Toxins known as perfluoroalkyl substances have become virtually ubiquitous throughout the environment, and various national and international voluntary phase-outs and restrictions on these compounds have been implemented over the last 10 to 15 years. Investigators who examined trends in the accumulation of these toxins in the eggs of four species of aquatic birds from the Pacific coast of Canada from the early 1990s to 2011 report that the concentrations of some of these compounds are decreasing in line with manufacturing phase-outs, while others continue to increase ...

SAN DIEGO, Calif. (May 18,2015) -- The massive, federally funded anti-smoking campaign "Tips From Former Smokers" -- "Tips" for short -- fizzled more than it popped. That's the conclusion behind research published this week in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine by San Diego State University public health researcher John W. Ayers, along with a team of investigators at the Santa Fe Institute and University of Illinois Chicago. In the new study the team was able to look at the first two years of the campaign for the first time by monitoring the nation's internet ...

Washington, DC (May 19, 2015) -- Use of computer-assisted propofol sedation for routine upper endoscopy and colonoscopy reduced recovery room time by almost 20 percent, according to a study (abstract 1054) released today at Digestive Disease Week® (DDW) 2015. The study, conducted by researchers at Virginia Mason Medical (VMMC) Center, Seattle, WA, showed the process yielded a better recovery experience than the commonly used combination of midazolam and fentanyl. "Some patients do not respond well to sedation with midazolam and fentanyl, and others find that these ...

WASHINGTON, DC -- May 19, 2015 -- It's no wonder that giant pandas are always chewing and eating, say Chinese researchers: their gut bacteria are not the type for efficiently digesting bamboo. The bamboo-eating giant panda actually harbors a carnivore-like gut microbiota predominated by bacteria such as Escherichia/Shigella and Streptococcus, according to new research published this week in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology. "Unlike other plant-eating animals that have successfully evolved, anatomically specialized digestive ...

WASHINGTON - Inducing a sense of awe in people can promote altruistic, helpful and positive social behavior according to research published by the American Psychological Association. "Our investigation indicates that awe, although often fleeting and hard to describe, serves a vital social function. By diminishing the emphasis on the individual self, awe may encourage people to forgo strict self-interest to improve the welfare of others," said Paul Piff, PhD, assistant professor of psychology and social behavior at the University of California, Irvine. He was lead author ...

(PARIS, FRANCE) -- Two year outcomes in a study comparing implantation of transcatheter and surgical bioprosthestic aortic valves shows that the less invasive procedure is safe and effective, and comparable to the gold standard, surgical valve replacement, in patients whose operational risk was lower than that of patients studied in the pivotal randomized trials for these new devices. Dr. Lars Søndergaard from the Heart Center, Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen University Hospital, Denmark presented the results of the Nordic Aortic Valve Intervention (NOTION) trial here ...

WHAT: Antiretroviral therapy (ART) has proven lifesaving for people infected with HIV; however, the medications are a lifelong necessity for most HIV-infected individuals and present practical, logistical, economic and health-related challenges. A primary research goal is to find an HIV cure that either clears the virus from an infected person's body or enables HIV-infected individuals to suppress virus levels and replication to extremely low levels without the need for daily ART. In a new perspective article, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) ...

Apremilast (trade name: Otezla) has been available since January 2015 for the treatment of moderate to severe plaque psoriasis or active psoriatic arthritis in adult patients in whom certain pretreatments are not sufficiently effective or unsuitable. The German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) examined in two dossier assessments whether this drug offers an added benefit over the respective appropriate comparator therapy. Such an added benefit cannot be derived from any of the dossiers however, because they contain no relevant data. Manufacturer ...

An international team of more than 100 scientists, policy makers and community representatives, led by international conservation charity the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), today published a new report outlining the vital steps needed to save the Hainan gibbon (Nomascus hainanus) from extinction. With only 25 individuals remaining in less than 20 square kilometres of forest in China's Hainan Island, the Critically Endangered Hainan gibbon is one of the rarest animals in the world. The last surviving Hainan gibbon population contains only three social groups, in ...

Suffering from anxiety or depression could carry an increased risk of death from liver disease, a study suggests. The study is the first to identify a possible link between high levels of psychological distress and deaths resulting from a variety of liver diseases. Reasons for this are unclear as the biological links between psychological distress and liver disease are not well understood, researchers say. Previous research suggests mental distress can put people at increased risk of cardiovascular disease. At the same time, risk factors for cardiovascular disease ...

(PARIS, FRANCE) -- Experts speaking at EuroPCR 2015 say the explosion of positive results for new-generation endovascular devices for the treatment of acute stroke warrant a call to action to ensure swifter implementation of this technology. Known as "stent-retrievers," mechanical thrombectomy devices use catheters introduced into a blocked cerebral artery to suck out or lyse a clot that is cutting off circulation to part of the brain. On Tuesday, EuroPCR 2015 featured a special breaking news session devoted to this rapidly evolving field to review the recent evidence ...

(PARIS, FRANCE) - Experts participating in a European Clinical Consensus Conference (CCC) have concluded that research into the use of renal denervation for high blood pressure in patients unable to control the disease using a multi-drug regimen should not be abandoned until high-quality research is completed according to agreed-upon standards. [1] "Focused, collaborative high-quality research will be necessary to ensure that future patients are neither denied an effective therapy, nor needlessly put at risk from procedures that bring no benefits," the authors, led by ...

