A new analysis of clinical trial participation in the largest ongoing observational study of U.S. heart attack patients has found participants are not representative of the larger patient base, according to a study led by Women's College Hospital cardiologist Dr. Jay Udell. The study authors call into question the general applicability of the findings to the wider population, and suggest the use of broader enrollment criteria and existing patient registries to increase trial participation. "We know that clinical trials can be tremendously expensive and a huge burden on ...

While many scientists are trying to prevent the onset of a cancer defense mechanism known as autophagy, researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center are leveraging it in a new therapy that causes the process to culminate in cell death rather than survival. The novel treatment strategy targets the p62 protein, which is often referred to as the "Trash Man" due to its role in disposing unwanted cellular proteins during autophagy. Results from preclinical experiments suggest this experimental treatment approach could be particularly effective against ...

(Lebanon, NH 8/27/14)—Dartmouth cancer researchers developed and tested an advanced statistical model to evaluate the genetic and environmental interactions that contribute to disease as published yesterday in Human Genetics. The approach fills a gap in current analyses. Complex diseases like cancer usually arise from complex interactions among genetic and environmental factors. When many such combinations are studied, identifying the relevant interactions versus those that reflect chance combinations among affected individuals becomes difficult. In this study, the ...

South Africa is entering what is described by the Volunteer Wildfire Services of South Africa as "Cape Fire Season." The Eastern Cape provincial government warned residents in certain parts of the province on Monday (8/25) of strong winds and veld fires. A high veld fire danger rating is expected in the north-western interior and along the coast in the Great Kei and Mnquma area. Strong winds often occurred along coastal regions, and during thunderstorms. The thunderstorms bring lightning strikes and subsequent fire and the wind serves to spread the fire from one place ...

Karina finally became a remnant low pressure area after roaming around in the Eastern Pacific for two weeks. Satellite data on August 27 showed that the now shapeless former hurricane was being drawn into nearby Hurricane Marie's circulation. The last bulletin on Karina was issued by the National Hurricane Center on August 27 at 0300 UTC (11 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, August 26). At that time, Karina's maximum sustained winds were near 30 mph (45 kph). It was centered near latitude 15.9 north and longitude 126.5 west. That's 1,185 miles (1,905 km) west-southwest of the southern ...

People and institutions who are marginal members of a high-status or well-esteemed group tend to emphasize their group membership more than those who are squarely entrenched members of the group, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Research has long shown that people prefer to be in groups that are thought to have higher status or cultural value as a way of boosting self-image and projecting an impressive image to others. Despite the fact that separations between groups are often arbitrary, ...

A growing number of studies have shown that excessive iron is closely associated with the pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease. Previous studies from Chunyan Guo and co-workers from Capital Medical University in China have shown that baicalin prevented iron accumulation after substantia nigra injury, reduced divalent metal transporter 1 expression, and increased ferroportin 1 expression in the substantia nigra of rotenone-induced Parkinson's disease rats. However, the relationship between iron concentration and transferrin expression is still unclear. Based on the previous ...

Currently, the main factors thought to be associated with outcomes after the repair of peripheral nerve injuries are the age of the patient, mechanism of injury, nerve injured, injury location, defect length, repair time, repair method, operation technique, and repair materials. However, despite numerous studies of outcomes after the repair of peripheral nerve injuries, there is no agreement regarding the independent predictors of a good prognosis, and the dose-effect relationship of the predictors has not been quantified. A study by Dr. Bo He and co-workers from the First ...

Despite major retailers investing tens of millions of dollars a year into loyalty programs, they are a dying breed, with customers struggling to see the benefits of signing up, according to QUT research. But benefits that stimulate gratitude in customers have the power to strengthen the seller-customer relationship and ensure loyalty, researchers Dr Syed Hasan, Professor Ian Lings, Associate Professor Larry Neale and Dr Gary Mortimer, from QUT's School of Advertising, Marketing and Public Relations, found. Lead researcher Dr Hasan, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow, said ...

University of Adelaide research has shown that piglets can be weaned later with no negative effects on sow birthing frequency. The outcome of the study at the University's Roseworthy campus, published in the journal Animal Reproduction Science, is an important finding for pig producers. It allows improvements in piglet health and welfare without loss of production. "Sows don't usually start their oestrous cycles again during lactation, only coming on heat after their piglets have been weaned," says Ms Alice Weaver, PhD candidate with the School of Animal and Veterinary ...

The field of astrophysics has a stubborn problem and it's called lithium. The quantities of lithium predicted to have resulted from the Big Bang are not actually present in stars. But the calculations are correct – a fact which has now been confirmed for the first time in experiments conducted at the underground laboratory in the Gran Sasso mountain in Italy. As part of an international team, researchers from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) studied how much lithium forms under Big Bang conditions. The results were published in "Physical Review Letters". Lithium, ...

Gamblers are greedy bird-brains, University of Warwick research finds Gamblers show the same tendencies as pigeons when they make risky decisions, new research has shown. Researchers, led by Dr Elliot Ludvig of the University of Warwick's Department of Psychology, conducted tests that found that both human gamblers and pigeons were 35% more likely to gamble for high-value than low-value rewards. Published in Biology Letters, the researchers argue that the test results show the important role that memories of previous biggest wins and losses play when we make risky ...

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the second leading cause of cancer-associated death worldwide. These regrettably poor prognoses are due to the difficulty in treating this cancer using conventional chemotherapeutic drugs such as doxorubicin, epirubicin, cisplatin, 5-fluorouracil, etoposide or combinations therein. This may be attributed to that the conventional medicines are not able to reach in a sufficient concentration in the liver tumor cells at levels that are not harmful to the rest of the body. Considering the large percentage of patients that are deemed ineligible ...

