An examination of the 2013 guidelines for determining statin eligibility, compared to guidelines from 2004, indicates that they are associated with greater accuracy and efficiency in identifying increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) events and presence of subclinical coronary artery disease, particularly in individuals at intermediate risk, according to a study in the July 14 issue of JAMA. The 2013 American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association (ACC/AHA) guidelines for the management of blood cholesterol represent a shift in the treatment approach ...

A microsimulation model-based analyses suggests that the health benefits associated with the 10-year atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease risk threshold of 7.5 percent or higher used in the 2013 ACC-AHA cholesterol guidelines are worth the additional costs required to achieve these health gains, and that a more lenient threshold might also be cost-effective, according to a study in the July 14 issue of JAMA. In November 2013 the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association (ACC/AHA) released new recommendations to guide statin treatment initiation ...

Among patients with diabetic kidney disease and hyperkalemia (elevated potassium levels in the blood), a potentially life-threatening condition, those who received the new drug patiromer, twice daily for four weeks, had significant decreases in potassium levels which lasted through one year, according to a study in the July 14 issue of JAMA. Patients at the highest risk for hyperkalemia are those taking renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (RAAS) inhibitors with stage 3 or greater chronic kidney disease (CKD) who also have diabetes mellitus, heart failure, or both. Because ...

An examination of state vaccination requirements for adolescents finds that the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine is currently required in only two states, many fewer than another vaccine associated with sexual transmission (hepatitis B) and another primarily recommended for adolescents (meningococcal conjugate), according to a study in the July 14 issue of JAMA. Eight years after HPV vaccines were first recommended in the United States, vaccination coverage is substantially below the Healthy People 2020 target of 80 percent. Data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control ...

Berkeley -- Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, in collaboration with scientists at the Gladstone Institutes, have developed a template for growing beating cardiac tissue from stem cells, creating a system that could serve as a model for early heart development and a drug-screening tool to make pregnancies safer. In experiments to be published Tuesday, July 14, in the journal Nature Communications, the researchers used biochemical and biophysical cues to prompt stem cells to differentiate and self-organize into micron-scale cardiac tissue, including ...

Boston, MA - A new study from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health researchers has found that it would be cost-effective to treat 48-67% of all adults aged 40-75 in the U.S. with cholesterol-lowering statins. By expanding the current recommended treatment guidelines and boosting the percentage of adults taking statins, an additional 161,560 cardiovascular-related events could be averted, according to the researchers. "The new cholesterol treatment guidelines have been controversial, so our goal for this study was to use the best available evidence to quantify the ...

WASHINGTON, DC --July 14, 2015--Multiple species of bacteria working together in healthy guts are responsible for keeping out nasty bacterial invader, Clostridium difficile, a hospital-acquired culprit responsible for 15,000 deaths each year. The study, published this week in mBio, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, could lead to tests to predict which hospital patients are at highest risk of infection and better management of infections. "Hospital-acquired C. difficile infections have bloomed as a problem in the last 10-15 years, ...

High-fat feeding can cause impairments in the functioning of the mesolimbic dopamine system, says Stephanie Fulton of the University of Montreal and the CHUM Research Centre (CRCHUM.) This system is a critical brain pathway controlling motivation. Fulton's findings, published today in Neuropsychopharmacology, may have great health implications. "Our research shows that independent of weight gain and obesity, high-fat feeding can cause impairments in the functioning of the brain circuitry profoundly implicated in mood disorders, drug addiction, and overeating - several states ...

Despite modern chemoradiation therapy it is still very difficult to give reliable prognoses for malignant gliomas. Surgical removal of the glioma is still the preferred method of treatment. Doctors at Universitätsklinikum Erlangen's Department of Neurosurgery have now developed a new procedure for analysing radiological imaging scans which makes it possible to predict the course of a disease relatively precisely. Their findings have now been published in the journal 'Scientific Reports'.* The Friedlein Grading A/B (FGA/B) classification system - named after the physician ...

HOUSTON - (July 14, 2015) - After Amazon announced plans last week for a day of online retail discounts July 15 comparable to Black Friday, Wal-Mart is launching a rival sale online the same day. Who will win the e-commerce battle? Winning is a matter of consistent superior e-service quality -- not just on one particular day of the year, according to new research from Rice University's Jones Graduate School of Business. "Increased e-service quality is associated with increased customer satisfaction, which then leads to higher repurchase intentions," said Vikas Mittal, ...

Putnam Valley, NY. (July 14, 2015) - Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disease that produces autoantibodies and subsequent immune reactions that can lead to a variety of symptoms, including inflammation of the kidneys, or nephritis. When researchers transplanted mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) derived from human bone marrow into mice modeled with SLE, they found that inflammation was reduced and nephritis "attenuated." They suggested that their study revealed a "novel mechanism" by which the MSCs can regulate the progression of autoimmune diseases such as ...

