A relatively new, easier to implement, and better-tolerated method to provide supplemental oxygen to patients at risk of respiratory failure after surgery did not result in a worse rate of treatment failure compared to a more commonly used method, according to a study appearing in JAMA. The study is being released to coincide with its presentation at the American Thoracic Society 2015 International Conference. After cardiothoracic surgery, acute respiratory failure is common and associated with an increased risk of illness and death. When low-flow oxygen therapy is insufficient ...

ATS 2015, DENVER -- Unlike standard cigarettes, the components of electronic cigarettes are not regulated and standardized, thus they vary widely between products. The characteristics of these e-cigarette elements, including their delivery systems, combustion apparatuses, and the composition of the nicotine solutions they contain may affect the levels of potentially hazardous substances in the vapor they produce, according to a new study presented at the 2015 American Thoracic Society International Conference. "While the chemical compositions and negative health effects ...

ATS 2015, DENVER -- With just one exposure to electronic-cigarette (e-cigarette) vapor, participants in a study of 30 healthy subjects demonstrated a diminishment of cough reflex sensitivity. The study was presented at the 2015 American Thoracic Society International Conference. "Although e-cigarettes have become popular worldwide, very little is known about their effect on the respiratory system. There has been no other research to our knowledge on the effect of e-cigarette use on the sensitivity of the cough reflex," said lead author Peter Dicpinigaitis, MD, Professor ...

ATS 2015, DENVER -- Certain flavorings used in electronic cigarette liquid may alter important cellular functions in lung tissue, according to new research presented at the 2015 American Thoracic Society International Conference. These changes in cell viability, cell proliferation, and calcium signaling are flavor-dependent. Coupling these results with chemicals identified in each flavor could prove useful in identifying flavors or chemical constituents that produce adverse effects in users. "The effects of the various chemical components of e-cigarette vapor on lung tissue ...

ATS 2015, DENVER - There is little reliable evidence that electronic cigarettes are effective for long-term smoking cessation, according to a new analysis of the currently available research which was presented at the 2015 American Thoracic Society International Conference. "While e-cigarettes have been shown to significantly improve abstinence at 1 month compared with placebo, no such evidence is available supporting their effectiveness for longer periods," said lead author Riyad al-Lehebi, MBBS, of the University of Toronto. "Until such data are available, there are ...

Chicago, Illinois, May 17, 2015 -- Treatment with two medications that target the most common genetic cause of cystic fibrosis improves lung function and lowers the rate of pulmonary exacerbations, according to the results from a Phase III international clinical trial published online in the New England Journal of Medicine on May 17, 2015. Combined lumacaftor-ivacaftor therapy was shown to be safe and effective for cystic fibrosis patients with two copies of the cystic fibrosis gene mutation (F508del) found in nearly half of the patients with this disease. "These groundbreaking ...

ATS 2015, DENVER - In recent years and months, peanut allergies in children have been in the news frequently, as scientists reveal new insights into why more and more children are developing them and what can be done to avoid them. However, until now, few have studied the connection between peanut allergy and childhood asthma. A new study has shown that many children who have asthma have a sensitivity to peanuts, but did not know it. Conducted by researchers in the U.S., the study specifically looked at pediatric asthma patients at a pediatric pulmonary clinic. The ...

ATS 2015, DENVER--Lung transplant candidates who are about 5'3" or shorter have longer waiting times than taller candidates and are more likely to die within a year while waiting for a lung transplant, according to a study presented at the 2015 American Thoracic Society International Conference. Shorter adults are also more likely to be placed on mechanical ventilation while they wait for lung transplantation, said lead author Jessica Sell, MPH, of the Columbia University Medical Center in New York. The researchers retrospectively reviewed information from 13,341 adults ...

ATS 2015, DENVER -- Caucasian and Hispanic children who undergo lung transplantation appear to be at greater risk for developing chronic kidney disease, or CKD, according to a small retrospective study conducted at Texas Children's Hospital. The study, believed to be the first to look at CKD in children who have received lung transplants, also found that those children with high levels of tacrolimus, a powerful immunosuppressant given to fight organ rejection, circulating in the blood and those who experience at least one episode of acute kidney injury during their recovery ...

Washington, DC (May 17, 2015) -- While a new generation of safer, more effective oral medications to treat hepatitis C patients may cost tens of thousands of dollars for a 12-week regiment, investing in these new therapies could generate savings estimated at more than $3.2 billion annually in the U.S. and five European countries, according to a new study (abstract 228) released today at Digestive Disease Week® (DDW) 2015. These savings would have a significant economic impact on society. The higher cure rate and lessened side-effects of treating patients with an all-oral ...

The American Cancer Society estimated that 220,800 new cases of prostate cancer will be diagnosed in the United States in 2015. Approximately 27,540 men will die of the disease, accounting for 5 percent of all cancer deaths. A common treatment for prostate cancer is a prostatectomy, in which all or part of the prostate gland is removed. Recent studies have shown that this procedure is often over-prescribed. As early as 2010, the New England Journal of Medicine reported that such a procedure extended the lives of just 1 patient in 48. Side effects from the surgery, including ...

We all know intuitively that normal liquids flow more quickly as the channel containing them tightens. Think of a river flowing through narrow rapids. But what if a pipe were so amazingly tiny that only a few atoms of superfluid helium could squeeze through its opening at once? According to a longstanding quantum-mechanics model, the superfluid helium would behave differently from a normal liquid: far from speeding up, it would actually slow down. For more than 70 years, scientists have been studying the flow of helium through ever smaller pipes. But only recently ...