One of nature's mysteries is how plants survive impact by the huge amounts of energy contained in the sun's rays, while using this energy for photosynthesis. The hypothesis is that the light-absorbing proteins in the plant's blades quickly dissipate the energy throughout the entire protein molecule through so-called protein quakes. Researchers at DTU Physics have now managed to successfully 'film' this process. Both plants, algae and bacteria contain light-absorbing proteins which play a role in photosynthesis and thus how the organisms produce energy. However, it has ...

TORONTO, Aug. 27, 2014 – Stroke patients are 70 per cent more likely to continue taking their stroke prevention medications one year later if they have a prescription in hand when discharged – according to researchers at St. Michael's Hospital and the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES). Using data from 11 stroke centres, researchers determined how many Ontarians were taking their medications one week, one year and two years after having a stroke. The results reveal the importance of simple interventions, such as giving a prescription to a patient before ...

VIDEO: Sakis play the group service game. Click here for more information. Scientists have long been searching for the factor that determines why humans often behave so selflessly. It was known that humans share this tendency with species of small Latin American primates of the family Callitrichidae (tamarins and marmosets), leading some to suggest that cooperative care for the young, which is ubiquitous in this family, was responsible for spontaneous helping behavior. But it ...

Men who eat over 10 portions a week of tomatoes have an 18 per cent lower risk of developing prostate cancer, new research suggests. With 35,000 new cases every year in the UK, and around 10,000 deaths, prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in men worldwide. Rates are higher in developed countries, which some experts believe is linked to a Westernised diet and lifestyle. To assess if following dietary and lifestyle recommendations reduces risk of prostate cancer, researchers at the Universities of Bristol, Cambridge and Oxford looked at the diets and lifestyle ...

Fluorochemicals are synthetically produced chemicals, which repel water and oil and are persistent towards aggressive physical and chemical conditions in industrial processing. These characteristics have made the fluorochemicals useful in numerous processes and products, such as coatings for food paper and board. The problem with fluorochemicals is that they are difficult to break down and accumulate in both humans and the environment. Some fluorochemicals have known correlations with harmful health effects, such as cancer, increased cholesterol and a weaker immune system ...

Dinosaurs are often depicted as giant, frightening beasts. But every creature is a baby once. A new examination of a rock slab containing fossils of 24 very young dinosaurs and one older individual is suggestive of a group of hatchlings overseen by a caretaker, according to a new study by University of Pennsylvania researchers. Penn's Brandon P. Hedrick and Peter Dodson led the work, collaborating with researchers from China's Dalian Museum of Natural History, where the specimen is held. Hedrick is a doctoral student in the School of Arts & Sciences' Department of Earth ...

This news release is available in German. Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease type 1A is the most common inherited disease affecting the peripheral nervous system. Researchers from the Department of Neurogenetics at the Max Planck Institute of Experimental Medicine and University Medical Centre Göttingen have discovered that the maturity of Schwann cells is impaired in rats with the disease. These cells enwrap the nerve fibres with an insulating layer known as myelin, which facilitates the rapid transfer of electrical impulses. If Schwann cells cannot mature correctly, ...

Ebola is a rare, but deadly disease that exists as five strains, none of which have approved therapies. One of the most lethal strains is the Sudan ebolavirus (SUDV). Although not the strain currently devastating West Africa, SUDV has caused widespread illness, even as recently as 2012. In a new study appearing in the journal ACS Chemical Biology, researchers now report a possible therapy that could someday help treat patients infected with SUDV. John Dye, Sachdev Sidhu, Jonathan Lai and colleagues explain that about 50-90 percent of ebola patients die after experiencing ...

A growing number of consumers are willing to pay a premium for fruits, vegetables and other foods labelled "organic", but whether they're getting what the label claims is another matter. Now scientists studying conventional and organic tomatoes are devising a new way to make sure farms are labelling their produce appropriately. Their report, which appears in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, could help prevent organic food fraud. Researchers from the Bavarian Health and Food Safety Authority and the Wuerzburg University note that the demand for organic ...

New evidence puts into doubt the long-standing belief that a deficiency in serotonin — a chemical messenger in the brain — plays a central role in depression. In the journal ACS Chemical Neuroscience, scientists report that mice lacking the ability to make serotonin in their brains (and thus should have been "depressed" by conventional wisdom) did not show depression-like symptoms. Donald Kuhn and colleagues at the John D. Dingell VA Medical Center and Wayne State University School of Medicine note that depression poses a major public health problem. More than 350 million ...

The effectiveness of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) treatment may hinge significantly upon sleep quality, report researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Veterans Affairs San Diego Healthcare System in a paper published today in the Journal of Neuroscience. "I think these findings help us understand why sleep disturbances and nightmares are such important symptoms in PTSD," said Sean P.A. Drummond, PhD, professor of psychiatry and director of the Behavioral Sleep Medicine Program at the VA San Diego Healthcare System. "Our study ...

They say knowledge is power, and a new UCLA study has shown this is definitely the case when it comes to men making the best decisions about how to treat their prostate cancer. UCLA researchers found that men who aren't well educated about their disease have a much more difficult time making treatment decisions, called decisional conflict, a challenge that could negatively impact the quality of their care and their long-term outcomes. The study should serve as a wake-up call for physicians, who can use the findings to target men less likely to know a lot about their ...