A review of medical records for almost 200 patients with breast cancer suggests that more selective use of biomarker testing for such patients has the potential to save millions of dollars in health care spending without compromising care, according to Johns Hopkins researchers. Specifically, waiting to perform these tests until a patient has a full excisional biopsy instead of "reflexively" or automatically testing for them on initial small "core" biopsies could save as much as $117 million, according to a report on the study published in the July issue of The American ...

A global taskforce of 174 scientists from leading research centres across 28 countries studied the link between mixtures of commonly encountered chemicals and the development of cancer. The study selected 85 chemicals not considered carcinogenic to humans and found 50 supported key cancer-related mechanisms at exposures found in the environment today. Longstanding concerns about the combined and additive effects of everyday chemicals prompted the organisation Getting To Know Cancer led by Lowe Leroy from Halifax Nova Scotia, to put the team together - pitching what is ...

Researchers at University of California, Berkeley have taken inspiration from the cockroach to create a robot that can use its body shape to manoeuvre through a densely cluttered environment. Fitted with the characteristic rounded shell of the discoid cockroach, the running robot can perform a roll manoeuvre to slip through gaps between grass-like vertical beam obstacles without the need for additional sensors or motors. It is hoped the robot can inspire the design of future terrestrial robots to use in a wide variety of scenarios, from monitoring the environment to ...

The gut microbe Akkermansia muciniphila may hold the key to better metabolic health and healthier body fat distribution in people who are overweight or obese, reveals a small study published online in the journal Gut. The microbe seems to be linked to lower levels of fasting blood glucose and fats--key factors involved in the development of diabetes and heart disease--and healthier distribution of body fat, the findings indicate. In healthy people A. muciniphila makes up around 3-5% of the gut's bacterial ecosystem and is associated with a diet rich in insoluble fibre. The ...

Squatting in 'skinny' jeans for a protracted period of time can damage muscle and nerve fibres in the legs, making it difficult to walk, reveals a case study published online in the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery & Psychiatry. Doctors describe a case of a 35 year old woman who arrived at hospital with severe weakness in both her ankles. The previous day she had been helping a relative move house, and had spent many hours squatting while emptying cupboards. She had been wearing tight 'skinny' jeans and recalled that these had felt increasingly tight and uncomfortable ...

New findings may help ease concerns for women with lupus who are interested in having a child. A new study concludes that most women with lupus whose disease is not very active will have a safe pregnancy. The results are to publish online June 22 in Annals of Internal Medicine. It was previously suggested that women with lupus avoid pregnancy because of serious complications to their own health and the health of the baby. As more knowledge became available, doctors told women with lupus to wait until symptoms were under control, but until now, it was still uncertain whether ...

BOSTON -- An expert panel convened by the Institute of Medicine clarified the cognitive aging process by making a distinction from Alzheimer disease and related dementias, and provided recommendations to enhance cognitive health in older adults. Now a new article published in Annals of Internal Medicine highlights key points of that report and serves as a guide for health care professionals seeking to improve the quality of life of older adults by maintaining brain health. Practitioners define "cognition" as mental functions encompassing attention, thinking, understanding, ...

As a new physician in Galway, Ireland, and then as a nephrology fellow at the Stanford University School of Medicine, Michelle O'Shaughnessy, MD, began to wonder whether similar treatment plans for all patients whose kidneys had failed was necessarily the best practice. "I was struck by my patients, who were often young and on dialysis at the age of 23 or 24," O'Shaughnessy said, referring to patients whose kidneys had failed because of glomerulonephritis, a group of rare disorders that damage the kidney's ability to filter the blood. "I thought there should be other ...

The results of a prospective, randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind trial of patients undergoing elective pulmonary resection was designed to evaluate the effects of statin therapy. Unfortunately, because of difficulties in enrolling patients who had never taken statins, the study was terminated early, and the sample size was smaller than anticipate. Trends in the data suggesting differences between groups failed to reach statistical significance except in a post-hoc analysis. The accompanying Editorial Commentary by Dr. Betty Tong emphasizes the potential importance ...

The microbiome of the human intestine consists of a variety of bacteria that assist in digestion, immune regulation, and other processes that are critical for human health. A subset of these bacteria produces urease, an enzyme that converts the waste product urea into ammonia. Ammonia supports a variety of physiological process. However, individuals with liver disease have excess ammonia in the blood, a condition referred to as hyperammonemia, that can cause neurotoxicity and hepatic encephalopathy. Current treatments for hyperammonemia-associated symptoms are limited and ...

(Boston)-- A major treatment breakthrough for total body scarring of the skin that occurs in patients with systemic sclerosis (SSc), also known as scleroderma, may soon be available for the estimated 300,000 Americans who suffer with this condition. Currently, no treatment is available. Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) researchers worked with 15 SSc patients who were treated with either one or two doses of fresolimumab, a new, unapproved drug therapy that targets a chemical mediator in the body known as TGF-beta. After seven weeks of treatment, the researchers ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Researchers have analyzed size data for rodents worldwide to distinguish the truly massive mice and giant gerbils from the regular-sized rodents. They found that the furry animals with chisel-like teeth are 17 times more likely to evolve to nightmarish proportions on islands than elsewhere. The results are in keeping with an idea called the 'island rule,' which previous studies claimed didn't apply to rodents. The study appears online in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Duke University biologists Paul Durst and Louise Roth analyzed data ...