HOUSTON - (July 14, 2015) - From 2004 to 2010 in Texas, mental illness was the most common reason for the hospitalization of children ages 10-14 while pregnancy/birth was the most common reason for the hospitalization of adolescents ages 15-17, according to researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) Medical School. The results were published in the July issue of Hospital Pediatrics, a journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics. "We were surprised by those two findings and the related costs in millions of dollars," said Bethanie ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - New research is revealing details about how the exoskeleton of a certain type of deep-sea shrimp allows the animal to survive scalding hot waters in hydrothermal vents thousands of feet under water. "A biological species surviving in that kind of extreme environment is a big deal," said Vikas Tomar, an associate professor in Purdue University's School of Aeronautics and Astronautics. "And shrimp are a great test case for evolution because you can find different species all over the world living at various depths and with a range of adaptation requirements." He ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Hypervigilance to hostility in others triggers aggressive behavior in children, says a new Duke University-led study. The four-year longitudinal study involving 1,299 children and their parents finds the pattern holds true in 12 different cultural groups from nine countries across the globe. This pattern is more common in some cultures than others, which helps explain why some cultures have more aggressive behavior problems in children than other cultures, according to the study. The findings, published online Monday in Proceedings of the National ...

MADISON, Wis. -- A diet that starves triple-negative breast cancer cells of an essential nutrient primes the cancer cells to be more easily killed by a targeted antibody treatment, UW Carbone Cancer Center scientists report in a recent publication. The study's senior author, Vincent Cryns, professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, says the study lays the foundation for a clinical trial to see if a low-methionine diet will help improve outcomes in women with "triple-negative" breast cancer. Methionine is an essential amino ...

Scientists have designed nanoparticles that release drugs in the presence of a class of proteins that enable cancers to metastasize. That is, they have engineered a drug delivery system so that the very enzymes that make cancers dangerous could instead guide their destruction. "We can start with a small molecule and build that into a nanoscale carrier that can seek out a tumor and deliver a payload of drug," said Cassandra Callmann, a graduate student in chemistry and biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego, and first author of the report published in ...

NEW YORK, NY (July 14, 2015) - A plan to ensure that evidence-based psychosocial interventions are routinely used in clinical practice and made a part of clinical training for mental health professionals was released today by the National Academy of Medicine (NAM). The NAM report, titled, "Psychosocial Interventions for Mental and Substance Use Disorders," points to a strong need to strengthen evidence on the effectiveness of psychosocial interventions, and to develop guidelines and quality measures for implementing these interventions in professional practice. Though ...

Fibromyalgia is almost impossible to diagnose. The chronic pain syndrome strikes an estimated 1 in 70 Americans, most of them women. The disorder is often triggered by head trauma, a neurological infection, or severe emotional stress, and is characterized by symptoms such as musculoskeletal pain, fatigue, memory loss and mood swings. Fibromyalgia is often mistaken for other culprits and most patients suffer months, even years, of unrelenting pain before being properly diagnosed. And once diagnosed, patients enjoy little respite because few therapies have been found to be ...

Case Western Reserve researchers already demonstrated that a single protein plays a pivotal role in the use of nutrients by major organs that allow for the burning of fat during exercise or regulating the heart's contractile and electrical activity. Now they have found a new benefit of Kruppel-like Factor 15 (KLF15) -- keeping the body in metabolic balance. The discovery, which highlights how KLF15 affects the availability of nutrients in the body, may also have significant implications for scientists' ability to understand ways that the body metabolizes different medications. ...

July 13, 2015 --Regardless of family income, children on summer break consume more sugar, watch more television, and eat fewer vegetables than the rest of the year, according to researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. Findings are published online in the Journal of School Health. The research was based on data from U.S. children in grades 1-12 in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2003-2008. The sample consisted of 6453 children and adolescents, some surveyed during the school year and others during a school break. The ...

Liuzijue qigong (LQG) is a set of meditative movement and breathing patterns practiced by more than 100 million people in China. In a new Journal of the American Geriatrics Society study, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients in remission who were randomized to LQG demonstrated marked improvements in their lung function, general health, mental health, and quality of life after 6 months compared with patients randomized to a control group. The LQG program consisted of four 45-minute sessions each week and daily walking for 30 minutes. Control participants ...

WASHINGTON - A considerable gap exists in mental health and substance abuse treatments known as psychosocial interventions between what is known to be effective and those interventions that are commonly delivered, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Mental health and substance use disorders are a serious public health problem, affect approximately 20 percent of the U.S. population, and often occur together. Psychosocial interventions -- such as psychotherapies, community-based treatments, vocational rehabilitation, ...

Ann Arbor, MI, July 14, 2015 - Admitting that you have a weight problem may be the first step in taking action, but a new study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that an increasing number of overweight adolescents do not consider themselves as such. "Adolescents with accurate self-perceptions of their body weight have greater readiness to make weight-related behavioral changes and are more effective in making the changes," explained lead investigator Jian Zhang, MD, DrPH, from the Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health, Georgia Southern University, ...

EUGENE, Ore. -- Large-scale organic farming operations, based on a review of almost a decade of data from 49 states, are not reducing greenhouse gas emissions, says a University of Oregon researcher. The increasing numbers of commercialized organic operations -- which still make up just 3 percent of total agricultural lands -- appear to contribute to increased and more intense levels of greenhouse gases coming from each acre of farmland, reports Julius McGee, a doctoral student in the UO sociology department. His study appeared in the June issue of the journal Agriculture ...

A new study published in Marketing Science, a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), finds that peer influence among physicians can affect both trial and repeat prescription behavior of a risky new prescription drug. The study, Social Contagion in New Product Trial and Repeat, tracks prescriptions of a new drug over 17 months, and measures the discussion and patient referral connections among physicians in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The research was conducted by professors Raghuram Iyengar and Christophe ...