Catheter-related bloodstream infection is the most prevalent and severe complication for patients who receive parenteral nutrition therapy at home. A new study by researchers at Aalborg University in Denmark examined whether environmental factors have any influence on the amount of time before a first infection. The study published today in the OnlineFirst version of the Journal of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (JPEN), the research journal of the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (A.S.P.E.N.), focused on tunneled vascular access devices and peripherally ...

A new study supports human milk as the optimal first food for babies, but the study raises questions about whether breast milk protects children from becoming obese. The Cincinnati Children's Medical Center review of more than 80 relevant breastfeeding studies that were conducted over a period of at least 20 years is published in Current Obesity Reports. "The best observational evidence up to now suggests that exclusively breastfeeding, or at least breastfeeding for a longer time, is associated with a 10 to 20 percent reduction in obesity prevalence in childhood," says ...

1. Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig come out on top among commercial weight loss programs Note: Sound bites, b-roll footage, and image available. Satellite coordinates and feed times are below. Physicians looking for an effective commercial weight-loss program for their overweight and obese patients may want to recommend Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig. According to an updated evidence review of 11 commercial weight-loss programs, only Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig showed evidence for effective long-term weight loss. The review is published in Annals of Internal Medicine. ...

In a bid to help physicians guide obese and overweight patients who want to try a commercial weight-loss program, a team of Johns Hopkins researchers reviewed 4,200 studies for solid evidence of their effectiveness but concluded only a few dozen of the studies met the scientific gold standard of reliability. In a review of the best research available through late 2014, the results suggest that only a few programs have shown that their users lose more weight than those not using them. The findings are published in the April 6 Annals of Internal Medicine, along with a ...

LOS ANGELES Middle-aged athletes are at low risk for having a sudden cardiac arrest while playing sports, and those who do have a greater chance of surviving the usually-fatal condition, shows a new Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute study. "Because there is so much media attention when someone has a sudden cardiac arrest while playing sports, we want to make sure people know that the benefits of exercise far outweigh the risk of having a cardiac arrest," said Sumeet S. Chugh, M.D., associate director of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute and a prominent expert in the diagnosis, ...

PITTSBURGH, April 6, 2015 - Symptoms from lumbar spinal stenosis, an anatomical impairment common with aging, were relieved and function improved in as many patients utilizing physical therapy as those taking the surgical route, University of Pittsburgh researchers discovered in a two-year study published today in Annals of Internal Medicine. It is the first study that clearly compared outcomes between surgery and an evidence-based, standardized physical therapy approach for lumbar spinal stenosis. The condition, created by a narrowing of the spinal canal that puts ...

DALLAS, April 6, 2015 --Sudden cardiac arrest during sports activities is relatively low among physically active middle-aged adults, according to research in the American Heart Association journal Circulation. Sudden cardiac arrest is the abrupt loss of heart function and usually results from an electrical disturbance in the heart that stops blood flow to other vital organs. Administering CPR immediately after the event, before emergency services arrives, can increase the chance of survival. A review of 1,247 sudden cardiac arrest cases involving men and women ages ...

A new test has been able to measure for the first time the build-up of a harmful mutant protein in the nervous system of patients during the progression of Huntington's disease (HD). Published today in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, the research team behind the findings hope that the new assay will enable the testing of drugs that aim to lower the production of the pathogenic mutant huntingtin protein that causes the disease, and could be useful in predicting or monitoring the progression of HD. HD is a genetic neurodegenerative disease that usually develops in ...

The rate of emergency department visits in California for non-injuries has risen while the rate of visits for injuries has dropped, according to a new study led by UC San Francisco that documents the increasing amount of care provided in emergency departments for complex, chronic conditions. The research shows the growing importance of non-trauma cases in the emergency department (ED), the authors said, and it provides an opportunity to better understand the health of people as well as shifting patterns of care, especially among vulnerable populations. The findings ...

Despite concerns about the increasing costs of treating illnesses like breast cancer, higher treatment costs are linked to better survival rates, according to a study by Yale School of Medicine researchers in the Cancer Outcomes Public Policy and Effectiveness Research (COPPER) Center at Yale School of Medicine and Yale Cancer Center. The study appears in the April issue of Health Affairs. "Our findings indicate that in some instances, newer and costlier approaches may be leading to improved outcomes in breast cancer patients," said senior author Cary P. Gross, M.D., ...

Separating circulating cancer cells from blood cells for diagnostic, prognostic and treatment purposes may become much easier using an acoustic separation method and an inexpensive, disposable chip, according to a team of engineers. "Looking for circulating tumor cells in a blood sample is like looking for a needle in a haystack," said Tony Jun Huang, professor of engineering science and mechanics. "Typically, the CTCs are about one in every one billion blood cells in the sample." Existing methods of separation use tumor-specific antibodies to bind with the cancer ...

06.04.2015: Rocks do not loose their memory during Earth history but their true ages might be distorted: even under ultra high-temperature metamorphic conditions exceeding 1200°C zircon maintains its lead content accumulated during radioactive decay of uranium and thorium. Giga year old zircon crystals still contain lead in form of nanometre size spheres of pure lead. However, the inhomogeneous spatial distribution of the lead spheres might falsify ages determined from high-resolution Pb isotope measurement with ion probe. Zircon is an ideal mineral for age determination ...

