Putnam Valley, NY. (July 14, 2015) - Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disease that produces autoantibodies and subsequent immune reactions that can lead to a variety of symptoms, including inflammation of the kidneys, or nephritis. When researchers transplanted mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) derived from human bone marrow into mice modeled with SLE, they found that inflammation was reduced and nephritis "attenuated." They suggested that their study revealed a "novel mechanism" by which the MSCs can regulate the progression of autoimmune diseases such as ...

HOUSTON - (July 14, 2015) - From 2004 to 2010 in Texas, mental illness was the most common reason for the hospitalization of children ages 10-14 while pregnancy/birth was the most common reason for the hospitalization of adolescents ages 15-17, according to researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) Medical School. The results were published in the July issue of Hospital Pediatrics, a journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics. "We were surprised by those two findings and the related costs in millions of dollars," said Bethanie ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - New research is revealing details about how the exoskeleton of a certain type of deep-sea shrimp allows the animal to survive scalding hot waters in hydrothermal vents thousands of feet under water. "A biological species surviving in that kind of extreme environment is a big deal," said Vikas Tomar, an associate professor in Purdue University's School of Aeronautics and Astronautics. "And shrimp are a great test case for evolution because you can find different species all over the world living at various depths and with a range of adaptation requirements." He ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Hypervigilance to hostility in others triggers aggressive behavior in children, says a new Duke University-led study. The four-year longitudinal study involving 1,299 children and their parents finds the pattern holds true in 12 different cultural groups from nine countries across the globe. This pattern is more common in some cultures than others, which helps explain why some cultures have more aggressive behavior problems in children than other cultures, according to the study. The findings, published online Monday in Proceedings of the National ...

MADISON, Wis. -- A diet that starves triple-negative breast cancer cells of an essential nutrient primes the cancer cells to be more easily killed by a targeted antibody treatment, UW Carbone Cancer Center scientists report in a recent publication. The study's senior author, Vincent Cryns, professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, says the study lays the foundation for a clinical trial to see if a low-methionine diet will help improve outcomes in women with "triple-negative" breast cancer. Methionine is an essential amino ...

Scientists have designed nanoparticles that release drugs in the presence of a class of proteins that enable cancers to metastasize. That is, they have engineered a drug delivery system so that the very enzymes that make cancers dangerous could instead guide their destruction. "We can start with a small molecule and build that into a nanoscale carrier that can seek out a tumor and deliver a payload of drug," said Cassandra Callmann, a graduate student in chemistry and biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego, and first author of the report published in ...

NEW YORK, NY (July 14, 2015) - A plan to ensure that evidence-based psychosocial interventions are routinely used in clinical practice and made a part of clinical training for mental health professionals was released today by the National Academy of Medicine (NAM). The NAM report, titled, "Psychosocial Interventions for Mental and Substance Use Disorders," points to a strong need to strengthen evidence on the effectiveness of psychosocial interventions, and to develop guidelines and quality measures for implementing these interventions in professional practice. Though ...

Fibromyalgia is almost impossible to diagnose. The chronic pain syndrome strikes an estimated 1 in 70 Americans, most of them women. The disorder is often triggered by head trauma, a neurological infection, or severe emotional stress, and is characterized by symptoms such as musculoskeletal pain, fatigue, memory loss and mood swings. Fibromyalgia is often mistaken for other culprits and most patients suffer months, even years, of unrelenting pain before being properly diagnosed. And once diagnosed, patients enjoy little respite because few therapies have been found to be ...

Case Western Reserve researchers already demonstrated that a single protein plays a pivotal role in the use of nutrients by major organs that allow for the burning of fat during exercise or regulating the heart's contractile and electrical activity. Now they have found a new benefit of Kruppel-like Factor 15 (KLF15) -- keeping the body in metabolic balance. The discovery, which highlights how KLF15 affects the availability of nutrients in the body, may also have significant implications for scientists' ability to understand ways that the body metabolizes different medications. ...

July 13, 2015 --Regardless of family income, children on summer break consume more sugar, watch more television, and eat fewer vegetables than the rest of the year, according to researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. Findings are published online in the Journal of School Health. The research was based on data from U.S. children in grades 1-12 in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2003-2008. The sample consisted of 6453 children and adolescents, some surveyed during the school year and others during a school break. The ...

Liuzijue qigong (LQG) is a set of meditative movement and breathing patterns practiced by more than 100 million people in China. In a new Journal of the American Geriatrics Society study, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients in remission who were randomized to LQG demonstrated marked improvements in their lung function, general health, mental health, and quality of life after 6 months compared with patients randomized to a control group. The LQG program consisted of four 45-minute sessions each week and daily walking for 30 minutes. Control participants ...

WASHINGTON - A considerable gap exists in mental health and substance abuse treatments known as psychosocial interventions between what is known to be effective and those interventions that are commonly delivered, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Mental health and substance use disorders are a serious public health problem, affect approximately 20 percent of the U.S. population, and often occur together. Psychosocial interventions -- such as psychotherapies, community-based treatments, vocational rehabilitation, ...

Ann Arbor, MI, July 14, 2015 - Admitting that you have a weight problem may be the first step in taking action, but a new study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that an increasing number of overweight adolescents do not consider themselves as such. "Adolescents with accurate self-perceptions of their body weight have greater readiness to make weight-related behavioral changes and are more effective in making the changes," explained lead investigator Jian Zhang, MD, DrPH, from the Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health, Georgia Southern University, ...