The MODIS instrument on the Aqua satellite captured this image of the Little Bobtail Lake fire in British Columbia, Canada. It is unclear how the fire started and was first spotted on Saturday, May 9. Since then the fire has grown significantly and has burned over 13,000 hectares (32,123 acres) and is zero percent con The wildfire is located about 70 km southwest of Prince George. Eighty people have already been evacuated and close to 700 homes are in danger of being consumed should the fire spread. British Columbia Wildfire Management reports that the fire is unpredictable ...

Washington D.C. - Friday, May 15, 2015- Investigators found that nearly half of the 50 chicken meat samples purchased from supermarkets, street markets, and butchers in Austria contained viruses that are capable of transferring antibiotic resistance genes from one bacterium to another--or from one species to another. "Our work suggests that such transfer could spread antibiotic resistance in environments such as food production units and hospitals and clinics," said corresponding author Friederike Hilbert, DVM. The research is published ahead of print May 1, in Applied ...

At the forefront of a field known as "neurocriminology," Adrian Raine of the University of Pennsylvania has long studied the interplay between biology and environment when it comes to antisocial and criminal behavior. With strong physiological evidence that disruption to the emotion-regulating parts of the brain can manifest in violent outbursts, impulsive decision-making and other behavioral traits associated with crime, much of Raine's research involves looking at biological interventions that can potentially ward off these behavioral outcomes. A new study by Raine ...

An article, "Smaller amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex predict escalating stimulant use," published online on May 13 in Brain: A Journal of Neurology has found that individual differences in brain structure could help to determine the risk for future drug addiction. The study found that occasional users who subsequently increased their drug use compared with those who did not, showed brain structural differences when they started using drugs. In the two studies, researchers, led by Dr. Benjamin Becker, scanned the brain structure of 66 participants to provide the ...

NEW YORK, May 15, 2015 -- National thought leaders convened at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health yesterday for a symposium identifying gaps in understanding the prevention of sexual violence on college campuses, calling for a broad interdisciplinary agenda for the next generation of research on a significant problem that became front-page news around the country this year. The day-long event, "Transforming the Campus Climate: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Sexual Violence," was one of the first public activities sponsored by the Sexual Health Initiative ...

The future of communities around the world will in large part be determined by the efforts to achieve a high quality of life for their older citizens, according to the latest issue of Public Policy & Aging Report (PP&AR), titled "Making a Home in the City: The Age-Friendly Community Movement." A total of seven articles argue that developing cities that meet the interests of all generations should be an important goal for economic and social policy. "The concomitant growth of cities and of an older population within those cities has come to generate a disjuncture between ...

Boulder, Colo., USA - California and other parts of the western U.S. are experiencing extended severe drought conditions. Varying groundwater levels in valleys throughout the state, balanced by water imported, for instance, via the State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project make understanding the state's underlying hydrologic framework all the more important. This paper by R.T. (Randy) Hanson of the U.S. Geological Survey focuses on California's Santa Clara Valley. In the introduction to his paper, Hanson provides a succinct history of the area, as paraphrased ...

Researchers at Lehigh University have identified for the first time that a performance gain in the electrical conductivity of random metal nanowire networks can be achieved by slightly restricting nanowire orientation. The most surprising result of the study is that heavily ordered configurations do not outperform configurations with some degree of randomness; randomness in the case of metal nanowire orientations acts to increase conductivity. The study, Conductivity of Nanowire Arrays under Random and Ordered Orientation Configurations, is published in the current issue ...

1. The "Radial Paradox": Higher Femoral Access Site Complications Offsets Radial Benefits Growing acceptance of radial access during cardiac catheterisation to reduce access site complications may contribute to a loss of experience with femoral access, potentially increasing vascular complications when the femoral technique is used. Montreal Heart Institute researchers compared contemporary and historical patient cohorts (n=17,059) and found that vascular access complications today, using the femoral artery approach--used typically as a back-up method--are more common ...

No one health issue has the most impact on human health, or engenders more debate about how to tackle it, than obesity. It has become the scourge of the health agenda, especially in the west, and it is a growing problem. According to the latest figures from the World Health Organisation, almost three-quarters of British men and two-thirds of women will be overweight or obese by 2030 - a staggering 39 million adults in total. We have one of the worst obesity records in Europe, with just six of the 52 countries in the WHO's European region with worse obesity rates for women. We ...

Spider silk has long been noted for its graceful structure, as well as its advanced material properties: Ounce for ounce, it is stronger than steel. MIT research has explained some of the material's mysteries, which could help design synthetic resources that mimic the extraordinary properties of natural silk. Now, scientists at MIT have developed a systematic approach to research its structure, blending computational modeling and mechanical analysis to 3D-print synthetic spider webs. These models offer insight into how spiders optimize their own webs. "This is the ...

This news release is available in Spanish. The mission of neural stem cells located in the hippocampus, one of the main regions of the brain, is to generate new neurons during the adult life of mammals, including human beings, of course, and their function is to participate in certain types of learning and responses to anxiety and stress. Using an epilepsy model in genetically modified mice, the researchers have discovered that hippocampal neural stem cells stop generating new neurons and are turned into reactive astrocytes, a cell type that promotes inflammation and ...

A research team based at the University of Eastern Finland and the Turku Centre for Biotechnology have found new ways to block a pathway that may be responsible for several brain disorders, which could open the door to developing better treatments. The protein NOS-1 generates nitric oxide, a chemical signal that is linked to neurological disorders from neurodegeneration, stroke and chronic pain sensitivity to anxiety and depressive disorders. These are now among the most common causes of disability and mortality, but decades of efforts have not led to a safe drug that ...