Insects form swarms, fish school, birds flock together. Likewise, one species of bacteria forms dynamic, living crystals, says new research from Rockefeller University. Biophysicists have revealed that fast-swimming, sulfur-eating microbes known as Thiovulum majus can organize themselves into a two-dimensional lattice composed of rotating cells, the first known example of bacteria spontaneously forming such a pattern. "The regular, repeated arrangement of the microbial cells shares the geometry of atoms within a mineral crystal, but the dynamics are fundamentally different; ...

Scientists at The University of Manchester have discovered that a previously known gene also helps cells divide normally and that its absence can cause tumours. The glucocorticoid receptor (GR) has previously been shown to have a role in cell development, immune response and metabolism. It is found in almost every cell in the body. Many widely used drugs, including prednisolone, act through this protein. The research from Manchester, to be published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), showed a new role for GR after the scientists ...

The stigma associated with particular neighborhoods has a direct impact on economic transactions, a team of New York University sociologists has found. Their study, which appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows that when sellers are seen as being from an economically disadvantaged neighborhood, they receive fewer responses to advertisements placed in online marketplaces. "Advertisements identifying the seller as a resident of a lower-income neighborhood received significantly fewer responses than advertisements identifying the ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- Life may seem precarious for the sea sponge known as Venus' flower basket. Tiny, hair-like appendages made essentially of glass are all that hold the creatures to their seafloor homes. But fear not for these creatures of the deep. Those tiny lifelines, called basalia spicules, are fine-tuned for strength, according to new research led by Brown University engineers. In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers show that the secret to spicules' strength lies in their remarkable internal ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. - What happens in the moments just before death is widely believed to be a slowdown of the body's systems as the heart stops beating and blood flow ends. But a new laboratory study by the University of Michigan Medical School reveals a storm of brain activity that erupts as the heart deteriorates and plays a surprising destabilizing role in heart function. This near-death brain signaling may be targeted to help cardiac arrest patients survive. Most of the more than 400,000 Americans who experience cardiac arrest at home, at work or in public die without ...

Researchers sketching out a wiring diagram for rat brains -- a field known as "connectomics" -- have discovered that its structure is organized like the Internet. For years, scientists looking for clues to brain function through its structure focused on what could be seen -- the brain's lobes, grooves and folds. Now, with a more comprehensive picture of how neurons connect to one another, they've discovered local networks of neurons nested into one another like shells. "The cerebral cortex is like a mini-Internet," said Larry Swanson, professor at the USC Dornsife College ...

Scientists funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, have identified a cellular receptor for rhinovirus C, a cold-causing virus that is strongly associated with severe asthma attacks. A variant in the gene for this receptor previously had been linked to asthma in genetic studies, but the potential role of the receptor, called CDHR3, in asthma was unknown. The new findings help clarify the function of CDHR3 and point to a novel target for the development of prevention and treatment strategies against ...

Researchers are always searching for improved technologies, but the most efficient computer possible already exists. It can learn and adapt without needing to be programmed or updated. It has nearly limitless memory, is difficult to crash, and works at extremely fast speeds. It's not a Mac or a PC; it's the human brain. And scientists around the world want to mimic its abilities. Both academic and industrial laboratories are working to develop computers that operate more like the human brain. Instead of operating like a conventional, digital system, these new devices ...

New mothers in the Philippines spend more time in the bedroom with their partner in the first few weeks after giving birth than they did before they became pregnant. This might be a type of survival strategy to keep the relationships with the fathers of their new babies alive and well, to ensure continued support for their offspring. So says Michelle Escasa-Dorne of the University of Colorado in the US, after studying how women from a society with a low divorce rate such as the Philippines adapt to being both mothers and lovers. The study appears in Springer's journal Human ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - April 6, 2015 - A commonly prescribed antidepressant caused up to a six-fold increase in atherosclerosis plaque in the coronary arteries of non-human primates, according to a study by researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. Coronary artery atherosclerosis is the primary cause of heart attacks. The study is published in the current online issue of the journal Psychosomatic Medicine. "The medical community has known for years that depression is closely associated with heart disease, but we didn't know if treating it would reduce the heart ...

A new UCLA study takes another step toward the early understanding of a degenerative brain condition called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, which affects athletes in contact sports who are exposed to repetitive brain injuries. Using a new imaging tool, researchers found a strikingly similar pattern of abnormal protein deposits in the brains of retired NFL players who suffered from concussions. The innovative imaging technique uses a chemical marker combined with positron emission tomography, or PET scan, and was initially tested in five retired NFL players ...

SAN FRANCISCO--The Pacific and North America plate boundary off the coast of British Columbia and southeastern Alaska is a complex system of faults capable of producing very large earthquakes. The recent 2012 Mw 7.8 Haida Gwaii and 2013 Mw 7.5 Craig earthquakes released strain built up over years, but did not release strain along the Queen Charlotte Fault, which remains the likely source of a future large earthquake, according to reports published in a special issue of the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (BSSA). "The study of these two quakes revealed ...

Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators have identified an inflammatory molecule that appears to play an essential role in the autoimmune disorder systemic lupus erythematosus, commonly known as lupus. In their report being published online in Nature Immunology, the researchers describe finding that a protein that regulates certain cells in the innate immune system - the body's first line of defense against infection - activates a molecular pathway known to be associated with lupus and that the protein's activity is required for the development of lupus symptoms ...