PITTSBURGH, Dec. 18, 2014 - The high-dose flu vaccine is significantly better than the regular flu shot at boosting the immune response to the flu virus in frail, older residents of long-term care facilities, according to the results of a University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine study. It is the first evaluation of the vaccine in long-term care residents, which is the population most vulnerable to flu-related death. The study, published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases and funded by vaccine-maker Sanofi Pasteur, found that - with the exception of one strain of ...

Long-term survival rates following laparoscopic surgery for bladder cancer are comparable to those of open surgery, according to a study published in BJU International. The findings, which come from the largest study to date with long-term follow-up after this type of minimally invasive surgery, indicate that prospective randomized trials comparing these two bladder cancer surgeries are warranted. Open radical cystectomy, or removal of the bladder though open surgery, is the treatment of choice for muscle invasive and high-risk non-muscle invasive bladder cancer; however, ...

Do electronic cigarettes help smokers to quit? Yes, but.... New Cochrane review finds emerging evidence that smokers who use electronic cigarettes can stop or reduce their smoking. The first Cochrane review on this subject published today in the Cochrane Library gives some early insights in to electronic cigarettes as an aid to stopping smoking and reducing consumption. The review draws on two randomised trials and found that while nicotine containing electronic cigarettes were more effective than electronic cigarettes without nicotine (placebo) in helping smokers ...

Turning the tables, Katherine Borden at the University of Montreal's Institute for Research in Immunology and Cancer (IRIC) has evoked Star Trek's Borg in her fight against the disease. "Cancer cells rapidly evolve a multitude of defense mechanisms to evade the effects of the oncologist's drug arsenal. Unfortunately, clinical strategies to overcome these lag far behind," Borden explained. "This mismatch likely underlies our inability to implement new durable treatment strategies." However, in her paper published in Cancer Research entitled "When will resistance be futile?", ...

Using combinations of well-known approved drugs has for the first time been shown to be potentially safe in treating a rare disease, according to the results of a clinical trial published in the open access Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases. The study also shows some promising preliminary results for the efficacy of the drug combination. Drug development can take decades to bring safe and effective treatments to patients. Re-use of existing drugs for new purposes is of considerable interest due to its potential to save time and resources, and help circumvent the low amount ...

SEATTLE--People are living much longer worldwide than they were two decades ago, as death rates from infectious diseases and cardiovascular disease have fallen, according to a new, first-ever journal publication of country-specific cause-of-death data for 188 countries. Causes of death vary widely by country, but, at the global level, drug use disorders and chronic kidney disease account for some of the largest percent increases in premature deaths since 1990. Death rates from some cancers, including pancreatic cancer and kidney cancer, also increased. At the same time, ...

Global life expectancy increased by 5.8 years in men and 6.6 years in women between 1990 and 2013, according to a major new analysis from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013 (GBD 2013). However, some causes of death ran counter to these trends and have seen increased rates of death [1] since 1990, including: liver cancer caused by hepatitis C (up by 125%), atrial fibrillation and flutter (serious disorders of heart rhythm; up by 100%), drug use disorders (up by 63%), chronic kidney disease (up by 37%), sickle cell disorders (up by 29%), diabetes (up by 9%), and pancreatic ...

Big data may be the next new thing to hit the fashion industry's runways, according to a team of researchers. By analyzing relevant words and phrases from fashion reviews, researchers were able to identify a network of influence among major designers and track how those style trends moved through the industry, said Heng Xu, associate professor of information sciences and technology, Penn State. "Data analytics, which is the idea that large amounts of data are becoming more available for finding patterns, establishing correlations and identifying emerging trends, is ...

MINNEAPOLIS - Migraine headache may double the risk of a nervous system condition that causes facial paralysis, called Bell's palsy, according to a new study published in the December 17, 2014, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Bell's palsy affects between 11 and 40 per 100,000 people each year. Most people with Bell's palsy recover completely. Headaches are the most common disorder of the nervous system and affect about 12 percent of the US population. "This is a very new association between migraine and Bell's ...

People with the highest fitness levels are less likely to develop hypertension, according to new research in the Journal of the American Heart Association. "If you're exercising and you're fit, your chances of developing hypertension are much less than someone else who has the same characteristics but isn't fit," said Mouaz H. Al-Mallah, M.D., senior author of the study and a cardiologist at the Henry Ford Heart and Vascular Institute in Detroit, Michigan. "Increasing exercise and fitness levels probably protects against many diseases." More than 57,000 participants ...

Airline pilots can be exposed to the same amount of UV-A radiation as that from a tanning bed session because airplane windshields do not completely block UV-A radiation, according to a research letter published online by JAMA Dermatology. Airplane windshields are commonly made of polycarbonate plastic or multilayer composite glass. UV-A radiation can cause DNA damage in cells and its role in melanoma is well known, according to the article. Author Martina Sanlorenzo, M.D., of the University of California, San Francisco, and co-authors measured the amount of UV radiation ...

Prescription use of benzodiazepines--a widely used class of sedative and anti-anxiety medications--increases steadily with age, despite the known risks for older people, according to a comprehensive analysis of benzodiazepine prescribing in the United States. Given existing guidelines cautioning health providers about benzodiazepine use among older adults, findings from the National Institutes of Health-funded study raise questions about why so many prescriptions--many for long-term use--are being written for this age group. The study found that among all adults 18 to ...