PHILADELPHIA -- House calls, a long-running option dating back to the early days of medicine, can be used in a new way to improve geriatric care and lower costs, says a report issued last week from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Using first year results from Penn Medicine's Truman G. Schnabel In-Home Primary Care Program and its partners in the Mid Atlantic Consortium, Medstar Washington Hospital Center and Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) along with the 16 other IAH practices nationwide, CMS announced last week more than $25 million was saved ...

For severely obese people, bariatric surgery may have a benefit besides dramatic weight loss: it can also substantially reduce urinary incontinence. A new investigation led by UC San Francisco is the first to examine the longer-term effects of the surgical procedure on incontinence three years after bariatric surgery. The study appears online June 22 in JAMA Internal Medicine. 'Our findings showing another important long-term benefit to bariatric surgery might help to motivate people who are severely overweight,' said first author Leslee L. Subak, M.D., a UCSF professor ...

Somehow, colorful tropical scarlet macaws from tropical Mesoamerica -- the term anthropologists use to refer to Mexico and parts of northern Central America -- ended up hundreds of miles north in the desert ruins of an ancient civilization in what is now New Mexico. Early scientists began excavating the large Pueblo settlements in Chaco Canyon in northwestern New Mexico and found the birds' remains in the late 1890s, but only recent radiocarbon dating of the physical evidence has pushed back the time period of sophisticated Pueblo culture by at least 150 years, according ...

Social networks affect every aspect of our lives, from the jobs we get and the technologies we adopt to the partners we choose and the healthiness of our lifestyles. But where do they come from? In a new study, the University of Pennsylvania's Damon Centola shows how social networks form and what that means for the ideas that will spread across them. Counterintuitively, he finds that breaking down group boundaries to increase the spread of knowledge across populations may ultimately result in less-effective knowledge sharing. Instead, his research shows that best ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. - A study at Oregon State University indicates that both a high-fat and a high-sugar diet, compared to a normal diet, cause changes in gut bacteria that appear related to a significant loss of "cognitive flexibility," or the power to adapt and adjust to changing situations. This effect was most serious on the high-sugar diet, which also showed an impairment of early learning for both long-term and short-term memory. The findings are consistent with some other studies about the impact of fat and sugar on cognitive function and behavior, and suggest that ...

If planets had personalities, Mars would be a rock star according to recent preliminary results from NASA's MAVEN spacecraft. Mars sports a "Mohawk" of escaping atmospheric particles at its poles, "wears" a layer of metal particles high in its atmosphere, and lights up with aurora after being smacked by solar storms. MAVEN is also mapping out the escaping atmospheric particles. The early results are being discussed at a MAVEN-sponsored "new media" workshop held in Berkeley, California, on June 19-21. The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft was launched ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. - In 1964, renowned biologists Peter Raven and Paul Erhlich published a landmark study that introduced the concept of co-evolution. Using butterflies and plants as primary examples, the team determined that two species can reciprocally drive each other's evolution and development. Now, an international team of researchers led by the University of Missouri and Stockholm University has used cutting-edge genomics to analyze the co-evolution theory and identified the mechanisms responsible for this phenomenon. Scientists believe that understanding how co-evolution ...

Our brains track moving objects by applying one of the algorithms your phone's GPS uses, according to researchers at the University of Rochester. This same algorithm also explains why we are fooled by several motion-related optical illusions, including the sudden "break" of baseball's well known "curveball illusion." The new open-access study published in PNAS shows that our brains apply an algorithm, known as a Kalman filter, when tracking an object's position. This algorithm helps the brain process less than perfect visual signals, such as when objects move to the ...

Amid reports that rank today's teens as the most stressed generation in the country, a new study offers hope for helping them effectively manage stress and build long-term resiliency. A pilot study, published in the spring issue of the journal Advances in Mind-Body Medicine, describes how a stress-reduction/resiliency-building curriculum developed by the Benson-Henry Institute (BHI) at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) helped a group of Boston-area high school students significantly reduce their anxiety levels, increase productivity and effectively manage stress over ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- Fish are power eaters. In many species, large muscles running along their backs and bellies provide bursts of speed for chasing down prey. Then, at the very instant they close in, they vacuum victims into their suddenly gaping mouths with overwhelming suction. It turns out that these power surges are no anatomical coincidence. A new study shows that largemouth bass get their slurping power from the very same muscles that provide their swimming power. In the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Brown University researchers ...

Chemists and biologists at UC San Diego have succeeded in designing and synthesizing an artificial cell membrane capable of sustaining continual growth, just like a living cell. Their achievement, detailed in a paper published in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, will allow scientists to more accurately replicate the behavior of living cell membranes, which until now have been modeled only by synthetic cell membranes without the ability to add new phospholipids. 'The membranes we created, though completely synthetic, mimic several ...

WASHINGTON (June 18, 2015) -- Research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that some individuals exposed to HIV-1, but who remain uninfected, have a certain pattern of virus-specific immune responses that differentiated them from individuals who became infected. The findings build upon prior research by studying these responses in the context of a controlled clinical trial, examining a large number of subjects, and by having access to specimens saved before anyone was infected. In the future, this information could be used to assess HIV-1 ...

CHAPEL HILL, NC - Painful insulin injections could become a thing of the past for the millions of Americans who suffer from diabetes, thanks to a new invention from researchers at the University of North Carolina and NC State, who have created the first "smart insulin patch" that can detect increases in blood sugar levels and secrete doses of insulin into the bloodstream whenever needed. The patch - a thin square no bigger than a penny - is covered with more than one hundred tiny needles, each about the size of an eyelash. These "microneedles" are packed with microscopic ...