Over half the smokers using the Liverpool Stop Smoking Service have tried electronic cigarettes (51.3 per cent). Of these, nearly half had used them within the past month and are considered current users (45.5 per cent). The data* – presented at the National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) Cancer Conference in Liverpool today (Tuesday) – also highlights that smokers are more likely to try e-cigarettes if they feel more confident that the products are safer than tobacco smoking. Researchers from the University of Liverpool quizzed more than 320 smokers from ...

Swallowing a sponge on a string could replace traditional endoscopy as an equally effective but less invasive way of diagnosing a condition that can be a forerunner of oesophageal cancer. The results of a Cancer Research UK trial involving more than 1,000 people are being presented today (Tuesday) at the National Cancer Research Institute's annual conference in Liverpool. The trial invited more than 600 patients with Barrett's Oesophagus – a condition that can sometimes lead to oesophageal cancer – to swallow the Cytosponge and to undergo an endoscopy. ...

Shift work, like chronic jet lag, is known to disrupt the body's internal clock (circadian rhythms), and it has been linked to a range of health problems, such as ulcers, cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome, and some cancers. But little is known about its potential impact on brain function, such as memory and processing speed. The researchers therefore tracked the cognitive abilities of more than 3000 people who were either working in a wide range of sectors or who had retired, at three time points: 1996; 2001; and 2006. Just under half (1484) of the sample, ...

Around one in five patients with chest pain will have no obvious signs of coronary artery disease after investigation, and their symptoms are unlikely to have a physical cause. But it is not always clear who these patients are, and they often undergo extensive and expensive tests to find out that nothing is wrong with their hearts. The German authors therefore wanted to test the prevalence of physical and mental symptoms in 253 patients who had been investigated for chest pain/shortness of breath/palpitations and found to have no coronary artery disease. The type ...

Philadelphia, November 4, 2014 -- In a new evidence-based clinical practice guideline published today in Annals of Internal Medicine, the American College of Physicians (ACP) recommends that people who have had a kidney stone increase their fluid intake to achieve at least two liters of urine per day to prevent another kidney stone from forming. If increased fluid intake fails to reduce the formation of stones, ACP recommends adding medication with a thiazide diuretic, citrate, or allopurinol. "Increased fluid intake spread throughout the day can decrease stone recurrence ...

1. ACP kidney stone guidelines offer another reason to drink more water, less soda Dietary changes including increased fluid intake are among recommendations in ACP's new evidence-based guideline People who have had a kidney stone should increase their fluid intake to achieve at least two liters of urine per day to prevent a recurrence, according to a new evidence-based clinical practice guideline from the American College of Physicians (ACP) being published in Annals of Internal Medicine. A kidney stone occurs when tiny crystals in urine stick together to form a stone. ...

The growing epidemic of obesity across the world is associated with an equivalent increase in type-2 diabetes, which results from the body's ineffective use of insulin. Obese people often develop inflammation in their fat tissue, which, in turn, can reduce the sensitivity of fat cells to insulin, resulting in type-2 diabetes. EPFL scientists, working with researchers from Italy and the Netherlands, have shown that bile acids activate a little-known receptor to overcome the loss of insulin sensitivity, forming the basis for a new class of drug against type-2 diabetes. The ...

Food allergies are on the rise in the U.S. and other developed countries. In patients, food allergies appear as a variety of symptoms, ranging from mild skin inflammation to severe asthma. Recent studies suggest that contact between inflamed skin and food proteins may trigger food allergy development. A new study in the Journal of Clinical Investigation provides a link between skin sensitization, gastrointestinal inflammation, and food allergy. Using a mouse model, Steven Ziegler and colleagues at the Benaroya Research Institute found that skin exposure to a combination ...

General anesthesia results in expended cognitive decline for many individuals following surgical procedure. Memory deficits can last for months and affect patient outcome and quality of life. Patient age, duration of surgery, and surgical trauma are all risk factors for postoperative cognitive impairment. A new study in the Journal of Clinical Investigation demonstrates that general anesthesia results in sustained activation of receptors that inhibit brain function. Beverly Orser and colleagues at the University of Toronto found that a single dose of anesthetic impaired ...

Researchers at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Medicine have shown why anesthetics can cause long-term memory loss, a discovery that can have serious implications for post-operative patients. Until now, scientists haven't understood why about a third of patients who undergo anesthesia and surgery experience some kind of cognitive impairment—such as memory loss—at hospital discharge. One-tenth of patients still suffer cognitive impairments three months later. Anesthetics activate memory-loss receptors in the brain, ensuring that patients don't remember ...

The microbes living in people's guts are much less diverse than those in humans' closest relatives, the African apes, an apparently long evolutionary trend that appears to be speeding up in more modern societies, with possible implications for human health, according to a new study. Based on an analysis of how humans and three lineages of ape diverged from common ancestors, researchers determined that within the lineage that gave rise to modern humans, microbial diversity changed slowly and steadily for millions of years, but that rate of change has accelerated lately ...

A study to be released in the November issue of Health Affairs shows that integrating community housing data on such code violations as mold and cockroaches with health data can identify at-risk geographical areas of medical concern and help target patients for medical interventions. Researchers from Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center used geocoding, or mapping, to examine associations between housing code violations and children's health. They found that children hospitalized for asthma are nearly twice as likely to be rehospitalized or to revisit the emergency ...

