ATS 2015, DENVER--Living in a rural area and being poor are risk factors for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), said Sarath Raju, MD, MPH, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, lead author of a study presented at the 2015 American Thoracic Society International Conference. The researchers used a nationally representative sample to pinpoint COPD risk factors. "We wanted to identify the prevalence of COPD in urban and rural areas in the U.S. and determine how residence, region, poverty, race and ethnicity, and other factors influence COPD rates," ...

ATS 2015, DENVER - In 2015, an estimated 158,040 Americans are expected to die from lung cancer, making it the leading cause of cancer death in in this country. Lung cancer screening with low-dose CT scans in high risk smokers has recently been approved to help detect lung cancer in its early stages when no symptoms are noticeable. The hope is that by detecting lung cancer in the early, more treatable stages, doctors may be able to improve the outcomes of patients with lung cancer. However, in addition to screening high risk smokers, close follow-up and monitoring of ...

WASHINGTON D.C., May 19, 2015 -- Researchers have held tremendous interest in liquid metal electronics for many years, but a significant and unfortunate drawback slowing the advance of such devices is that they tend to require external pumps that can't be easily integrated into electronic systems. So a team of North Carolina State University (NCSU) researchers set out to create a reconfigurable liquid metal antenna controlled by voltage only, which they describe in the Journal of Applied Physics, from AIP Publishing. The team's work was inspired by a phenomenon recently ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Mayo Clinic urologists will present research findings onseveral topics at the American Urological Association Annual Meeting May 15-19 in New Orleans. Researchers will be available to discuss their research with reporters who are covering the conference. Mayo Clinic studies to be presented include: Holmium Laser Excision of Genitourinary Mesh Exposure Following Anti-Incontinence Surgery: Minimum Six-Month Follow-up. Embargoed until Sunday, May 17, 2015 1:00 p.m. CT The polypropylene mesh implants used in some incontinence surgeries for women can ...

Among patients with acute radiculopathy (sciatica) due to a herniated lumbar disk, a short course of oral steroids, compared with placebo, resulted in modest improvement in function and no significant improvement in pain, according to a study in the May 19 issue of JAMA. Many patients with sciatica endure substantial pain and disability. For those who do not recover quickly, invasive procedures such as epidural steroid injections (ESIs) and surgery are commonly performed. Oral administration of steroid medication may provide similar anti-inflammatory activity, can be ...

Nearly 35 percent of all U.S. adults and 50 percent of those 60 years of age or older were estimated to have the metabolic syndrome in 2011-2012, according to a study in the May 19 issue of JAMA. The metabolic syndrome is combination of health conditions (such as obesity, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, poor lipid profile) that contribute to cardiovascular illness and death. Data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 1999-2006 reported a metabolic syndrome prevalence of 34 percent. Understanding updated prevalence trends may be important ...

Two studies in the May 19 issue of JAMA analyze the prevalence of the plaque amyloid among adults of varying ages, with and without dementia, and its association with cognitive impairment. Alzheimer disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia, with a worldwide prevalence of about 25 million in 2010, expected to be doubled by 2030 because of increased life expectancy. The earliest recognizable pathological event in AD is cerebral amyloid-β aggregation (protein fragments that clump together to form plaque). This pathology may be present up to 20 years before ...

Among patients with acute sciatica caused by a herniated lumbar disk (a condition also known as "acute radiculopathy"), a short course of oral steroids resulted in only modest improvement in function and no significant improvement in pain, according to a study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Acute sciatica, characterized by radiating buttock and leg pain, is most frequently associated with a herniated disk in the lower (lumbar) spine, and occurs in more than one in 10 people sometime in their lives. Although oral steroids are used by ...

Scientists have moved graphene -- the incredibly strong and conductive single-atom-thick sheet of carbon -- a significant step along the path from lab bench novelty to commercially viable material for new electronic applications. Researchers from the University of Manchester, together with BGT Materials Limited, a graphene manufacturer in the United Kingdom, have printed a radio frequency antenna using compressed graphene ink. The antenna performed well enough to make it practical for use in radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags and wireless sensors, the researchers ...

Antidepressants are associated with better rates of treatment response and remission for women with postnatal depression, when compared to a placebo, according to a new systematic review by the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King's College London. Reports often focus on the risks of using antidepressants during pregnancy and the postnatal period but this paper, published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), highlights the benefits that antidepressants can have for women with postnatal depression. Postnatal depression ...

Researchers determined DNA sequences from the Y chromosomes of 334 men belonging to 17 populations from Europe and the Middle East Study shows that almost two out of three (64%) modern European men belong to just three young paternal lineage Male-specific population expansion was widespread, and surprisingly recent, focusing interest on the Bronze Age Geneticists from the University of Leicester have discovered that most European men descend from just a handful of Bronze Age forefathers, due to a 'population explosion' several thousand years ago. The project, which ...

The leading theory for why the blood of younger mice rejuvenates the muscles of older mice is now in contest. The vampiric exchange of young blood and old blood has long been reported to have anti-aging effects, but it was in 2013 when Harvard University researchers first linked GDF-11, a molecule that circulates in the blood, to this effect. Now, an analysis that set out to see how GDF-11 works in the muscles published May 19 in Cell Metabolism found just the opposite. The investigators showed first that GDF-11 was not specifically measured; the methods that were previously ...

Chicago -- May 14, 2015 -- Infants undergoing some types of surgery could have better recovery if they receive regional anesthesia rather than general anesthesia, according to two studies published in the Online First edition of Anesthesiology, the official medical journal of the American Society of Anesthesiologists® (ASA®). Researchers explored the differences between the two types of anesthesia by measuring the presence of apnea, a breathing complication, following hernia surgery. Experts have long examined the effects of anesthesia on infants and toddlers, ...