EUGENE, Ore. -- Large-scale organic farming operations, based on a review of almost a decade of data from 49 states, are not reducing greenhouse gas emissions, says a University of Oregon researcher. The increasing numbers of commercialized organic operations -- which still make up just 3 percent of total agricultural lands -- appear to contribute to increased and more intense levels of greenhouse gases coming from each acre of farmland, reports Julius McGee, a doctoral student in the UO sociology department. His study appeared in the June issue of the journal Agriculture ...

A new study published in Marketing Science, a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), finds that peer influence among physicians can affect both trial and repeat prescription behavior of a risky new prescription drug. The study, Social Contagion in New Product Trial and Repeat, tracks prescriptions of a new drug over 17 months, and measures the discussion and patient referral connections among physicians in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The research was conducted by professors Raghuram Iyengar and Christophe ...

University of Leicester psychologist describes unique case as new to science 38-year-old fit and healthy man suffered memory loss after local anaesthetic and root-canal treatment at dentist For the past decade he can only remember up to 90 minutes And he awakes each day thinking it is the same day he went to the dentist Symptoms are akin to those depicted in movies such as Groundhog Day and Memento There is no evidence that the treatment at the dentist can be blamed for his condition "One of our reasons for writing up this individual's case was that we ...

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), lung diseases are the third most common cause of death worldwide: toxic particles, infections, and chronic inflammatory responses pose a permanent threat to our lungs. To date, the regenerative mechanisms leading to healing of lung injury remain incompletely understood. Since few to no causal therapies are in place for most lung diseases, it is important to understand how these healing processes, which involve initial inflammation, fibrosis, and then resolution thereof, occur in the lung. Using novel mass spectrometry ...

A team of scientists from the National University of Singapore (NUS) has found that blue light emitting diodes (LEDs) have strong antibacterial effect on major foodborne pathogens, and are most effective when in cold temperatures (between 4°C and 15°C) and mildly acidic conditions of around pH 4.5. This opens up novel possibilities of using blue LEDs as a chemical-free food preservation method. Acidic foods such as fresh-cut fruits and ready-to-eat meat can be preserved under blue LEDs in combination with chilling temperatures without requiring further chemical ...

A new study from Lund University in Sweden shows that women with low levels of an anti-stress hormone have an increased risk of getting breast cancer. The study is the first of its kind on humans and confirms previous similar observations from animal experiments. The recent findings on a potential new marker for the risk of developing breast cancer are presented in the renowned Journal of Clinical Oncology. The study focused on a hormone which circulates freely in the blood, enkephalin, with pain- and anxiety-reducing properties. Enkephalin also reinforces the immune ...

Despite modern chemoradiation therapy it is still very difficult to give reliable prognoses for malignant gliomas. Surgical removal of the glioma is still the preferred method of treatment. Doctors at Universitätsklinikum Erlangen's Department of Neurosurgery have now developed a new procedure for analysing radiological imaging scans which makes it possible to predict the course of a disease relatively precisely. Their findings have now been published in the journal 'Scientific Reports'.* The Friedlein Grading A/B (FGA/B) classification system - named after the physician ...

July 14, 2015 - Studies using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques are beginning to reveal differences in brain connectivity--the ways that different parts of the brain are connected to each other and work together--in people with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), reports a review in the Harvard Review of Psychiatry. The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer. Some common themes are beginning to emerge from research on structural and functional brain connectivity in ASD, according to David Kennedy, PhD, and colleagues of University of Massachusetts Medical School. ...

July 14, 2015 - More than 80 percent of people with depression in the general population aren't eligible for clinical trials of antidepressant drugs, according to a study in the Journal of Psychiatric Practice. The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer. At least five patients would need to be screened to enroll just one patient meeting the typical inclusion and exclusion criteria for antidepressant registration trials (ARTs), suggests the new research by Drs. Sheldon Preskorn and Matthew Macaluso of University of Kansas School of Medicine-Wichita and Dr. Madhukar Trivedi ...

July 14, 2015 - Benzodiazepine drugs are widely used in patients with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but available evidence suggests that they are not effective--and may even be harmful, concludes a systematic review and meta-analysis in the July Journal of Psychiatric Practice. The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer. "Benzodiazepines are ineffective for PTSD treatment and prevention, and risks associated with their use tend to outweigh potential short-term benefits," write Dr. Jeffrey Guina and colleagues from Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio. They also ...

Collision physics can be like a game of billiards. Yet in the microscopic world, the outcome of the game is hard to predict. Fire a particle at a group of other particles, and they may scatter, combine or break apart, according to probability distributions governed by quantum mechanics. These processes can tell us about fundamental properties of matter and, if antimatter projectiles are used, also about matter-antimatter interactions. Scientists at UCL have finally answered one of the basic questions that has remained outstanding until now: if, in a collision with matter, ...

CHICAGO-- Algae is evolving as the next new alternative protein source consumers are anxious to bite into as an ingredient in crackers, snack bars, cereals and breads, according to a July 12th presentation at IFT15: Where Science Feeds Innovation hosted by the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) in Chicago. Algae, quinoa and pulses are considered by some food technologists to be the best protein sources and strong alternatives to slow meat consumption, reduce food waste and help feed the world's growing population. Algae is a new vegan source of protein with a comparable ...