According to a recent study, published Online First in The Lancet , selenium may help people who don't have enough of it, but for the people who have enough to begin with, selenium supplements may be detrimental to their health. It is shown in the study that taking the supplements may result in the development of type 2 diabetes. Margaret Rayman, from the University of Surrey, Guilford, UK, and author of the study e... (read more)
Damage caused by a heart attack has been healed using stem cells gathered from the patient's own heart, according to doctors in the US. The amount of scar tissue was halved in the small safety trial reported in the Lancet medical journal. The authors said there was also an "unprecedented" increase in new heart muscle. The British Heart Foundation said it was "early days", but cou... (read more)
Damage caused by a heart attack has been healed using stem cells gathered from the patient's own heart, according to doctors in the US. The amount of scar tissue was halved in the small safety trial reported in the Lancet medical journal. The authors said there was also an "unprecedented" increase in new heart muscle. The British Heart Foundation said it was "early days", but could &quo... (read more)
Although heart disease is the leading killer of women as well as of men, two heart disease patients out of every three are male, and heart disease strikes men 10 to 15 years earlier than it does women. No one really knows why. Now, a new study reports that part of the answer may lie on the Y chromosome, the one chromosome unique to men. In the study, published on Wednesday in The Lancet, researchers fo... (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)
Measuring blood pressure in both arms should be routine because the difference between left and right arm could indicate underlying health problems, says a study review. The Lancet research found that a large difference could mean an increased risk of vascular disease and death. Although existing guidelines state that blood pressure should be measured in both arms, it is not often done. But a heart cha... (read more)
A UCSF study shows a popular treatment for a potentially blinding eye infection is just as effective if given every six months versus annually. This randomized study on trachoma, the leading cause of infection-caused blindness in the world, could potentially treat twice the number of patients using the same amount of medication. "The idea is we can do more with less," said Bruce Gaynor, MD, assista... (read more)
Overall survival, as well as progression -- and event-free survival -- was increased in patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma when they received a dose-intensive chemotherapy regimen along with rituximab (Rituxan), according to results of a randomized trial. The three-year overall survival rate with intensive chemotherapy plus rituximab was 92%, compared with 84% among patients receiving a more c... (read more)
Drugs that fight cholesterol keep producing benefits without hazardous effects for years after patients stop using them, scientists said Wednesday. Large trials in the past have shown that lowering "bad" LDL cholesterol with statin drugs reduces blood vessel disease and death from heart attack, but there is limited evidence about the long-term effects from using such medicines. ... (read more)
Two small studies of cardiac stem cells for the treatment of heart failure have shown promise, but ABC News, CBS News and other media outlets are throwing around words like “medical breakthrough” and “heart failure cure.” ABC News correspondent Richard Besser was so enthusiastic that anchor Diane Sawyer commented that she had never seen him “so excited.” The first author of one of the st... (read more)
Two new studies led by University of California, Berkeley, researchers spotlight the human health effects of exposure to smoke from open fires and dirty cookstoves, the primary source of cooking and heating for 43 percent, or some 3 billion members, of the world's population. Women and young children in poverty are particularly vulnerable. In the first study, the researchers found a drama... (read more)
Three severely brain-injured people thought to be in an irreversible “vegetative” state showed signs of full consciousness when tested with a relatively inexpensive and commonly used method of measuring brain waves, doctors reported Wednesday. Experts said the findings, if replicated, would change standards in treating such patients. Scientists have seen meaningful, responsive brain activity in suc... (read more)
Earthquakes have a bigger impact on health than other natural disasters such as floods and hurricanes, US researchers say. There are more than a million earthquakes, of varying severity, around the world each year. As well as the immediate deaths, many people receive serious injuries which cannot be treated because of the quake damage to infrastructure. The Lancet review says children are o... (read more)
Research published in the prestigious medical journal, The Lancet, indicates that a regular dose of aspirin may not only stave off heart disease but also cut the risk of developing hereditary cancer in half. The study, which tracked 1000 patients in 16 countries for more than four years, was conducted by researchers from Queens University and Newcastle University in the UK. They focused principally... (read more)
Patients with a genetic condition that increases their risk of colon and other cancers who took aspirin daily developed colon cancer less often than patients who took a placebo, researchers reported Thursday. The study, which was the first randomized controlled trial to look at the effect of aspirin on cancer rates, was published in the journal the Lancet. Professor John Burn, a geneticis... (read more)
Radiation treatment after surgery for breast cancer significantly lowers the risk that the disease will recur in the breast or spread lethally to other parts of the body over the next 10 to 15 years, researchers say. The new findings mean that radiation prevents recurrences for a longer time and saves more lives than was generally recognized, said Sarah C. Darby, a professor of medical statistics at the U... (read more)
One in three people on Medicare have surgery in the final year of their lives, and many have surgery in their last month, according to a new study published in The Lancet. Of the 1.8 million Medicare patients over age 65 who died in 2008, researchers found that a third had undergone surgery in the year before death and that 18% of those surgeries had occurred in the month before death. Nearly 1 in 10 ha... (read more)
Surgery is surprisingly common in older people during the last year, month and even week of life, researchers reported Wednesday, a finding that is likely to stoke, but not resolve, the debate over whether medical care is overused and needlessly driving up medical costs. The most comprehensive examination of operations performed on Medicare recipients in the final year of life found that nationally in 2008... (read more)
A new study looking at the genetic risks for asthma has identified 2 loci of significance. Researchers looked at the genomes of a large sample of patients with physician diagnosed asthma and the genomes of a large sample of patients without asthma. They found that a loci associated with chromosome 11q13.5 was significantly associated with atopy (allergy) among asthmatics. Additionally, another loci located in the interleukin-6 (IL-6) ... (read more)
Exercise is often seen as a chore. Despite the constant bombardment of its benefits in medical school and the media, I still have trouble getting myself to do anything beyond getting from point A to B. Here is another large study showing how even minimal exercise is associated with increased life expectancy. The study followed almost a half million people over 12 years. Via self-reported questi... (read more)
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