living independently with advanced chronic diseases, researchers at Yale have found that the majority experienced multiple moderate or severe symptoms.
Delayed enrollment in hospice can result in increased depression among family members after the death of their loved one, according to a study by Yale researchers published in the American Journal of Psychiatry.
Senator Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Senator Jon S. Corzine (D-NJ), will announce tomorrow that they have secured $1 million in federal appropriations funding for 2005 to accelerate the development of a safer and more secure personalized handgun at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT). The senators secured similar funding last year for 2004.
Yale School of Medicine and Pfizer Global Research have launched a pilot program to enhance scientific interactions between Pfizer and Yale.The program also provides Yale faculty with an improved understanding of the drug discovery process in order to counsel its students more effectively on career opportunities in the pharmaceutical industry.
On Monday, December 6, 2004 the NYU Child Study Center raised a record $3.4 million at the Seventh Annual Child Advocacy Award Dinner held at Cipriani 42nd Street. This year's dinner, "Changing the Face of Child Mental Health," was chaired by Linda and Arthur Carter and honored The Honorable Michael R. Bloomberg, Mayor of the City of New York for his dedication to philanthropy and civic affairs relating to children and public health.
Despite progress in end-of-life research, important aspects of this life stage remain poorly understood, according to a panel convened by the NIH. The panel found that for many Americans, a lack of continuity of care and poor communication between healthcare practitioners, patients, and family members make the end-of-life period a struggle. These and other findings emerged from the NIH State-of-the-Science Conference on Improving End-of-Life Care, December 6-8, 2004, at the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland.
A first-of-its-kind study of safety issues surrounding the medical use of cannabis in chronic pain sufferers has just been launched. The study is being coordinated from the McGill University Health Centre in Montreal, Canada and will involve six additional institutes across the country.
Scientists have found the first direct evidence linking large-scale coastal farming to massive blooms of marine algae that are potentially harmful to ocean life and fisheries.
Gender bias in pharmaceutical advertisements for cardiovascular disease may affect treatment, says a new University of Toronto study.
Scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center say that chronic stress may speed development of skin cancer in those at high risk for the disease. Their new study, published in the December issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, shows that mice exposed to stressful conditions and cancer-causing UV light develop skin cancers in less than half the time it took for non-stressed mice to grow tumors.
An international trial comparing blood-pressure lowering treatments has been stopped early due to the significantly better performance of one of the treatments in the trial.
Pfizer announced today that it has submitted a supplemental new drug application (sNDA) to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) seeking approval for AROMASIN (exemestane tablets) in the adjuvant treatment of postmenopausal women with estrogen receptor positive or receptor unknown early-stage breast cancer.
A team of researchers based partly in South Africa has identified a key set of immune system molecules that helps determine how effectively a person resists infection with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Their work shows that mothers with a specific type of genetic makeup may be less likely to pass HIV to their offspring.
The National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), announced today it will provide $32.8 million in additional funding to the University of California San Diego Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital to enhance its Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN). BIRN is a nationwide NIH initiative that fosters collaborations by utilizing information technology innovations. BIRN's initial three test bed projects focus on brain imaging of human neurological disorders.
Scientific publishers and the nation's leading voluntary health organizations have announced a groundbreaking initiative to help patients and caregivers close a critical information gap.
An international research consortium has found that chickens and humans share more than half of their genes, but that their DNA sequences diverge in ways that may explain some of the important differences between birds and mammals. The consortium's analysis is published in the Dec. 9 issue of the journal Nature.
Psychologists have found that a region of the brain associated with the detection and learning of emotional responses is associated with unconscious race bias, and that the perception of race happens even more readily when a black or white face is seen subliminally. The researchers, at Harvard University, Yale University, and the University of Toronto, have also determined that areas of the brain involved in conscious thought processes can take over within half a second to override the unconscious bias observed in the subcortical region.
A new book charting the health of Edinburgh residents in the past century is launched today Wednesday (8 December) at the University of Edinburgh.
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