IN-TIME shows equal benefit of home telemonitoring in ICD and CRT-D patients

Athens, 19 May 2014: A novel device implanted under the skin like a pacemaker successfully treats central sleep apnoea (CSA) in heart failure patients, according to research presented today at the Heart Failure Congress 2014, held 17-20 May in Athens, Greece. The Congress is the main annual meeting of the Heart Failure Association of the European Society of Cardiology. The one year results of the remede® system pilot study were revealed for the first time by lead author Professor William T. Abraham from the Ohio State University. He said: "The remede® system is the first ...

Adolescents with chronic diseases (ACD), such as cystic fibrosis, gastrointestinal disorders (including Crohn's disease) and Type 1 diabetes, often find the transition of managing their health care needs into adulthood to be challenging. Preparations for this transition are often clinic-based, costly and do not fully or effectively engage with this patient population. A new study by researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine found the answer to developing independent, self-management skills in ACD could be right at the patient's fingertips. ...

One of the most comprehensive studies of the potential link between reduced sleep and childhood obesity finds compelling evidence that children who consistently received less than the recommended hours of sleep during infancy and early childhood had increases in both obesity and in adiposity or overall body fat at age 7. The study from MassGeneral Hospital for Children (MGHfC) investigators, published in the June issue of Pediatrics, also finds no evidence of a specific period during which insufficient sleep has greater influence on later obesity. "Our study found convincing ...

More and more men who believe they have low-risk prostate cancers are opting for active surveillance, forgoing treatment and monitoring the cancer closely with prostate-specific antigen (PSA) tests, digital rectal exams and ultrasounds at regular intervals to see if their tumors are growing. Nearly 400 men are now enrolled in the UCLA Active Surveillance program, the largest in Southern California. However, according to a new UCLA study, selection of men for active surveillance should be based not on the widely used conventional biopsy, but with a new, image-guided targeted ...

WASHINGTON - Low-income Latino children who experienced one year of Montessori pre-K education at age 4 made dramatic improvements in early achievement and behavior even though they began the year at great risk for school failure, according to research published by the American Psychological Association. In contrast, although low-income black children made gains in school readiness when enrolled in Montessori classrooms as well, they exhibited slightly greater gains when they attended more conventional public school pre-kindergarten programs. The research was published ...

LIVERPOOL, UK – 9 May 2014: A University of Liverpool study of fruit flies has revealed that males forced to compete with other males become less attractive to females and die young. In the test, male fruit flies of the species Drosophila subobscura were kept either alone or in groups. The females of this species are monandrous – they only mate once in their lives, meaning that males have to get very lucky to mate at all. As a result males compete furiously for access to females. Evolutionary biologist, Dr Anne Lizé, who led the study said: "When we see stags fighting ...

Today, the majority of cancers are detected on the macroscopic level, when the tumor is already composed of millions of cancer cells and the disease is starting to advance into a more mature phase. But what if we could diagnose cancer before it took hold- while it was still only affecting a few localized cells? It would be like putting a fire out while it was still just a few sparks versus after having already caught on and spread to many areas of the house. An international team of researchers, led by ICFO- Institute of Photonic Sciences in Castelldefels, announce ...

Adding vitamin D to asthma treatment to improve breathing only appears to benefit patients who achieve sufficient levels of the supplement in the blood. Overall, the ability to control asthma did not differ between a study group that received vitamin D supplements and a group that received placebo, according to new research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. "Previous studies suggested that if you have asthma and low levels of vitamin D in the blood, you have worse lung function, more asthma attacks and more emergency room visits than asthma patients ...

Researchers at MIT and the University of Vienna have created an imaging system that reveals neural activity throughout the brains of living animals. This technique, the first that can generate 3-D movies of entire brains at the millisecond timescale, could help scientists discover how neuronal networks process sensory information and generate behavior. The team used the new system to simultaneously image the activity of every neuron in the worm Caenorhabditis elegans, as well as the entire brain of a zebrafish larva, offering a more complete picture of nervous system ...

Cold Spring Harbor, NY -- Scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) today report a discovery that they hope will lead to the development of a powerful new way of treating an aggressive form of breast cancer. The breast cancer subtype in question is commonly called "HER2-positive"; it's a subset of the disease affecting about one patient in four, in which tumor cells overexpress a signaling protein called HER2. The blockbuster drug Herceptin is a treatment of choice for many women with HER2-positive breast cancer, but in most cases, resistance to the treatment ...