A new study suggests that massive underreporting may occur within the system set up by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to estimate the incidence of acute hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. In a paper receiving advance online publication in Annals of Internal Medicine, a team led by investigators from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (Mass. DPH) describes how less than 1 percent of a group of acute HCV patients participating in a long-term study of the disease had been reported to the CDC, largely ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Most states violate federal Medicaid law because they deny coverage for sofosbuvir, a new and highly effective treatment to cure hepatitis C, according to Lynn E. Taylor, M.D., director of The Miriam Hospital's HIV/Viral Hepatitis Coinfection Program. Taylor's team of researchers examined Medicaid policies for hepatitis C virus treatment using sofosbuvir, more commonly known as Solvadi, and found that most should change policy to improve access to the treatment. The study and its findings were published online in advance of the August issue of the Annals ...

DALLAS, June 29, 2015 -- Women who experience traumatic events or develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may have a greater risk of future cardiovascular disease than women with no traumatic history, according to research in the American Heart Association journal Circulation. In the first major study of PTSD and onset of cardiovascular disease (both heart attacks and strokes) exclusively in women, researchers examined about 50,000 participants in the Nurses' Health Study II over 20 years. PTSD occurs in some people after traumatic events (such as a natural disaster, ...

DALLAS, June 29 -- For the first time, the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association recommends using a stent retrieval device to remove blood clots in select stroke patients who have clots obstructing the large arteries supplying blood to the brain, according to a new focused update published in the American Heart Association journal Stroke. The optimal initial treatment for a clot-caused (ischemic) stroke remains intravenous delivery of the clot-busting medication tissue plasminogen activator (tPA). When given within a few hours after stroke symptoms, ...

Women with elevated symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder consistent with the clinical threshold for the disorder had 60 percent higher rates of having a heart attack or stroke compared with women who never experienced trauma, according to scientists at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Results appear in Circulation, the journal of the American Heart Association. In a survey of nearly 50,000 younger and middle-aged women in the Nurses' Health Study II, 80 percent reported experiencing a traumatic ...

BOSTON (June 29, 2015, 4 pm ET) -- Consumption of sugary drinks may lead to an estimated 184,000 adult deaths each year worldwide, according to research published today in the journal Circulation and previously presented as an abstract at the American Heart Association Council on Epidemiology and Prevention in 2013. "Many countries in the world have a significant number of deaths occurring from a single dietary factor, sugar-sweetened beverages. It should be a global priority to substantially reduce or eliminate sugar-sweetened beverages from the diet," said Dariush ...

Children of parents who are frequently in conflict process emotion differently and may face more social challenges later in life compared with children from low conflict homes, according to the author of a new study published in the Journal of Family Psychology. The research study measured brain activity in children who were shown a mix of photos of couples in angry poses, happy poses and neutral poses. Based on questionnaires filled out by their mothers, the children were grouped in either a high conflict or a low conflict group. When children in the high conflict ...

PITTSBURGH, June 29, 2015 - The immune response that occurs in patients with severe asthma is markedly different than what occurs in milder forms of the lung condition, according to researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Those unique features could point the way to new treatments, they said in an article published online today in the Journal of Clinical Investigation (JCI). People with severe asthma, in which the airways become inflamed and constrict to impair breathing, do not get better even with high doses of corticosteroids, the mainstay ...

Baltimore, Md., June 29, 2015 - As the South Korean epidemic of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) continues unabated, researchers have raced to find treatments for the deadly virus, which has killed more than 400 people since it was first discovered three years ago in Saudi Arabia. Now, scientists at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc., have discovered and validated two therapeutics that show early promise in preventing and treating the disease, which can cause severe respiratory symptoms, and has a death rate of 40 ...

Alexandria, Va., USA - Today, the International and American Associations for Dental Research (IADR/AADR) published a case report on the first application of a 3D printed scaffold for periodontal tissue engineering in a human patient, along with a review of 3D printing for oral and craniofacial tissue engineering. These papers are published in the latest clinical supplement to the Journal of Dental Research, which encompasses all areas of clinical research in the dental, oral and craniofacial sciences, and brings emerging contributions in discovery and translational science ...

The goal for many cancer patients is to reach the five-year, disease-free mark, but new research from UR Medicine's Wilmot Cancer Institute suggests that two years might be a more practical survival goal for people with follicular lymphoma. The difference underscores the fact that about 20 percent of follicular lymphoma patients consistently experience their disease coming back within two years of being treated with the latest therapies--despite the fact that most follicular lymphoma patients can expect to live 20 years. People who relapse early may have a disease with ...

NEW YORK (29 June 2015) -- There has been much recent discussion in the press of the plight of the so-called "sandwich generation," that is, adults who are responsible for the care of children as well as aging parents. The need for simultaneous childcare and eldercare is a reality that can limit families'--particularly women's--opportunities for paying work. A new study by social scientists Emilio Zagheni and Denys Dukhovnov for the first time drills down into US statistics about who is providing this care, and who is receiving it. The study found that in 2012, adults ...

WASHINGTON (June 29, 2015) -- As Liberia rebuilds a health care system decimated by the 2014 Ebola outbreak, understanding precisely how far citizens live from health facilities and its impact on seeking care can help shape new strategies to improve health care delivery and reduce geographic disparities. A new examination of remoteness as a barrier to health care, published online today in the Journal of Global Health, notes that most surveys and policy documents categorize families as living either in an urban or rural setting, and this dichotomy can mask disparities ...

