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 Back to Eurekalert Medical and Health News Archives
Eurekalert Medical and Health News: 09-16-2004
Adults eat around twice the amount of fruit and vegetables and less fat and sugar than they did as children, a new study by UK researchers suggests, although many perceive there are still many barriers to healthy eating.
Starting in the mid-1850s, humans began living longer due, researchers believe, to improvements in living conditions, nutrition, income levels and medicine.But two USC gerontologists have found an invisible cause that could have important implications for modern-day health care.
Research links stroke damage to a rise in brain acidity following the oxygen depletion characteristic of the condition. The results may lead to new therapies designed to avert the often debilitating effects of stroke. A series of experiments implicated a recently described class of membrane ion channels to the influx of calcium in nerve cells starved of oxygen and subjected to acidic conditions. That calcium overload sets off a cascade of events toxic to cells.
A University of Alberta researcher has discovered a potential breakthrough for premature ejaculation--the most common sexual dysfunction in men--with a drug usually used to treat bi-polar or anxiety disorder.
Cancer researchers have long suggested that new targeted drugs may work best when paired with other therapies. In a new study published today in Cancer Research, scientists have taken some of the first steps to demonstrate this synergy in mouse and cell line models. The findings show that two different drugs may work better in a "one-two punch," targeting a cancer development process in two types of cells.
This issue of the Journal of Neuroscience includes: Spontaneous firing in clock neurons and the who's who signal in electric fish.
Counselors were more successful in motivating smokers to quit when they explored the smokers' personal values, discussed their knowledge of the health risks, and supported patients as they tried to solve their problem, a University of Rochester study has found.
The increased use of CT from 1992 to 2002 for the imaging of facial trauma has actually decreased imaging costs by 22% per patient, say researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
A genetically engineered 'mighty mouse' is helping Medical College of Georgia researchers find the best way for young people to build bone and avoid osteoporosis.
By combining stem cell science with orthopedic surgery, a team of researchers at the University of British Columbia and Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute aims to reduce the 10 per cent failure rate in hip replacements and make repeat replacements and other joint repairs obsolete within 10-15 years.
A newly completed picture of how fruitflies control their blood sugar will inform researchers and clinicians about the basics of metabolism and how it relates to disease. Eric Rulifson, PhD, Assistant Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and colleague Seung Kim, PhD, from Stanford University, discovered an interconnected network of cells that tell the fly to take up or release sugar, as needed.
The search-and-rescue dogs deployed following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have not suffered either immediate or short-term effects from exposure to the disaster sites. For the last three years, University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine researchers tracked the health of 97 of 212 identified dogs deployed at the 9/11 disaster sites. Neither the death rate nor the cancer rate among the deployed dogs is different from that of the control group.
Donald M. O'Rourke, M.D., Associate Professor of Neurosurgery at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and Gurpreet S. Kapoor, PhD, Research Associate in O'Rourke's laboratory, have discovered that two proteins sitting on the surface of cells are the interconnected switches for turning uncontrolled cell growth on or off in the brain and other tissues. These coupled proteins are the Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor (EGFR) and the Signal Regulatory Protein.1 (SIRP.1).
The September 15, 2004 Journal of Clinical Investigation Press Release contains links to PDFs of all papers and commentaries, contact information for all authors, and summaries of the following papers: Venn Diagram Tactics to Vet Complex Disease, Picking Prostanoids to Provide Protection, New Veins of Thought for Retinal Degeneration, No Compensation Without PDX-1, Become One: Beat as One, Pathways to Immunity.
Atherosclerosis is an inflammation in the lining of the arteries. Biological chemicals in the body called pros-tanoids have been implicated in the development of atherosclerosis. In the September 15 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, researchers at Kyoto University Faculty of Medicine, have mouse models to investgate the role of two prostanoids in atherosclerosis development. Their data show that one prostanoid, PGI2, protects against atherosclerosis development, while and another, TXA2, promotes it.
A whole range of human muscular and neuromuscular diseases are caused by mutations in the oxidative phosphorylation system. The problem is there are about120 genes involved in this system, some in the mitochondria and some in the nucleus, making identifying all the disease-causing mutations a daunting task. Now David Thorburn and colleagues, from Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, have developed a methodology that takes a "Venn Diagram" approach to efficiently pinpoint mutations in this system.
While considerable research has been devoted to understanding the neural machinery involved in learning fears, less has been devoted to understanding how fears are diminished, according to Elizabeth Phelps and her colleagues.Thus, they have performed experiments that reveal for the first time in humans details of the brain regions that become most active as fears are unlearned.
While it was known that the visual system has a specialized region for perceiving motion, it wasn't known whether the auditory system has such a region--or whether sound location and motion are processed by the same circuitry. Researchers used studies of a patient to demonstrate conclusively for the first time that the brain has a specialized region for processing sound motion.
Although the prevalence of underage drinking has decreased since its peak in the late 1970s, drinking by youth has stabilized over the past decade at disturbingly high levels, according to a new analysis of youth drinking trends by NIH researchers.
Per capita social welfare spending for elders was four times greater than for children in 2000, compared with only a three-fold difference in 1980. The growing gap in expenditures was due primarily to higher per capita medical expenses.
Researchers from VIB at Ghent University are joining the fight against chronic intestinal disease with a genetically modified bacterium (Lactococcus lactis). The modified bacterium is able to produce medication right in the intestine. The researchers have shown that the genetically modified bacterium is able to manufacture the potential medicine, Trefoil Factors, in the intestines of diseased mice.
Eliminating disparities in health care for minority children will take a concerted quality improvement effort throughout the fragmented U.S. health care system, best overseen by a national body housed within the Department of Health and Human Services, says an article in the September/October issue of Health Affairs.
Two separate research studies published in the September issue of Immunity provide significant new details about why immune cells attack the body's own healthy tissues in response to a harmless substance that the immune system mistakenly perceives as a threat. The results are likely to further research efforts designed to combat and hopefully prevent autoimmune disorders like celiac disease.
Other highlights in the September 15 JNCI include an examination of cancer risk among pesticide applicators exposed to atrazine, a study of alcohol consumption and the risk of bladder cancer, an assessment of how changes in tumor classification altered gastric cancer incidence, and an animal study of a potential breast cancer vaccine.
Non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) patients are no more likely than healthy people to have been exposed to or infected by simian virus 40 (SV40), a macaque polyomavirus that contaminated poliovirus vaccines in the mid-20th century, according to a new study in the September 15 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. SV40 has been suggested as a cause of human cancers, including NHL.
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