Better coordinated health care needed to better serve Haitians post-earthquake

CINCINNATI—University of Cincinnati (UC) researchers have discovered a biomarker, known as phosphatidylserine (PS), for pancreatic cancer that could be effectively targeted, creating a potential therapy for a condition that has a small survival rate. These findings, being published in the Oct. 4, 2013, online edition of PLOS ONE, also show that the use of a biotherapy consisting of a lysosomal protein, known as saposin C (SapC), and a phospholipid, known as dioleoylphosphatidylserine (DOPS), can be combined into tiny cavities, or nanovesicles, to target and kill pancreatic ...

SAN FRANCISCO – Oct. 4, 2013 – Healthcare workers' use of disposable gowns and gloves upon entering all patient rooms on an intensive care unit (ICU), versus only in rooms on standard isolation protocol, helped reduce patient acquisition of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) by approximately 40 percent, according to new research co-led by the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the Yale New Haven Health System Center for Healthcare Solutions. While the study did not show statistically significant results for preventing patient acquisition of another ...

The wearing of gloves and gowns by health care workers for all intensive care unit (ICU) patient contact did not reduce the rate of acquisition of a combination of the bacteria methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE), although there was a lower risk of MRSA acquisition alone, according to a study published online by JAMA. The study is being released early to coincide with its presentation at IDWeek 2013. Antibiotic-resistance is associated with considerable illness, death, and costs. MRSA and VRE are primary causes ...

INDIANAPOLIS -- An Indiana University cancer researcher and his colleagues have discovered new therapeutic targets and drugs that may someday benefit people with certain types of leukemia or blood cancer. Reuben Kapur, Ph.D., the Frieda and Albrecht Kipp Professor of Pediatrics at the IU School of Medicine and a researcher at the Indiana University Melvin and Bren Simon Cancer Center, and colleagues discovered in pre-clinical and pharmacological models that cancer cells with a mutation in the KIT receptor -- an oncogenic/cancerous form of the receptor -- in mast cell ...

HOUSTON – Children of melanoma survivors were more likely to wear hats and re-apply sunscreen after receiving a multi-media informational program designed specifically for them. These new findings were included in research published in the journal of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention – a publication of the American Association for Cancer Research. A team of researchers led by Ellen R. Gritz, Ph.D., and Mary Tripp, Ph.D., M.P.H., both researchers of Behavioral Science at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, conducted a randomized trial to determine ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. Oct. 4, 2013 -- Researchers in Japan have developed a new photodiode that can detect in just milliseconds a certain type of high-energy ultraviolet light, called UVC, which is powerful enough to break the bonds of DNA and harm living creatures. The researchers describe their new device in the journal Applied Physics Letters. Although this radiation doesn't normally reach the Earth's surface, it can leak through to just below the hole in the ozone layer. Monitoring this radiation is a way of tracking the hole in the ozone layer, and photodiodes that measure ...

University of Notre Dame researchers Shahriar Mobashery and Mayland Chang and their collaborators in Spain have published research results this week that show how methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) regulates the critical crosslinking of its cell wall in the face of beta-lactam antibiotics. The work, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveals the mechanistic basis for how the MRSA bacterium became such a difficult pathogen over the previous 50 years, in which time it spread rapidly across the world. Modern strains of MRSA ...

Understanding how genes act in specific tissues is critical to our ability to combat many human diseases, from heart disease to kidney failure to cancer. Yet isolating individual cell types for study is impossible for most human tissues. A new method developed by researchers at Princeton University and the University of Michigan called "in silico nano-dissection" uses computers rather than scalpels to separate and identify genes from specific cell types, enabling the systematic study of genes involved in diseases. The team used the new method to successfully identify ...

Philadelphia, Pa. (October 4, 2013) – Doctors who abuse prescription drugs often do so for "self-medication"—whether for physical or emotional pain or stress relief, reports a study in the October Journal of Addiction Medicine, the official journal of the American Society of Addiction Medicine. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. Based on focus groups with physicians in treatment for substance abuse, the findings lend "unique insights" into the reasons why doctors abuse prescription medications—as well as important ...

NASA's footage of the first moon landing promised a future of sci-fi heroism that never came to pass, according to a new study. The paper, by Professor Steve Brown and Professor Martin Parker, of the University of Leicester's School of Management, and Dr Lewis Goodings, of the University of Roehampton, is published in the International Journal of Management Concepts and Philosophy. The first moon landing is overwhelmingly remembered as an exciting and important turning point in world history, which continues to inspire space exploration projects to Mars and beyond today. However, ...