When it comes to the art of persuasion, you can attract more followers if you turn conventional wisdom on its head and stress what you like, not what you do. A new study, to be published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, finds that people are more likely to conform to others' preferences than conform to others' actions. In other words, people want to like what others like, but they want to have or do what others don't have or don't do. In the study, "Words Speak Louder: Conforming to Preferences More Than Actions," by University ...

DURHAM, N.C. - Researchers at Duke University School of Medicine and Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School have identified a mechanism that explains why some mutations can be disease-causing in one genome but benign in another. In a study appearing June 29, 2015, in the journal Nature, the researchers compared thousands of human disease-causing mutations with the analogous sequences of some 100 animal species. They discovered non-human genomes carrying mutations that cause severe disease in humans, yet were benign in the animals. Although generally in ...

The brown marmorated stink bug has a bad reputation. And for good reason: every summer, this pest attacks crops and invades homes, causing both sizable economic losses and a messy, smelly nuisance--especially in the eastern United States. A new study by entomologists at the University of Maryland shows that these pests, known simply as stink bugs, have a strong preference for ripe fruit. Moreover, stink bugs track their favorite fruits throughout the growing season in an effort to maximize their access to food. The study, published online June 25, 2015 in the Journal ...

PHILADELPHIA -- Since their discovery in the 1950s, transfer RNAs (tRNAs) have been best known for their role in helping the cell make proteins from messenger RNA templates. However, recent studies have led to a previously-unsuspected concept that tRNAs are not always the end product; namely, they further serve as a source of small RNAs. Now researchers have discovered a new species of tRNA-derived small RNAs that are produced only in hormonally-driven breast and prostate cancers, and which contribute to cell proliferation. The results will be published online the week ...

The warm temperature on a summer's day is often a time for relaxing, but researchers from the University of Leicester have suggested that a 'thermosensory' gene could be responsible for changes in behaviour in different climates. The researchers from the University of Leicester's Department of Genetics have explored how the biological clock can be affected by the environment by examining the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster, which shows 24 hour biological cycles and is used as a model organism for studies into human rhythms. Like many humans, the fly has a 'siesta' ...

It's been difficult to explain patterns of toxic mercury in some parts of the world, such as why there's so much of the toxin deposited into ecosystems from the air in the southeastern United States, even upwind of usual sources. A new analysis led by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder shows that one key to understanding mercury's strange behavior may be the unexpected reactivity of naturally occurring halogen compounds from the ocean. "Atmospheric chemistry involving bromine and iodine is turning out to be much more vigorous than we expected," said ...

A University of Oklahoma professor studying malaria mosquito interaction has discovered a new mosquito protein for the development of a new vaccine that is expected to stop the spread of the disease in areas where it is considered endemic. Malaria is transmitted by mosquitoes, and it infects millions of people in Africa, Asia and South America every year, causing a global health crisis. In addition to the local populations, U.S. military personnel stationed in these areas and travelers to these malaria-prone areas are at risk of becoming infected. Jun Li, assistant ...

UC Santa Barbara geologist Jim Boles has found evidence of helium leakage from the Earth's mantle along a 30-mile stretch of the Newport-Inglewood Fault Zone in the Los Angeles Basin. Using samples of casing gas from two dozen oil wells ranging from LA's Westside to Newport Beach in Orange County, Boles discovered that more than one-third of the sites -- some of the deepest ones -- show evidence of high levels of helium-3 (3He). Considered primordial, 3He is a vestige of the Big Bang. Its only terrestrial source is the mantle. Leakage of 3He suggests that the Newport-Inglewood ...

WASHINGTON (June 29, 2015) -The American College of Cardiology, Heart Rhythm Society and Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions today released a new overview on the implantation of left atrial appendage occlusion devices. The implantation of left atrial appendage occlusion devices may lower the risk of stroke in patients with atrial fibrillation. As new devices are developed, it is anticipated that the use of left atrial appendage occlusion technologies in clinical practice will expand. The authors of the paper urge that the new technology should be ...

Stringing together meaningless sounds to create meaningful signals was previously thought to be the preserve of humans alone, but a new study, publishing June 29th in the Open Access journal PLOS Biology, has revealed that babbler birds are also able to communicate in this way. Researchers at the Universities of Exeter and Zurich discovered that the chestnut-crowned babbler - a highly social bird found in the Australian Outback - has the ability to convey new meaning by rearranging the meaningless sounds in its calls. This babbler bird communication is reminiscent of ...

LAKEVILLE-MIDDLEBORO, Mass., (June 29, 2015) - A new study (1) reveals that drinking low-calorie cranberry juice cocktail may help lower the risk of chronic diseases that rank among the leading causes of death worldwide, including heart disease, diabetes and stroke. The finding is welcome news considering the World Health Organization estimates the trio of diseases annually claim 15.6 million lives around the globe (2). These illnesses are among the most common and costly health conditions, but fortunately, they are also among the most preventable through dietary intervention. ...

An overview and analysis of the factors underlying the recent Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) outbreak in Korea has been published online ahead of print in the American Thoracic Society's American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. "On 20 May 2015, the Republic of Korea confirmed the first case of MERS-CoV infection in a 68 year old male who had returned to Seoul after traveling to 4 countries in the Middle East," write co-authors David S Hui, MD, of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Malik Peiris, DPhil, of the University ...