With the help of a computer program called "Rosetta," researchers at Vanderbilt University have "redesigned" an antibody that has increased potency and can neutralize more strains of the AIDS-causing human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) than can any known natural antibody. Their findings, published online today in The Journal of Clinical Investigation, suggest that computer-redesigned antibodies may speed the search for an effective therapy or vaccine for a virus that so far has eluded all attempts to eradicate it. "There's a consensus (in the HIV field) that the vaccine ...

WASHINGTON --The best remedy for severe salicylate poisoning is hemodialysis, according to a comprehensive systematic review of the medical literature published on Friday in Annals of Emergency Medicine ("Extracorporeal Treatment for Salicylate Poisoning: Systematic Review and Recommendations from the EXTIRP Workgroup"). Salicylate is an active ingredient in aspirin as well as hundreds of over-the-counter medications, and contributes to approximately 20,000 accidental or intentional poisonings and nearly 30 deaths reported to US Poison Control Centers every year. "Our ...

Using nature for inspiration, a team of Northwestern University scientists is the first to develop an entirely artificial molecular pump, in which molecules pump other molecules. This tiny machine is no small feat. The pump one day might be used to power other molecular machines, such as artificial muscles. The new machine mimics the pumping mechanism of life-sustaining proteins that move small molecules around living cells to metabolize and store energy from food. For its food, the artificial pump draws power from chemical reactions, driving molecules step-by-step from ...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Patients with liver cancer can be cured with a liver transplant. But because of the shortage of donated organs, these patients often die waiting for a liver. That's because most transplant centers predominantly use livers from donors who die from brain death. But in the largest study of its kind, transplant physicians at Mayo Clinic in Florida have found that liver cancer patients have the same beneficial outcomes using organs donated by patients who died of cardiac death. The study was recently published online in the American Journal of Transplantation. MULTIMEDIA ...

(New York, May 19, 2015) -- The largest urban health systems, which serve as safety nets for large patient populations with lower socioeconomic status and greater likelihood to speak English as a second language, do worse on government patient satisfaction scores than smaller, non-urban hospitals likely to serve white customers with higher education levels, according to a new study by Mount Sinai researchers published this month in the Journal of Hospital Medicine. Patient satisfaction scores, in part due to the Affordable Care Act of 2010, are a key part of the formula ...

ANN ARBOR--A class of FDA-approved cancer drugs may be able to prevent problems with brain cell development associated with disorders including Down syndrome and Fragile X syndrome, researchers at the University of Michigan Life Sciences Institute have found. The researchers' proof-of-concept study using fruit fly models of brain dysfunction was published today in the journal eLife. They show that giving the leukemia drugs nilotinib or bafetinib to fly larvae with the equivalent of Fragile X prevented the wild overgrowth of neuron endings associated with the disorder. ...

For the patient, surgery involves extreme physical stress, and in older patients especially this can lead to disorders of consciousness or cognition. The acute confusional state known as delirium, however, can often be prevented by specialist nursing care after the operation, as Torsten Kratz and co-authors show in an original article in the current issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2015; 112: 289-96). In their study delirium liaison nurses were employed to help care for surgical patients aged 70 years and over. In every patient, the risk ...

Preschoolers already recognize what it feels like to be left out when goodies are being shared. In a new study, Researchers at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich show that 3-year-olds can anticipate negative feelings in others, and adjust their own behavior in response. Why are we willing to share with others what we could just as well keep for ourselves? Willingness to allot a portion of a coveted resource to someone else is a behavioral pattern that can throw light on the origins and development of prosocial modes of response during childhood. In a new ...

TAMPA, Fla. -- Cells within a tumor are not the same; they may have different genetic mutations and different characteristics during growth and throughout treatment. These differences make treating tumors extremely difficult and often lead to tumor recurrence dominated by more aggressive tumor cells. Moffitt Cancer Center researchers are using mathematical modeling to characterize these differences within a tumor and hope that the results of their latest study will lead to better therapeutic treatments. "Many tumors exhibit different metabolic behaviors compared to normal ...

Researchers at the University of Warwick have found a significant link between the presence of persistent nightmares in childhood and psychotic experiences in later adolescence. In a new paper published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, a team based at the Division of Mental Health and Wellbeing at Warwick Medical School at the University of Warwick found that persistent childhood nightmares both at an early age (between 2 and 9) and at age 12 were significantly associated with new incidences of suspected or definite psychotic experiences at age 18. The University ...

Escherichia coli O104 is an emergent disease-causing bacterium various strains of which are becoming increasingly well known and troublesome. The pathogen causes bloody diarrhea as well as and potentially fatal kidney damage, hemolytic uremic syndrome. Infection is usually through inadvertent ingestion of contaminated and incompletely cooked food or other materials, such as animals feces. Escherichia coli is a so-called gram negative bacterium, commonly found in the intestine of humans and other mammals. Entero-hemorrhagic strains including O157, O26, O103 and O111 and ...

The fungi (Rhizoctonia solani) is stealthy blight, becoming visible only shortly before the harvest infesting beets or corn at their roots. The fungal rot begins early in the season, working its way from the inside out, and only becoming visible in the fall, destroying the possibility of a harvest. Year after year crop failures due to attacks by pests and pathogens are reported in the media despite their being treated with pesticides. Crop failure is further exacerbated by pesticide treatments which cause the death of insects such as bees through neonicotinoids. "There ...