ARGONNE, Ill. - It is becoming possible to image complex systems in 3-D with near-atomic resolution on ultrafast timescales using extremely intense X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL) pulses. One important step toward ultrafast imaging of samples with a single X-ray shot is understanding the interaction of extremely brilliant and intense X-ray pulses with the sample, including ionization rates. Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory developed an extended Monte Carlo computational scheme that ...

CHESTNUT HILL, MA (Dec. 17, 2014) - The next generation of light-manipulating networks may take their lead from designs inspired by spiders and leaves, according to a new report from two Boston College physicists and colleagues at South China Normal University. Structures as commonplace as spider webs and leaf venation show they can lead to near optimal performance when copied to create flexible and durable networks that can be used in optoelectronic applications such as photovoltaic devices and display screens, the researcher team reported in a recent edition of the ...

LEBANON, NH - A health promotion program, called In SHAPE, specifically designed for people with serious mental illness, produced more fit participants and significant weight loss than a control group where participants only received a gym membership. The results of a randomized clinical trial, published in the Dec. 12 American Journal of Psychiatry, Dr. Stephen Bartels of Dartmouth and colleagues showed that more than half the participants in the In SHAPE group achieved clinically significant reduction in cardiovascular risk. These positive outcomes were maintained six ...

When designing a new car, manufacturers might try to attract consumers with more horsepower, increased fuel efficiency or a lower price point. But new research from San Francisco State University shows consumers' loyalty and passion for an automobile brand are driven more by appearance. Aesthetics that resonate on an emotional level are more responsible for brand loyalty than such factors as functionality and price, the study found. "In product design, if you focus more on the aesthetics of the product, the connections that you create with the consumer at the brand level ...

Stepping on the scale is common among dieters but how does the frequency of weigh-ins impact weight? A new study in PLOS ONE showed that the more frequently dieters weighed themselves the more weight they lost, and if participants went more than a week without weighing themselves, they gained weight. The researchers analyzed 2,838 weight measurements (up to a years' worth of weigh-ins) from 40 overweight individuals (with a body mass index of 25 and over) who indicated that weight loss was a personal goal or concern. The researchers found that weight loss was related ...

DENVER - Next generation sequencing in malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) tumors shows a complex mutational setting with a high number of genetic alterations in genes involved in DNA repair, cell survival and cell proliferation pathways. Increased accumulation of mutations correlates with early progression of the tumor and decreased survival. MPM is a fatal cancer associated with asbestos exposure that develops on the outer linings of the lungs. The 3-year survival rate is only 8% and most MPM patients are diagnosed with late stage disease with limited therapeutic options. ...

DENVER - A prospective nationwide survey on perceptions of lung cancer in the general population of France highlights a need for increased public education on the benefits of lung cancer screening, the good survival rates of early-stage disease and the improved outcomes with new therapeutic strategies, including targeted-therapies. Lung cancer management in recent years has improved patient outcomes because of screening, improved surgery and radiotherapy in early and locally-advanced stages of disease, new chemotherapies, validated maintenance therapy, and effective targeted ...

High-energy jets powered by supermassive black holes can blast away a galaxy's star-forming fuel, resulting in so-called "red and dead" galaxies: those brimming with ancient red stars yet containing little or no hydrogen gas to create new ones. Now astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have discovered that black holes don't have to be nearly so powerful to shut down star formation. By observing the dust and gas at the center of NGC 1266, a nearby lenticular galaxy with a relatively modest central black hole, the astronomers have detected ...

BELLINGHAM, Washington, USA - The first issue of the new Journal of Astronomical Telescopes, Instruments, and Systems (JATIS) has been launched by SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics. All articles will be freely available through the end of 2015 in the SPIE Digital Library. Mark Clampin, SPIE Fellow and James Webb Space Telescope Observatory Project Scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, is editor-in-chief. "A key motivation for the creation of this journal has been the continuing success of SPIE's Instrumentation in Astronomy conference ...

VIDEO: The Arctic Ocean is absorbing more of the sun's energy in recent years as white, reflective sea ice melts and darker ocean waters are exposed. The increased darker surface area... Click here for more information. NASA satellite instruments have observed a marked increase in solar radiation absorbed in the Arctic since the year 2000 - a trend that aligns with the steady decrease in Arctic sea ice during the same period. While sea ice is mostly white and reflects the ...

Johns Hopkins researchers have developed a sugar-based molecular microcapsule that eliminates the toxicity of an anticancer agent developed a decade ago at Johns Hopkins, called 3-bromopyruvate, or 3BrPA, in studies of mice with implants of human pancreatic cancer tissue. The encapsulated drug packed a potent anticancer punch, stopping the progression of tumors in the mice, but without the usual toxic effects. "We developed 3BrPA to target a hallmark of cancer cells, namely their increased dependency on glucose compared with normal cells. But the nonencapsulated drug ...

In a development that holds promise for future magnetic memory and logic devices, researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and Cornell University successfully used an electric field to reverse the magnetization direction in a multiferroic spintronic device at room temperature. This demonstration, which runs counter to conventional scientific wisdom, points a new way towards spintronics and smaller, faster and cheaper ways of storing and processing data. "Our work shows that 180-degree magnetization switching ...

Premature ovarian failure, also known as primary ovarian insufficiency (POI), affects 1% of all women worldwide. In most cases, the exact cause of the condition, which is often associated with infertility, is difficult to determine. A new Tel Aviv University study throws a spotlight on a previously-unidentified cause of POI: a unique mutation in a gene called SYCE1 that has not been previously associated with POI in humans. The research, published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, was led by Dr. Liat de Vries and Prof. Lina Basel-Vanagaite of TAU's ...