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 ...

WASHINGTON, DC (May 15, 2015) -- More than half of popular probiotics contain traces of gluten, according to an analysis performed by investigators at the Celiac Disease Center at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC). Tests on 22 top-selling probiotics revealed that 12 of them (or 55%) had detectable gluten. Probiotics are commonly taken by patients for their theoretical effect in promoting gut health, though evidence of benefits is limited to a few clinical situations. "Many patients with celiac disease take dietary supplements, and probiotics are particularly popular," ...

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, May 15, 2015 -- Myriad Genetics, Inc. (NASDAQ: MYGN) today presented clinical data for its Prolaris test at the 2015 American Urological Association (AUA) Annual Meeting being held May 15 to 19 in New Orleans, La. The results highlighted and underscored the significant ability of the Prolaris test to help physicians improve care for men diagnosed with prostate cancer. In this pioneering study, Myriad presented important new clinical validation data that establishes an active surveillance (AS) threshold for men with localized prostate cancer. Specifically, ...

Research published today in the journal Analyst has demonstrated a new, noninvasive test that can detect cocaine use through a simple fingerprint. For the first time, this new fingerprint method can determine whether cocaine has been ingested, rather than just touched. Led by the University of Surrey, a team of researchers from the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NL), the National Physical Laboratory (UK), King's College London (UK) and Sheffield Hallam University (UK), used different types of an analytical chemistry technique known as mass spectrometry to analyse the ...

Great Neck, NY - While the consequences of osteoporosis are worse in men than women - including death - older males are far less likely to take preventive measures against the potentially devastating bone-thinning disease or accept recommendations for screening, according to startling new research by North Shore-LIJ Health System geriatricians. Geriatric fellow Irina Dashkova, MD, designed and led a cross-sectional survey of 146 older adults in New York and Florida that showed stunning gender differences in perspectives, beliefs and behaviors surrounding osteoporosis, ...

Great Neck, NY - With an aging Baby Boomer population and increasing numbers of childless and unmarried seniors, nearly one-quarter of Americans over age 65 are currently or at risk to become "elder orphans," a vulnerable group requiring greater awareness and advocacy efforts, according to new research by a North Shore-LIJ geriatrician and palliative care physician. A case study and literature review by Maria Torroella Carney, MD, chief of geriatric and palliative medicine at the North Shore-LIJ Health System, zeroes in on staggering data on the prevalence and risks ...

Researchers at the University of Birmingham have shed new light on the relationship between autistic tendencies and psychosis proneness in neurotypical adults. If a similar pattern were found in people diagnosed with these conditions, their findings would suggest that a co-occurrence of both conditions might balance, and diminish problems associated with perspective-taking difficulties. The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, indicates that while increased tendencies for either condition are associated with perspective-taking difficulties, ...

This news release is available in Japanese. Though some large predatory fish, like tuna, have been shown to temporarily warm muscles or organs during pursuit, at least one fish may have done that one better by being able to internally generate heat that warms its heart and brain, a new study reports. This ability increases the fish's metabolic function in cold deep waters, and it shows that birds and mammals are not the only vertebrates with warm hearts. One thing that sets mammals and birds apart from vertebrates like fish is the ability to internally warm ...

This news release is available in Japanese. Allowing both males and females in hunter-gatherer groups to choose their living companions reduces the number of family members in individual hunter-gatherer camps, a new study shows. The results answer a longstanding mystery about why hunter-gatherer populations have evolved to comprise large numbers of unrelated individuals, especially since hunter-gatherers have shown a strong preference to live with kin. Previously, studies have pointed to pair-bonding, or lifelong monogamous relationships in which couples go ...

This news release is available in Japanese. There's more than one explanation for how colony-living animals like bees evolve their unique social structure, according to a detailed genome analysis conducted by Karen Kapheim and colleagues. Bees are eusocial, meaning that some of their workers forego reproduction to care for their siblings. In some cases, this can lead to an elaborate and sophisticated "superorganism" of thousands of individuals. Kapheim and colleagues took a detailed look at the genomes of ten bee species to determine if the evolution of eusociality always ...