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 Back to Eurekalert Medical and Health News Archives
Eurekalert Medical and Health News: 10-12-2004
By introducing just the right biocompatible molecules to one another, a research team led by Boston University's Mark Grinstaff has produced an elastic, transparent gel that sets so fast and adheres so surely to the eye's surface that it could soon become the first and best choice for sealing corneal incisions. The substance, a hydrogel, promises to be a useful tool for the most common of ophthalmic surgeries: cataract removal.
With fewer than 1 in 3 Americans with hypertension successfully controlling his or her blood pressure, medication, diet and exercise might not be enough. Now, a promising new non-drug treatment offers an additional approach.
With medical liability insurance premiums skyrocketing, the role of a physician expert witness and how they can contribute to increasing malpractice costs is certainly controversial. Expert witnesses are a necessary component of the U.S. legal system. Untruthful testimony, however, can punish good doctors and push the medical community's overall medical liability insurance premiums up, which forces many physicians to modify their practice and pass costs onto their patients, according to a panel held today at the Plastic Surgery 2004 conference in Philadelphia.
To the surprise of many people, the loss of fat and sun exposure play a bigger role than gravity in aging the face, according to a study presented today at the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) Plastic Surgery 2004 conference in Philadelphia.
The Center for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine in Cleveland has received two grants totaling $3.1 million from the National Institute on Aging to study the role of stem cells in aging. The two grants were awarded to Stanton Gerson, M.D., director of the Cleveland Center for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine; George Muschler, M.D., an orthopaedic surgeon at The Cleveland Clinic; and Jaroslow Maciejewski, M.D., a hematologist at the Clinic.
With a three-year, $3.2 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health, Johns Hopkins scientists will lead the largest hunt for genetic contributors to autism, a neuropsychiatric condition whose causes are almost as mysterious today as when the condition was first described in 1943.
Dartmouth Medical School cardiology researchers have discovered a new mechanism for what drives the growth of muscle tissue in the lining of injured heart vessels that can eventually lead to blockage. Their study, reported in the October 19 issue of the journal Circulation, raises important questions about the use of drugs that promote or prevent angiogenesis - the formation of blood vessels - to treat the condition.
The Mini Mitter Company is proud to announce the release of VitalSense, an innovative and exciting new way to telemetrically monitor physiological parameters without wires or probes.
A team of University of Florida researchers has created tiny hybrid particles that can speedily root out even one isolated E. coli bacterium lurking in ground beef or provide a crucial early warning alarm for bacteria used as agents of bioterrorism and for early disease diagnosis.
The National Partnership for Immunization invites you to an important discussion about the complex world of vaccines, especially timely with last week's news of the influenza vaccine shortage.
In a boost to cancer research, Princeton scientists have invented a fast and reliable method for identifying alterations to chromosomes that occur when cells become malignant. The technique helps to show how cells modify their own genetic makeup and may allow cancer treatments to be tailored more precisely to a patient's disease.
Northwestern University has received a three-year, $2.1 million award from the Picower Foundation to study the molecular and cellular mechanisms of Parkinson's disease.
Based on 18 months of Envisat observations, this high-resolution global atmospheric map of nitrogen dioxide pollution makes clear just how human activities impact air quality.
At this two-day workshop hosted by the committee, scientists, ethicists, and policy-makers will discuss the appropriate use and handling of stem cells derived from frozen embryos originally intended for in vitro fertilization procedures, as well as those derived from a process scientists call somatic cell nuclear transfer that is often referred to as therapeutic cloning.
The Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech has received $4.9 million in additional funding from the United States Department of Defense for the PathPort project, which is helping scientists amass and analyze information about disease organisms. PathPort is a set of Web-services to consolidate, annotate, validate, disseminate, and analyze available pathogen data from disparate sources through an interoperable life sciences framework built on open community standards.
Dutch researcher Manon Franssen has shown that cells which heal the skin following an injury play an important role in the development of the skin disease psoriasis. In people with psoriasis, the skin peels much faster than normal so that it flakes and becomes inflamed.
According to Dutch researcher Pascal Groenen, a balanced diet reduces the risk of a baby with spina bifida. He investigated how different nutritional components affected the risk of developing this condition.
Dutch researcher Marjolein de Vugt has found that carers of dementing family members can exacerbate the dementing patient's problematic behaviour. If they cannot accept the behavioural problems and express this irritation towards the dementing patient then the patient can become more restless.
The Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation today named Rice University bioengineer Jennifer West as the 2004 Frank Annunzio Award Columbus Scholar. One of the nation's most prestigious and competitive honors, the Annunzio Award includes a $50,000 prize. West is internationally recognized for cutting-edge research in both nanotechnology and tissue engineering. For example, she is pioneering methods of creating vascular grafts that could eliminate the need for a patient's own leg veins in heart bypass surgery.
As Texas Children's Hospital braces for the upcoming flu season, parents are urged to schedule immunizations for at-risk youngsters and seek early treatment when symptoms are present.
Before stem cells can be used to treat patients, scientists will need to learn how to coax them to develop into the desired cell types, a major challenge. Researchers from the University of Chicago present the first rough road map, suggesting how to lead a hematopoietic stem cell down the narrowing path to becoming an antibody-producing B cell.
Researchers at Duke have found a slightly elevated risk of "ischemic" stroke due to a blood clot in the brain in patients treated with tamoxifen - a drug commonly prescribed both for preventing breast cancer and treating women with the disease. The researchers emphasize that this slight increase in risk does not mean that use of tamoxifen should be reduced, given the drug's considerable benefits.
Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital have found that a structural difference previously observed in the brains of some boys with autism is found primarily in those with language problems and also appears in boys with a condition called specific language impairment. The findings suggest that this anatomic feature may underlie language difficulty only rather than overall autism and supports an apparent relationship between the two conditions.
Intravenous immunoglobulin therapy may reduce the risk of a second attack of symptoms related to multiple sclerosis, according to an article in the October issue of The Archives of Neurology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Alcohol consumption may slightly increase the risk for developing a certain type of irregular heart beat, known as atrial fibrillation, or atrial flutter, according to an article in the October 11 issue of The Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
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