Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have developed a genetic test that can accurately predict whether the most common form of eye cancer will spread to other parts of the body, particularly the liver. In 459 patients with ocular melanoma at 12 centers in the United States and Canada, the researchers found the test could successfully classify tumors more than 97 pe... (read more)
Stevens-Johnson sydrome is a devastating skin disease where the skin and mucous memranes react to infection or medication, including the surface of the eye. Patients suffer from painful blisters and the skin sloughs off. When the disease effects more than 30% of the the body's skin, it is called epidermal necrolysis. Severe forms of the di... (read more)
Another day, another four turns of the screw. That's just a part of life for people, primarily children, undergoing the long and difficult process of distraction osteogenesis, a method to correct bone deformities that leave one limb shorter than the other. A team of Rice University undergraduates has invented a device they hope will make the process safer and easier. In collaboration with Shriners H... (read more)
Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) have identified a molecular pathway that controls the retention and release of the brain's stem cells. The discovery offers new insights into normal and abnormal neurologic development and could eventually lead to regenerative therapies for neurologic disease and injury. The findings, from a collaborative effort of the laboratories of Drs. Anna La... (read more)
Schoolteachers who underwent a short but intensive program of meditation were less depressed, anxious or stressed -- and more compassionate and aware of others' feelings, according to a UCSF-led study that blended ancient meditation practices with the most current scientific methods for regulating emotions. A core feature of many religions, meditation is practiced by tens of millions around the world as... (read more)
A biological clue to male baldness has been discovered, raising the prospect of a treatment to stop or even reverse thinning hair. In studies of bald men and laboratory mice, US scientists pinpointed a protein that triggers hair loss. Drugs that target the pathway are already in development, they report in the journal Science Translational Medicine. The research could lead to a cream to treat baldness. Most men s... (read more)
The Nutritional Immunology and Molecular Medicine Laboratory (NIMML) research team at Virginia Tech has discovered important new information on the efficacy of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) in treating Crohn's disease, a form of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). CLA is a naturally occurring acid found in meat and dairy products known for its anti-cancer and immune modulatory properties. In collaboration with ... (read more)
Despite a century of research, memory encoding in the brain has remained mysterious. Neuronal synaptic connection strengths are involved, but synaptic components are short-lived while memories last lifetimes. This suggests synaptic information is encoded and hard-wired at a deeper, finer-grained molecular scale. In an article in the March 8 issue of the journal PLoS Computational Biology, physicists Travis Cradd... (read more)
A major downside of the medical use of marijuana is the drug's ill effects on working memory, the ability to transiently hold and process information for reasoning, comprehension and learning. Researchers reporting in the March 2 print issue of the Cell Press journal Cell provide new insight into the source of those memory lapses. The answer comes as quite a surprise: Marijuana's major psychoactive ingredient (THC) impairs memor... (read more)
Adding prebiotic ingredients to infant formula helps colonize the newborn's gut with a stable population of beneficial bacteria, and probiotics enhance immunity in formula-fed infants, two University of Illinois studies report. "The beneficial bacteria that live in a baby's intestine are all-important to an infant's health, growth, and ability to fight off infections,... (read more)
New data from the Framingham Offspring Study cohort suggest that higher dietary intake of the omega-3 fatty acids docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) may help protect the aging brain. Results showed that lower red blood cell (RBC) levels of DHA and EPA in late middle age were associated with smaller brain volumes and a "vascular" pattern of cognitive impairment, even... (read more)
Researchers at the RIKEN-MIT Center for Neural Circuit Genetics have discovered an answer to the long-standing mystery of how brain cells can both remember new memories while also maintaining older ones. They found that specific neurons in a brain region called the dentate gyrus serve distinct roles in memory formation depending on whether the neural stem cells that produced them were of old versus young a... (read more)
It turns out plastic surgery really does make you look younger, one study has found — on average, in the case of one Canadian doctor’s patients, 7.2 years younger. Some plastic surgeons “tend to use the terms more youthful and more refreshed, but precise quantification of these attributes has remained elusive,” a team of cosmetic surgeons wrote in a study published Monday in the Archives of Facial Pl... (read more)
