Alcohol consumption linked to lower disability in patients with chronic pain
2015-07-20
(Press-News.org) In a study of 2239 individuals with chronic widespread pain, the key feature of fibromyalgia, those who regularly consumed alcohol had lower levels of disability than those who never or rarely drank.
Those who drank 21 to 35 units of alcohol per week were 67% less likely than never drinkers to experience disability. (One unit of alcohol is a half pint of average strength beer/lager, one small glass of wine, or one single measure of spirits.).
"Although we cannot say that alcohol consumption causes less disability among people with chronic widespread pain, the observed link warrants further investigation," said Dr. Gary Macfarlane, co-author of the Arthritis Care & Research study.
INFORMATION:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2015-07-20
New research provides mathematical evidence that Michelangelo used the Golden Ratio of 1.6 when painting The Creation of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The Golden Ratio is found when you divide a line into two parts so that the longer part divided by the smaller part is equal to the whole length divided by the longer part.
The Golden Ratio has been linked with greater structural efficiency and has puzzled scientists for centuries due to its frequent occurrence in nature--for example in snail shells and flower petals. The Golden Ratio can also be found in a ...
2015-07-20
Fossil fuel emissions could soon make it impossible for radiocarbon dating to distinguish new materials from artefacts that are hundreds of years old.
Carbon released by burning fossil fuels is diluting radioactive carbon-14 and artificially raising the radiocarbon 'age' of the atmosphere, according to a paper published today (Monday 20 July 2015) in the journal PNAS.
Radiocarbon measurements have a range of uses, from analysing archaeological finds, to detecting fraudulent works of art, to identifying illegal ivory trading, to assessing the regeneration of brain cells ...
2015-07-20
Music enhances the teenage brain's response to sound; sharpens language skills
Band class had larger effect on brain than fitness-based ROTC training
Results highlight music's place in the high school curriculum
Kraus: 'Music may engender what educators refer to as learning to learn'
EVANSTON, Ill. --- Music training, begun as late as high school, may help improve the teenage brain's responses to sound and sharpen hearing and language skills, suggests a new Northwestern University study.
The research, to be published the week of July 20 in the Proceedings ...
2015-07-20
Scientists at NYU Langone Medical Center's Center for Cognitive Neurology have evidence that monoclonal antibodies they developed may provide the blueprint for effective treatments for Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson's disease.
A team led by Fernando Goni, PhD, an adjunct associate professor of Neurology, and Thomas Wisniewski MD, director of the Center for Cognitive Neurology at NYU Langone, showed that a novel class of monoclonal antibodies successfully targeted proteins that change shape and misfold, becoming toxic and triggering ...
2015-07-20
Infants can use their expectations about the world to rapidly shape their developing brains, researchers have found.
A series of experiments with infants ages 5 to 7 months has shown that portions of babies' brains responsible for visual processing respond not just to the presence of visual stimuli, but also to the mere expectation of visual stimuli, according to the researchers from Princeton University, the University of Rochester and the University of South Carolina.
That type of sophisticated neural processing was once thought to happen only in adults and not infants, ...
2015-07-20
Washington, DC - July 20, 2015 - Biofilms are tough, opportunistic, highly antibiotic resistant bacterial coatings that form on catheters and on medical devices implanted within the body. University of Maryland investigators have now shown that a "messenger molecule" produced by the opportunistic human pathogen, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, encourages bacteria to colonize catheters in the bladders of laboratory mice, where they form biofilms. The research appears July 20th in the Journal of Bacteriology, a publication of the American Society for Microbiology.
Normally, in ...
2015-07-20
DURHAM, N.C. -- A Duke University study in rats finds that gut worms can protect babies' brains from long-term learning and memory problems caused by newborn infections.
Baby rats with tapeworms avoided the brain inflammation that plagued worm-free rats after exposure to immune triggers in adulthood.
What's more, the benefits began early, while still in the womb. Expectant mother rats with tapeworms passed similar protection on to their worm-free pups, the researchers found.
The findings could point to new ways to treat or prevent the chronic brain inflammation ...
2015-07-20
When modern football helmets were introduced, they all but eliminated traumatic skull fractures caused by blunt force impacts. Mounting evidence, however, suggests that concussions are caused by a different type of head motion, namely brain and skull rotation.
Now, a group of Stanford engineers has produced a collection of results that suggest that current helmet-testing equipment and techniques are not optimized for evaluating these additional injury-causing elements.
The ideal way to test any protective gear is to gain a sense of what causes the trauma, set up a system ...
2015-07-20
Angelina Jolie received widespread media attention in 2013 when she told the public that she'd tested positive for BRCA1, a gene associated with an increased risk of breast and ovarian cancers, and subsequently had a double mastectomy. Now research shows that this publicity did influence some women's intentions to seek out similar genetic testing.
"We put a questionnaire online within three days of Jolie's announcement, to see if the announcement influenced anyone's intention to get genetic testing," says Kami Kosenko, an associate professor of communication at North ...
2015-07-20
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Researchers on Mayo Clinic's Florida campus have identified key differences between patients with sporadic amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease) and those with the most common genetic form of ALS, a mutation in the C9orf72 gene.
Their findings, reported online today in Nature Neuroscience, demonstrate that ALS patients show abnormalities in levels and processing of ribonucleic acids (RNA), biological molecules that determine what gene information is used to guide protein synthesis.
More than 30,000 Americans live with ALS, ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Alcohol consumption linked to lower disability in patients with chronic pain
