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 ...

New Vanderbilt-led research shows hospitals are doing a better job of using antibiotics less commonly associated with antibiotic resistance to treat children hospitalized with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP). The report, 'Antibiotic choice for children hospitalized with pneumonia and adherence to national guidelines,' was released today in the journal Pediatrics. This study was nested within a larger study, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Etiology of Pneumonia in the Community (EPIC). The multi-center EPIC study was a prospective, population-based ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Time management isn't just important for busy people -- it's critical for plants, too. A Duke University study shows how two biological clocks work together to help plants deal with intermittent demands such as fungal infections, while maintaining an already-packed daily schedule of activities like growth. The researchers also identified a gene that senses disturbances in the 'tick-tock' of one clock, and causes the other clock to tighten its timetable. Their work appears in the June 22 issue of the journal Nature. From daily sleep/wake cycles and fluctuations ...

For diabetics, a quick prick of the finger can give information about their blood glucose levels, guiding them in whether to have a snack or inject a dose of insulin. Point-of-care glucose meters, or glucometers, are also used in the veterinary world to monitor cats and dogs with diabetes or pets hospitalized for other reasons. In both cases, the device's readout can literally be a matter of life and death. While glucometers have the advantage of being fast and requiring only a small drop of blood, they are not as accurate as some other methods of measuring blood glucose. ...

Mild elevations in blood pressure considered to be in the upper range of normal during young adulthood can lead to subclinical heart damage by middle age -- a condition that sets the stage for full-blown heart failure, according to findings of a federally funded study led by scientists at Johns Hopkins. A report on the findings of the multicenter study that followed 2,500 men and women over a period of 25 years is published online June 22 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Persistently elevated blood pressure, or hypertension, is one that tops 140/90, ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- A new study shows that captive black rhinos -- but not their wild counterparts -- are at high risk for two common health problems suffered by millions of humans: inflammation and insulin resistance. The finding suggests captive black rhinos have metabolic problems. In humans, these same conditions can both result from a rich diet and sedentary lifestyle and contribute to obesity and other diseases. To be clear, this study does not suggest that zoos cause health problems in black rhinos, said Pam Dennis, clinical assistant professor of veterinary preventive ...

WASHINGTON (June 22, 2015) - Young adults who had blood pressure that was elevated but still within normal range for long periods of time were more likely to show signs of cardiac dysfunction in middle age, according to a study published today in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Researchers followed 2,479 men and women for 25 years, conducting health assessments -- including blood pressure readings -- seven times during the study period beginning as part of the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults, or CARDIA study. Participants ranged in ...

The impact of cancer treatments on cardiovascular health is an important consideration when treating cancer patients, but many hospital training programs have no formal training or services in cardio-oncology and a lack of national guidelines and funding are frequent barriers to establishing such programs, according to a nationwide survey published today in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. The ACC conducted the survey to determine the existing practices and current needs in this area and plan for a cardio-oncology section that would fill gaps in resources ...

From the old Charles Atlas ads showing a scrawny male having sand kicked in his face to sitcom clichés of henpecked husbands, men have long faced pressure to live up to ideals of masculinity. Societal norms dictating that men should be masculine are powerful. And new University of Washington research finds that men who believe they fall short of those ideals might be prompted to reassert their masculinity in small but significant ways. Published last week in Social Psychology, the research sought to understand how men respond when their masculinity is threatened, ...

Cost to hospitals from uncompensated care roughly equals the state cost of Medicaid expansion Hospitals absorb most of the uncompensated costs through lower profits Hospital closures generally increase uncompensated care of nearby hospitals that remain open EVANSTON, Ill. -- Twenty-one states have opted not to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), arguing that the expansion would be too expensive. But according to new research, the cost to hospitals from uncompensated care in those states roughly equals the cost of Medicaid expansion. The ...

Rochester, Minn. -- Diabetes is a known risk factor for cognitive decline and dementia, age-related conditions that affect memory and thinking skills. However, little is known about how the diabetes-cognitive decline link compares across cultures. Scientists from Mayo Clinic and Huashan Hospital in Shanghai explored the association between Type 2 diabetes and cognitive impairment to find out if the relationship varies in different populations. Study participants had not been diagnosed with memory-related diseases, such as vascular dementia or Alzheimer's dementia. For ...

Most women -- about 86% -- with early-stage breast cancer will undergo imaging to determine if the cancer has metastasized, despite international guidelines that recommend against testing, found a study in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). Guidelines from the American Society of Clinical Oncology, Cancer Care Ontario and the National Comprehensive Cancer Network recommend against imaging for metastatic cancer in asymptomatic women with stage I or II breast cancer, because the likelihood of metastases is low, at 0.2% and 1.2% respectively, and the chance of ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- New research could help reverse deadly side effects caused by excessive doses of the drug acetaminophen, the major ingredient in Tylenol and many other over-the-counter and prescription medicines. Researchers at Duke University have developed a mathematical model of acetaminophen metabolism based on data from lab rats. The findings suggest that giving patients glutamine -- a common amino acid in the body -- alongside the standard antidote for acetaminophen overdose could prevent liver damage and boost the body's ability to recover. The results appear ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. - Safety-net agencies, such as food banks and nonprofits offering health care, serve vulnerable individuals who are uninsured or underinsured and help them connect with services, such as health care, legal aid and housing. A researcher from the University of Missouri studied the closure of a large, safety-net agency and how the closure affected clients and other, smaller agencies that depended on the larger agency for referrals. Based on her research, Nidhi Khosla, an assistant professor of health sciences in the MU School of Health Professions, offers recommendations ...