Science has once again showed us that a well informed diet can positively affect one's health. An article published in Archives of Ophthalmology argues that diets rich in omega-3 fatty acids, combined with vitamin A, can prevent changes in visual acuity. Researchers studied retinitis pigmentosa specifically and measured patients' central vision. The results are significant because we all will experience vision... (read more)
Treatments for ophthalmic diseases like Glaucoma and Macular Degeneration emphasize preventing further damage and disease management. In the search for a means to reverse these conditions, researchers at University of Michigan Health Systems found one animal that goes beyond disease management. Zebrafish were found to have the ability to repair damaged or injured retinas by rege... (read more)
A UCSF stem cell study conducted in mice suggests a novel strategy for treating damaged cardiac tissue in patients following a heart attack. The approach potentially could improve cardiac function, minimize scar size, lead to the development of new blood vessels -- and avoid the risk of tissue rejection. n the investigation, reported online in the journal PLoS ONE, the researchers iso... (read more)
Patients with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) had a four times greater risk of malignancy than did matched control groups without the disease, investigators reported. After adjustment for multiple variables, JIA conferred a standard incidence ratio (SIR) of 4.4 for malignancy compared with patients who had asthma or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but not JIA. However, JIA treatment, includi... (read more)
Hi, everybody! Thanks for checking out my healthnoise.com profile. When I left my job in finance to go to medical school, I quickly learned that medicine is its own separate universe, and has its own language, culture and economy. Patients and even medical students often have no clue as to what doctors are talking about, and why they do what they do. I’m planning to discuss some topics on healthnoise.com that might help to get us all on th... (read more)
Children who are ostracized by their peers and bullied often become depressed, but new research suggests that the relationship may work the other way around as well: children’s depressive symptoms in elementary school precede social victimization and isolation later on. Previous studies that tried to work out whether bullying causes depression, or whether depressed kids become magnets for ... (read more)
Jim Black is fighting the meanest, most aggressive, most common kind of brain tumor in the United States: recurrent glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). In the United States, each year, approximately 10,000 patients are affected by GBM. Now, a novel investigational device -- available only at clinical trial sites -- is offering new hope to these patients. The non-invasive procedure -- called Tumor Treating Fields (TTF) -... (read more)
An innovative approach to genome screening has provided clues about rare mutations that may make people susceptible to brain aneurysms, predisposing them to brain bleeds, according to preliminary late-breaking research presented at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference 2012. For the first time, scientists applied a process called whole exome sequencing to seek gene... (read more)
Scientists from The Scripps Research Institute, Scripps Health, and collaborating cancer physicians have successfully demonstrated the effectiveness of an advanced blood test for detecting and analyzing circulating tumor cells (CTCs) -- breakaway cells from patients' solid tumors -- from cancer patients. The findings, reported in five new papers, show that the highly sensitive blood analysis provides information t... (read more)
Drug addicts and their non-addicted siblings share certain features in the brain, suggesting a susceptibility to addiction is inherited but is also a flaw that can be overcome, scientists said on Thursday. Researchers who scanned the brains of 50 pairs of brothers and sisters of whom one was a cocaine addict found that both siblings had brain abnormalities that make it more difficult for them to exercise se... (read more)
Everyone knows that it can feel really good to get a massage. Now scientists may have figured out why, by identifying how massage switches genes on and off, thus reducing inflammation and coaxing muscle adaptation to exercise. The discovery provides strong evidence that massage merits further study as a treatment for injuries and chronic disorders, said Dr. Mark Tarnopolsky, a researcher at McMaster Un... (read more)
As you listened to your colleagues’ conversations at work today, or to a podcast on the train home, or to your personal trainer shouting lift, your brain completed some complex tasks. The frequencies of syllables and whole words were decoded and given meaning, and you could make sense of the language-filled world we live in without actively thinking about it. Now a team of research... (read more)
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