PITTSBURGH, Nov. 3, 2014 – Patients with atrial fibrillation who take the blood thinner dabigatran are at greater risk for major bleeding and gastrointestinal bleeding than those who take warfarin, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health. The findings, based on Medicare claims data and published today in JAMA Internal Medicine, indicate greater caution is needed when prescribing dabigatran to certain high-risk patients. Atrial fibrillation, an arrhythmia in which the heart's upper chambers irregularly ...

A study of Medicare beneficiaries suggests the anticoagulant medication dabigatran should be prescribed with caution because it appears to be associated with a higher incidence of major bleeding and a higher risk of gastrointestinal bleeding but a lower risk of intracranial hemorrhage than warfarin, according to a report published online by JAMA Internal Medicine. Dabigatran etexilate mesylate was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2010 to prevent stroke and embolism (blood clots) in patients with nonvalvular atrial fibrillation (AF, abnormal heartbeat) ...

About 60 percent of the increase in the observed prevalence of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) in Danish children appears to be largely due to changes in reporting practices, according to a study published online by JAMA Pediatrics. The prevalence of ASDs (neurodevelopmental disorders characterized by impaired social interactions, communication and by repetitive behaviors) has increased over the past 30 years. The current estimate is about 1 percent of children, although it also has been reported to be higher, according to background information in the study. That increase ...

(MEMPHIS, Tenn. – November 3, 2014) Supplementing written heart screening guidelines with telephone counseling from specially trained nurses more than doubled the likelihood that adult survivors of childhood cancer received recommended heart checks, according to results from the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study (CCSS). St. Jude Children's Research Hospital investigators led the research, whose findings appear in the current issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The research focused on adults whose childhood cancer treatment put them at risk for a variety of ...

November 3, 2014 – A new study shows cellular-level changes in nerve structure and function that may contribute to the development of migraine headaches, reports the November issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery®, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS). Nerve specimens from patients with migraine show abnormalities of the myelin sheath that serves as "insulation" around the nerve fibers," according to the study by ASPS Member Surgeon Bahman Guyuron, MD, of Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland. The findings ...

November 3, 2014 – After opening a comprehensive breast center (CBC), one hospital achieved significant improvement in key measures of quality of care for women undergoing breast reconstruction, reports the November issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery®, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS). Centralized breast cancer care at CBCs can lead to more timely breast reconstruction for women undergoing breast cancer surgery, suggests the study by ASPS Member Surgeon Albert H. Chao, MD, and colleagues of The Ohio State ...

For years, astronomers have been puzzled by a bizarre object in the center of the Milky Way that was believed to be a hydrogen gas cloud headed toward our galaxy's enormous black hole. Having studied it during its closest approach to the black hole this summer, UCLA astronomers believe that they have solved the riddle of the object widely known as G2. A team led by Andrea Ghez, professor of physics and astronomy in the UCLA College, determined that G2 is most likely a pair of binary stars that had been orbiting the black hole in tandem and merged together into an extremely ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – Even during summer dry spells, some patches of soil in forested watersheds remain waterlogged. Researchers have discovered that these patches act as hot spots of microbial activity that remove nitrogen from groundwater and return it to the atmosphere, as reported in a Nov. 3 article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Nitrogen is a critically important nutrient for plant growth in the forest. Denitrification removes this nutrient from the ecosystem and can reduce the growth and productivity of the forest. The research contributes ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Every year, nearly 4,000 children go to emergency rooms after swallowing button batteries — the flat, round batteries that power toys, hearing aids, calculators, and many other devices. Ingesting these batteries has severe consequences, including burns that permanently damage the esophagus, tears in the digestive tract, and in some cases, even death. To help prevent such injuries, researchers at MIT, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Massachusetts General Hospital have devised a new way to coat batteries with a special material that prevents them ...

New research from the Center for Vital Longevity (CVL) at UT Dallas offers a different approach for looking at the way the brain operates on a network level, and could eventually lead to new clinical diagnostic criteria for age-related memory disorders. The latest findings, published the week of Nov. 3 in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, focus on how brain areas communicate with one another to form brain networks, and how brain networks may change as we age. "Brain networks consist of groups of highly interactive nodes, ...

Targeting emissions of non-CO2 gases and air pollutants with climate effects might produce smaller benefits for long-term climate change than previously estimated, according to a new integrated study of the potential of air pollution and carbon dioxide mitigation. High hopes have been placed on limiting emissions of so-called short-lived climate forcers (SLCF) such as methane and soot for protecting human health, vegetation and limiting temperature increase. These emissions originate from a broad variety of sources, including diesel engines, stoves, cows, and coal mines. ...

In a study published today in PNAS, Dr William Roberts of Bristol's School of Geographical Sciences and colleagues use computer models to simulate a Heinrich event in Hudson Bay, Canada, adjusting the models to consider freshwater influx only, changing ice sheet height only or both factors together. Dr Roberts said: "There's lots of evidence to suggest that changing the height of the ice sheets could change atmospheric circulation or even ocean circulation but the role this forcing might play during Heinrich events has generally been overlooked. Our study aimed to ...

A Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) led team has developed a simple "coat of armor" to encase small batteries, rendering them harmless if they are ever swallowed. Children, particularly infants and young toddlers, can ingest these batteries, leading to serious damage to their esophagus as well as other gut tissue, and sometimes, death. Such incidents are on the rise, yet up until now, no solutions have been directed at the battery itself. The new work, published online November 3, 2014 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, offers a simple, cost-effective ...