The remnants of Tropical Depression Bill soaked a large part of the U.S. from Texas to Washington, D.C. before moving into the Atlantic Ocean. NOAA's GOES-East satellite captured the movement over several days. An animation of images captured June 20 to 22 from NOAA's GOES-East satellite was created by the NASA/NOAA GOES Project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland. The animation shows Tropical Depression Bill's remnants moving through the Ohio Valley and moving off the northeastern U.S. The animation includes visible and infrared imagery taken from ...

The 2015 White House Conference on Aging (WHCoA), slated for July 13 in Washington, DC, is focused on four priority areas: retirement security, healthy aging, long-term services and supports, and elder justice. In response, The Gerontological Society of America has produced a special issue of Public Policy & Aging Report (Volume 25, Number 2), wherein the nation's foremost experts on these topics make policy recommendations to improve the lives of all Americans as they age. The publication was supported by AARP. The WHCoA has been held once every decade since the 1960s ...

Physicists at UC San Diego have developed a new way to control the transport of electrical currents through high-temperature superconductors -- materials discovered nearly 30 years ago that lose all resistance to electricity at commercially attainable low temperatures. Their development, detailed in two separate scientific publications, paves the way for the development of sophisticated electronic devices capable of allowing scientists or clinicians to non-invasively measure the tiny magnetic fields in the heart or brain, and improve satellite communications. 'We believe ...

New estimates suggest that more than two-thirds of Americans are either overweight or obese, according to an article published online by JAMA Internal Medicine. Overweight and obesity are associated with a variety of chronic health conditions, which could potentially be avoided by preventing weight gain and obesity. Graham A. Colditz, M.D., Dr.P.H., and Lin Yang, Ph.D., of the Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, analyzed data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 2007 to 2012 to estimate the prevalence of overweight and obesity. ...

The median percentage of children and adolescents who reported being bullied online was 23 percent and there appears to be a consistent relationship between cyberbullying and reports of depression in a review of social media studies, according to an article published online by JAMA Pediatrics. Social media is a presence in the lives of young people, with reports indicating 95 percent of American teenagers use the Internet and that 81 percent of them use social media. But these online interactions can coincide with potential risks and safety concerns regarding social media, ...

The current monitoring of patients with cardiac implantable electronic devices (CIEDs) such as pacemakers and defibrillators may be underestimating device problems, according to UC San Francisco researchers who propose systematic methods to determine accurate causes of sudden death in those with CIEDs as well as improved monitoring for device concerns. Their study appears online June 22 in JAMA Internal Medicine. "With a vast majority of out-of-hospital sudden deaths evaluated by medical examiners or coroners, CIED problems are often missed in the postmortem investigation, ...

Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the Babraham Institute have found that a naturally occurring modified DNA base appears to be stably incorporated in the DNA of many mammalian tissues, possibly representing an expansion of the functional DNA alphabet. The new study, published today (22 June) in the journal Nature Chemical Biology, has found that this rare 'extra' base, known as 5-formylcytosine (5fC) is stable in living mouse tissues. While its exact function is yet to be determined, 5fC's physical position in the genome makes it likely that it plays a ...

Researchers from the University of Cambridge, together with French collaborators based in Toulouse, have developed a new method to see inside battery-like devices known as supercapacitors at the atomic level. The new method could be used in order to optimise and improve the devices for real-world applications, including electric cars, where they can be used alongside batteries to enhance a vehicle's performance. By using a combination of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and tiny scales sensitive enough to detect changes in mass of a millionth of a gram, ...

More than half of long-term smokers and ex-smokers who are considered disease-free because they passed lung-function tests have respiratory-related impairments when more closely evaluated with lung imaging, walking and quality-of-life tests. Many of those people likely have the earliest stages of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, an incurable progressive disease (COPD) that is the third leading cause of death in the United States. "The impact of chronic smoking on the lungs and the individual is substantially underestimated when using lung-function tests alone," ...

A gene previously suspected of wielding the single greatest genetic influence on human obesity actually has nothing to do with body weight, according to a new study led by researchers at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children's Hospital. The work not only overturns a major finding about the genetics of obesity but also provides the first effective ways to analyze "particularly ornery and confusing" parts of the genome, such as the locus of this gene, said the study's co-senior author, Steven McCarroll, assistant professor of genetics at HMS. The techniques described ...

In 2002, archaeologists discovered the jawbone of a human who lived in Europe about 40,000 years ago. Geneticists have now analyzed ancient DNA from that jawbone and learned that it belonged to a modern human whose recent ancestors included Neanderthals. Neanderthals lived in Europe until about 35,000 years ago, disappearing at the same time modern humans were spreading across the continent. The new study, co-led by Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator David Reich at Harvard Medical School and Svante Pääbo at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, ...