Sending teen girls periodic text messages reminding them to follow through on their clinic appointments for periodic birth control injections can go a long way toward improving timing and adherence to contraception in an age group that is notoriously noncompliant, according to a small study from the Johns Hopkins Children's Center. "Our findings suggest that text messaging can help overcome some issues that teens struggle with and pose challenges for the clinicians caring for them, such as keeping clinical appointments, adhering to a tight treatment schedule and regularly ...

There is a striking and statistically significant difference in how women and men are treated following a heart attack. These gender differences are reflected in the rate of risk factor control, which was lower in women, and in the rate of hospital readmission for a further heart attack, which was higher in women than in men. The conclusions are reported today in an analysis of the SWEDEHEART registry in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology.(1) This Swedish registry is one of the world's biggest ongoing statistical records in cardiac treatments and one of the ...

Thirty-five million people worldwide are currently living with HIV-1/AIDS. Broadly neutralizing antibodies (bnAbs) have been isolated from some patients with HIV-1, and these antibodies recognize and inhibit a range of HIV-1 variants. Strategies to enhance the potency and breadth of these bnAbs have the potential to inform the development of an effective HIV-1 vaccine. A new study in the Journal of Clinical Investigation reveals that increasing the stability of an HIV-1-targeting bnAb improves efficacy. James Crowe and colleagues at Vanderbilt University used computational ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Chest pain is a scary symptom that sends more than 7 million Americans to the emergency department each year. About half of them are admitted to the hospital for further observation, testing or treatment. Now, emergency medicine physicians at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and Mount Carmel Health System believe that number can be significantly reduced. Their study, published in today's JAMA Internal Medicine, finds a very low short-term risk for life-threatening cardiac events among patients with chest pain who have normal cardiac blood ...

SAN FRANCISCO, May 18, 2015 -- Prescribing patients two or more drugs that do not reach the same parts of the body could accelerate a pathogen's resistance to all of the drugs being used in treatment, according to a new study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Not all drugs can reach all parts of the body, a situation known as "imperfect drug penetration." In the study, researchers found that when there is a "pocket" of the body where only one drug is present, such as the brain or the digestive system, a pathogen can quickly develop ...

More than 500,000 people in the United States die each year of cancer-related causes. Now, emerging research has identified the mechanism behind one of the most common mutations that help cancer cells replicate limitlessly. Approximately 85 percent of cancer cells obtain their limitless replicative potential through the reactivation of a specific protein called telomerase (TERT). Recent cancer research has shown that highly recurrent mutations in the promoter of the TERT gene are the most common genetic mutations in many cancers, including adult glioblastoma and hepatocellular ...

Adolescents who sleep less or stay up later are significantly more likely to have used alcohol and marijuana over the past month when compared to their peers who report better sleep patterns, according to a new RAND Corporation study. Studying adolescents in Southern California, researchers found that the association between sleep and alcohol/marijuana use was consistent even after controlling for other known risk factors, such as depression. The findings, published online by the journal Sleep Health, were generally consistent across racial and ethnic groups. "Our ...

WASHINGTON, D.C., May 18, 2015 - Wind turbines causing cluckus interruptus in prairie chickens, tranquility at a conservation center, better blood pressure monitors with wearables, improved voice recognition software, language emergence with cochlear implants, and a vibrational analysis of graphite tennis rackets are just some of the highlights from the lay-language versions of papers to be presented at the 169th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), held May 18-22 in Pittsburgh. These summaries are posted online in the ASA's Pressroom; many contain sounds, ...

MISSOULA, MONTANA - University of Montana Assistant Professor John McCutcheon has once again discovered something new about the complex and intriguing inner workings of the cicada insect. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences recently published his findings online. In a paper titled "Genome expansion by lineage splitting and genome reduction in the cicada endosymbiont Hodgkinia," McCutcheon and his team found that the nutritional symbionts living inside long-living cicadas have become a lot more complicated. And it's not necessarily a good thing for the ...

A mass media campaign intended to help prevent suicides in California is reaching a majority of the state's adults and appears to be increasing their confidence about how to intervene with those at risk of suicide, according to new RAND Corporation research. In addition, an assessment of a companion suicide prevention program finds that for each year the program is operated, the long-term impact could be the prevention of at least 140 deaths and 3,600 suicide attempts over the next three decades. The analysis also estimates that for every $1 the state invests in the ...

WASHINGTON (May 18, 2015) -- Hospitals performing carotid artery stenting vary considerably in rates of in-hospital stroke or death--from 0 to 18 percent overall and from 1.2 to 4.7 percent when accounting for variation in health of patients at admission, according to a study published today in JACC: Cardiovascular Interventions. Using data from the American College of Cardiology's CARE Registry, the largest national registry of carotid artery stent patients, researchers assessed 19,381 procedures from 188 hospitals that each performed more than five carotid artery stenting ...

(WASHINGTON, May, 18, 2015) - Cancer patients with brain metastases who develop blood clots may safely receive blood thinners without increased risk of dangerous bleeding, according to a study, published online today in Blood, the Journal of the American Society of Hematology Cancer increases a patient's risk of developing blood clots. When a patient with cancer develops a clot, treatment with a blood thinning medication called an anticoagulant is often added to their treatment regimen in order to prevent the potentially fatal complication of blood clots traveling to ...

In recent years, the popularity of "electronic dance music" (EDM) and dance festivals has increased substantially throughout the US and worldwide. Even though data from national samples suggests drug use among adolescents in the general US population has been declining, targeted samples have shown nightclub attendees tend to report high rates of drug use, above that of the general population. In spite of increasing deaths among dance festival attendees in recent years, no nationally representative studies have examined potential associations between nightlife attendance ...