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 Back to Eurekalert Medical and Health News Archives
Eurekalert Medical and Health News: 01-18-2005
According to a new study by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health researchers, when choosing a doctor based on increasintly popular "doctor report cards, patients should know that the areas in which physicians are graded are not always clear.
The first clinical trials seeking to repair spinal cord injury on a pilot group of selected patients are set to begin at University College London (UCL) within the next three years, says Professor Geoffrey Raisman, director of the newly established Spinal Repair Unit at UCL.
Two leading forces in cognitive research will team up to speed the development of effective treatments for disorders ranging from Alzheimer's disease and schizophrenia to diabetes and heart disease. Network Neurometrics (NetMet), based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Cogtest plc, with offices in London, Chicago and New Delhi, announced today a collaborative agreement whereby the clinical facilities, trial site networks, proprietary technologies and scientific expertise of each company would be made available to the other.
According to conventional wisdom, old dogs and new tricks aren't a good match. But a new study of beagles finds that regular physical activity, mental stimulation, and a diet rich in antioxidants can help keep aging canine--and perhaps human--brains in tip-top shape. The research is among the first to examine the combined effects of these interventions and suggests that diet and mental exercise may work more effectively in combination than by themselves.
The creation of a revolutionary class of contrast agents for magnetic resonance imaging has earned Rice University doctoral student Balaji Sitharaman a 2004 George Kozmetsky Award for Outstanding Graduate Research in Nanotechnology from the Nanotechnology Foundation of Texas. Sitharaman placed gadolinium -- a toxic metal used in clinical MRIs today -- inside cage-like molecules of carbon called fullerenes. The cages lower toxicity and make the metal up to 100 times more effective as a contrast agent.
Physicians should avoid prescribing Bextra altogether, or use it only as a drug of last resort, says a researcher from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center and colleagues in an editorial published on-line Jan. 17 in Circulation, a publication of the American Heart Association.
A new study of beagles led by researchers at the University of Toronto at Scarborough underscores the importance of using a combination of diet and behaviour therapies to curb the progressive decline in the ability to learn that occurs with advanced aging.
It's time to add to our store of proverbs with new phrases that teach us how to be healthier, says a University of Toronto researcher.In a paper published in the Dec. 2004 issue of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, Bernard Choi, a professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences, suggests that we need to create new science-based proverbs that reflect current information about healthy living.
New understanding of the dynamic interplay between genes and environment, made possible by technologies arising from the Human Genome Project, helps support the individualization of medicine and makes focusing on racial or ethnic group differences in disease less relevant, say Penn State researchers.
Mayo Clinic researchers studying endometrial cancer have found that patients at risk for relapse based on identified risk factors had a 46 percent probability of experiencing recurrence within five years despite treatment with state-of-the-art therapy.
Clinical researchers seeking patient volunteers within the U.S. are invited to submit information about their clinical trial to a new patient website dedicated to Parkinson's clinical trials, www.PDtrials.org.
.Grapefruit juice can be deadly for people on certain medications, nurse researchers remind everyone who takes medicine and enjoys grapefruit juice. The research is especially important for "snowbirds" who head south each winter, as well as people going on diets built around drinking lots of the juice.
In two-related papers, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine provide further evidence for the role of cyclooxygenases in heart-disease risk. In one, a meta-analysis of two placebo-controlled trials, the COX-2 inhibitor Bextra elevated the incidence of heart attack and stroke three-fold in coronary artery bypass graft surgery patients. In the second, the investigators found that a fat produced by COX-1 speeds hardening of the arteries in a mouse model of atherosclerosis.
The latest findings in cancer vaccine development suggest that cancer vaccines may have two modes of action; specific immunization and non-specific activation of immune cells paralyzed by the tumor.
A new study by researchers at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and The Johns Hopkins University provides new insight into how tumor cells can become resistant to anti-cancer therapy.
Alexander Levitzki, the Wolfson Famly Professor of Biochemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has been named as one of the three winners of the 2005 Wolf Prize in Medicine. All three recipients were awarded the prize for their research in cancer development and treatment.
Changes to the training of junior medical doctors, combined with the increased emphasis on clinical work in the new consultant contract will damage the future of clinical research in the UK, a University of Edinburgh Professor will state in his inaugural lecture on Tuesday, 18 January, 2005.
Ancient woodlands in Europe may have been remarkably similar to the dark forests of ancient folklore according to a paper in Journal of Ecology by Dr Fraser Mitchell. He provides new evidence about the nature of ancient woodlands in temperate Europe, which has been the source of much controversy among forest ecologists. The Dutch ecologist Frans Vera argued that ancient woodlands would have resembled modern parkland because of the action of large grazing animals.
Tatiana Foroud, Ph.D., of the Indiana University School of Medicine, principal investigator of the multi-site Parkinson Study Group study says that a mutation in a recently discovered Parkinson's disease gene (LRRK2) is the most common genetic cause of inherited forms of the disease. The study appears in January issue of the Lancet.
Two new studies strongly suggest that a mutation in a recently discovered gene is the most common genetic cause of Parkinson's disease identified to date. The discovery by an international research team provides fresh evidence that genetics may contribute to the development of some cases of Parkinson's disease. The findings could lead to the development of a genetic test to detect the mutation in individuals at risk.
Researchers have found that a single mutation in a recently discovered Parkinson's disease gene is responsible for 5 percent of inherited Parkinson's disease cases. The finding opens the door to the possibility of genetic screening for the LRRK2 gene mutation, which is believed to be the most common genetic cause of inherited Parkinson's disease identified to date.
The use of new mobile surgical teams resulted in the faster treatment of injured US Marines and Iraqi patients, according to an article in the January issue of Archives of Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Behavioral and emotional difficulties are found in children with obstructive sleep apnea, but they improve after treatment, according to a study in the January issue of Archives of Otolaryngology - Head & Neck Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Newsworthy highlights include studies showing that: total maternal vitamin C intake during pregnancy was associated with wheeze during the infant's second year; in a study of 2,760 asthma patients, inhaled corticosteroid combined with a long-acting beta2-agonist reduced exacerbation rates by 45 percent, improved symptom control, and resulted in better lung function; and U.S.-born Mexican Americans have a higher prevalence of asthma than do Mexican Americans born in Mexico.
This issue includes the following two articles: A single office-based stool blood test (FOBT) is a poor, but often used, screening test for colorectal cancer; Improving HDL cholesterol limited progression of heart disease.
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