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 Back to Eurekalert Medical and Health News Archives
Eurekalert Medical and Health News: 12-20-2004
Blocking a key molecule protects breast implants, pacemakers, artificial joints and other biomaterials from rejection and damage by the body.
The latest IOM Gulf War report confirms the link between lung cancer and combustion products, while evidence on other health problems is inconclusive.
A panel of experts says doctors treating patients with schizophrenia should be targeting symptoms beyond hallucinations and delusions, and focus in on the common, but often overlooked, symptoms of depression and anxiety, as well as the inability to think clearly.
Perhaps George Washington wouldn't have chopped down his father's cherry tree if he knew what chemists now know. They have identified a group of naturally occurring chemicals abundant in cherries that could help lower blood sugar levels in people with diabetes. In early laboratory studies using animal pancreatic cells, the chemicals, called anthocyanins, increased insulin production by 50 percent, the researchers say.
A research team led by Terumi Kohwi-Shigematsu of the Life Sciences Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has identified a gene, DLX5, that may play a role in the pathology of Rett Syndrome, a devastating neurological disorder diagnosed almost exclusively in girls. Their findings are reported in the January issue of Nature Genetics and currently available online. The team also found that Rett Syndrome is associated with impaired three-dimensional chromatin folding.
T cells are the weakest link in the immune systems of older people, based on a report by Eaton and colleagues in the December 20 issue of The Journal of Experimental Medicine. The authors show that old CD4 "helper" T cells cannot provide the stimulatory signals to B cells that prompt them to make antibodies. The authors think this may help explain why immunizations are less effective in the elderly.
Educational Christmas toys can leave a mark on more than just your checkbook - they can also leave a permanent imprint on a child's brain. That's according to a Stanford University School of Medicine study in owls showing that early learning experiences forever change the brain's structure.
Embroiled in an emergency like a deadly infectious disease outbreak, hospital managers and staff may consider saving time by suspending or modifying normal decision-making procedures. But international medical ethics specialists who evaluated the performance of one large Toronto area hospital during last year's SARS outbreak conclude that procedural requirements, particularly fair and ethical priority-setting, are even more important in the midst of a crisis.
For the first time a human disease has been linked to specific defects in the three-dimensional folding of chromatin. Young girls affected with Rett Syndrome become withdrawn and anxious and develop autistic-like behaviors. The devastating neurological disease was recently tracked to mutations in a gene on the X chromosome, MECP2. How the mutated gene causes the disorder has now been revealed by a team of scientists with the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
The Elisabeth Severance Prentiss Foundation has awarded $5 million to University Hospitals of Cleveland to create an inpatient psychiatric unit, including a crisis management team, for children and adolescents at Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital.The gift is the largest ever awarded by the Prentiss Foundation to the hospital, which -- including the latest gift -- has received over $34 million in Prentiss support in more than 50 years.
In wound care treatment bandages and dressings may become archaic tools of the past. The future is in a spray called Youki that accelerates the healing process.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced today that it has suspended the use of COX-2 inhibitor celecoxib (Celebrex(R) Pfizer, Inc.) for all participants in a large colorectal cancer prevention clinical trial conducted by the National Cancer Institute (NCI).
Are we ready for a future where brain scans invade our private thoughts? Will we have to alter our brains chemically to keep competitive at our jobs? Could science determine that "souls" do not exist, and, what would that mean for how we think of ourselves as human beings? Penn researcher Martha Farah tackles these questions about the influence of neuroscience on 21st-century life and how new technology will modify, monitor and manipulate our brains.
A child's level of anxiety prior to surgery is predictive of whether they will experience post-surgical delirium and maladaptive behavioral changes, including anxiety, nighttime crying, and bedwetting, according to a Yale study.
University of Cincinnati researchers tested how diet affects distribution in the body of a chlorinated hydrocarbon toxin related to DDT, PCBs and dioxins. A yo-yo diet affected different organs differently, and moved more toxin into the brain. When olestra, the non-digested "fake fat," was added to the diet, the toxin's distribution into the brain was reduced by 50%. Olestra and caloric restriction caused a 30-fold increase in the excretion rate of the test toxin.
The discovery of a new compound by Michigan State University researchers could lead to improved chemotherapy treatments for different types of cancers - potentially with fewer side effects.
The American Association for Cancer Research, in alliance with The V Foundation for Cancer Research, has announced the first-ever recipients of The V Foundation-AACR Grants in Translational Cancer Research.
Ten to 20 million people in the United States have kidney disease but most don't know it, according to researchers at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) at the National Institutes of Health, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The findings are in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.
Novartis Pharma AG announced today the start of a collaboration between Novartis Pharma GmbH and Bayer Vital AG for the commercialization and distribution of EMSELEX. (darifenacin hydrobromide), 7.5 mg and 15 mg in Germany. EMSELEX, a new once-daily M3 selective receptive antagonist (M3 SRA) recently received Marketing Authorization from the European Commission in 25 European member states, plus Norway and Iceland for the treatment of overactive bladder (OAB).
The risk of tuberculosis infection doubles within one year of HIV infection, according to a study published in the Jan. 15 issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases, now available online. Scientists previously assumed that there was no increase in tuberculosis risk within the first few years of HIV infection. Pam Sonnenberg of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and colleagues were therefore surprised by the results of their research on the two infections, which they conducted in South African gold miners.
A novel approach to cell therapy has won a federal award and a new patent for a team of researchers from Saneron CCEL and the University of South Florida.
Five years after the establishment of the Emmy Noether Programme to promote outstanding young researchers, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation, DFG) has made the eligibility requirements more flexible. This aims to ensure that the outstanding young researchers' individual career paths can be better taken into consideration.
Two months from now comes a landmark day in planetary history: the Kyoto Protocol finally comes into legal force on 16 February 2005. However Kyoto was intended only as an initial step in mitigating climate change: a 6000-strong Buenos Aires gathering due to conclude today has spent a fortnight discussing follow-up strategies, with ESA among them.
Alfred Sommer, MD, MHS, dean of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, is this year's recipient of the prestigious Pollin Prize for Pediatric Research. Dr. Sommer's groundbreaking discoveries led to the widespread use of inexpensive vitamin A supplements that reduced childhood mortality by 34 percent in the developing world. Dr. Sommer will be presented with the Pollin Prize at a reception at New York-Presbyterian Hospital in New York City on December 17, 2004.
A new report on health insurance coverage of Iowa children indicates that nearly 90,000 children in the state are uninsured at some point in the year. Some programs, however, are available to help families, and more could be done to expand, as well as educate people about, options.
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