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 Back to Eurekalert Medical and Health News Archives
Eurekalert Medical and Health News: 11-17-2004
In one of the world's fastest growing industrial regions, a study finding that a class of pollutants exist at levels four times that of U.S. air quality standards has prompted a Hong Kong public policy group to call for government standards on fine particulate matter.
Emergency medicine researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have found that patients with similar traumatic brain injuries who are intubated outside the hospital fare worse than those intubated after arrival to the hospital. The researchers also found that the patients' neurologic and functional outcome was nearly twice as worse. These findings are the lead article in the November issue of Annals of Emergency Medicine.
Two new Penn State studies show that people who pursue a healthy, low-fat, low-energy-density diet that includes more water-rich foods, such as fruits and vegetables, consume more food but weigh less than people who eat a more energy-dense diet.
Dutch researcher Jacqueline Vink has discovered that the number of cigarettes smoked per day and the level of nicotine dependence is largely down to a person's genes. She investigated the smoking behaviour of more than 16,000 twins and their relatives.
Since 1875 a large number of well preserved fossils have been discovered in the brown coal mine at Messel near Darmstadt. Palaeontologists have long puzzled over what could have been the reason for this annihilation of so many creatures. In the latest issue of the Pal.ontologische Zeitschrift researchers from the University of Bonn have put forward a new theory: the cause of the deaths of these animals may have been poisoning by cyanobacteria.
Dutch medical researchers have developed a technique by which a computer can determine the condition of the left heart chamber or ventricle. The computer draws the contours of the heart on the X-ray images and from the wall motion it determines the heart's condition. Previously the contours had to be drawn by hand. The new technique saves time and is reliable. Medis medical imaging systems recently introduced the software with this technique at a major cardiology congress held in Washington DC.
It's one of the first demonstrations on how to take care of your bones since the Surgeon General warned that half the population is likely to be at risk for osteoporosis unless they take action. Leaders in fitness and nutrition are demonstrating exactly how participants in the BEST Study, a four-year investigation conducted at the University of Arizona (UA), improved their bone mineral density (BMD) using two essentials: calcium and weight-bearing exercise.
The number of registered nurses entering the job market appears to be on a steady incline, with a total employment growth of over 200,000 R.N.'s since 2001, the largest increase since the early 1980's, but experts at the School of Nursing say it's still not enough to prevent a long-term crisis that threatens to cripple the entire health care system.
The top 10 toys for children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), along with selection criteria designed to help guide parents, were announced by Shire and the Oppenheim Toy Portfolio. The list was developed based on the specific needs of children with ADHD, including the need to better focus attention, to gain self-confidence and to learn to socialize and interact appropriately with other children.
In research that could benefit astronauts posted to the International Space Station as well as individuals whose universe is defined by their sick bed, Boston University Sargent College researchers Susan Kandarian and R. Bridge Hunter have found that disrupting either one of two genes can block the biological process of muscle wasting known as atrophy.
The Minimally Invasive Surgical Therapies (MIST) Consortium for Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH) has launched a new study to compare long-term benefits and risks of transurethral needle ablation (TUNA) and transurethral microwave thermotherapy (TUMT) to a regimen of the alpha-1 inhibitor alfuzosin and the 5-alpha reductase inhibitor finasteride. The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases at NIH, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, is investing more than $15 million in the study.
An extensive, Oregon Health & Science University-led research effort examining the role of the male sex hormone androgen in bone formation has piqued the interest of the US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command. Looking to reduce stress fractures and preserve bone health among its young recruits, it is funding a four-year, $1.72 million project scientists hope will lead to a better understanding of the molecular and cellular events by which androgen influences the skeleton.
This is the newly announced closing session for the 57th Annual Scientific Meeting of The Gerontological Society of America.
Drinking Concord grape juice significantly increased HDL--the good cholesterol--and significantly lowered two markers of inflammation, soluble CD40 ligand, an inflammatory marker and superoxide, a free radical, in study subjects with stable coronary artery disease, according to results of a study presented in the November issue of the journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology.
The age-specific prevalence of sexually transmitted human papillomavirus infection in women differs substantially from that in men who have sex with men, according to a new study published in the December 15 issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases, now available online.
Nowadays, a vial of blood taken by a family physician can sometimes forecast a person's risk of heart disease, and cholesterol-lowering drugs as well as a daily baby aspirin may be recommended to curb the threat. But in the future, a simple finger prick also may predict which cancers are destined to develop in an individual, years, even decades, down the road.
Irradiation and high-dose chemotherapy used to treat two types of brain tumors--medulloblastoma and supratentorial PNET--can cause changes in the brain's white matter that look like tumors when seen on MRI scans. This finding, by a team of investigators led by St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, is published in the Nov. 15 issue of Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO).
A potent antioxidant abundant in apples and some other fruits and vegetables appears to protect brain cells against oxidative stress, a tissue-damaging process associated with Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative disorders, according to a new study in rat brain cells conducted by researchers at Cornell University in New York. The study strengthens the theory that the risk of developing Alzheimer's may be reduced by dietary intervention, particularly by increasing one's intake of antioxidant-rich foods.
The same receptors in the brain that are activated when a person smokes cigarettes also play a critical role in the effectiveness of antidepressants.
An eight-year partnership of co-operation and research will lead to new treatments for prostate cancer and partial or complete androgen receptor insensitivity syndrome.
Many pediatricians know their patients use complementary and alternative therapies (CAM) to improve their health, yet most do not feel comfortable discussing or recommending these therapies, according to a study published in the November issue of Ambulatory Pediatrics.
Researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center have shown that breast cancer patients treated with taxane-based chemotherapies and radiation are not at increased risk of developing a dangerous lung condition involving the inflammation of lung tissue, pneumonitis.
Neonatal infections in extremely-low-birth-weight infants significantly increase the likelihood of problems related to neurodevelopment in early childhood, according to a study of more than 6,000 premature infants.
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Yale University determined that changes in ground-level ozone were significantly associated with an increase in deaths in many U.S. cities. The risk of death was similar for adults of all ages and slightly higher for people with respiratory or cardiovascular problems. The nationwide study of the 95 largest U.S. cities is published in the November 17 issue of JAMA.
More people died in urban areas when ground-level ozone was higher during the previous week, researchers at Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and Johns Hopkins report in the November 17 Journal of the American Medical Association.
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