Rome, Italy, 13 June 2015: The results of an interventional trial presented today at the European League Against Rheumatism Annual Congress (EULAR 2015) showed that use of the disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drug hydroxychloroquine for 24 weeks did not diminish mild-moderate pain from primary hand osteoarthritis (OA). Furthermore, treatment did not improve overall physical, social and emotional wellbeing. These findings suggest that hydroxychloroquine should no longer be routinely prescribed for patients with this form of arthritis. OA is the most common type of arthritis, ...

Rome, Italy, 13 June 2015: The results of a study presented today at the European League Against Rheumatism Annual Congress (EULAR 2015) showed that, in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients, a good clinical response to maintenance treatment with a tumour necrosis factor inhibitor (TNFi) was maintained even when the dose was reduced by one-third. Reducing the TNFi dose by two-thirds resulted in more flares (exacerbations of symptoms and signs) but these subsided when the higher dose of TNFi was restarted, and did not adversely affect subsequent progression of any disability. ...

Time may heal all wounds, but in the case of stroke survivors, the key to better recovery is to spend more time in an intensive physical therapy program, according to a University of Florida Health study. After a stroke, the brain and body can start recovering immediately and can show improvement up to six months afterward, said UF Health researcher Janis Daly, Ph.D. But this study focused on people who had persistent disability even a year or more after completing standard care. The study found that extensive physical therapy helped them recover motor function, even ...

New ideas are bubbling up for more efficient computer memory. Researchers at UCLA and the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory announced today a new method for creating magnetic skyrmion bubbles at room temperature. The bubbles, a physics phenomenon thought to be an option for more energy-efficient and compact electronics, can be created with simple equipment and common materials. Skyrmions, discovered just a few years ago, are tiny islands of magnetism that form in certain materials. If you wrapped one up into a sphere, its magnetic fields would ...

African-American adults -- particularly women -- are much more likely to know or be related to someone behind bars than whites, according to the first national estimates of Americans' ties to prisoners. The research, led by Hedwig Lee, University of Washington associate professor of sociology, reveals the racial inequality wrought by the U.S. prison boom, with potentially harmful consequences to families and communities left lacking social supports for raising children and managing households. In an article published May 20 in the Du Bois Review: Social Science Research ...

KNOXVILLE--The increasing use of video games is often blamed for children's lack of interest in physical activity, but a study by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, recently published in the Games for Health Journal suggests that active video games may actually be a source of moderate or intense physical activity in children five to eight years old. "Our study shows video games which wholly engage a child's body can be a source of physical activity," said Hollie Raynor, director of UT's Healthy Eating and Activity Laboratory and associate professor of nutrition. ...

(June 12, 2015) New research published in this month's edition of United European Gastroenterology journal suggests that supplementation with vitamin D may impact on the intestinal barrier dysfunction associated with Crohn's disease, and could have a role in the treatment of the condition. The study is by Professor Maria O'Sullivan and Tara Raftery. Department of Clinical Medicine, Trinity Centre for Health Sciences, St. James's Hospital, Dublin, Ireland. Crohn's disease (CD) is a lifelong chronic relapsing and remitting gastrointestinal condition, characterised by inflammation, ...

Investigators at Disney Research Zurich have developed a method for achieving very accurate object segmentation of video by enabling human editors to work efficiently with state-of-the-art algorithms using a click-and-drag interface. Segmentation, which identifies objects, backgrounds and other meaningful regions within an image or video, is a necessary step for many editing tasks and for image analysis. People can readily perceive objects and the composition of scenes despite variations in colors, lighting and contours, but despite significant advances in recent years, ...

When a new type of drug or therapy is discovered, double-blind randomized controlled trials (DBRCTs) are the gold standard for evaluating them. These trials, which have been used for years, were designed to determine the true efficacy of a treatment free from patient or doctor bias, but they do not factor in the effects that patient behaviors, such as diet and lifestyle choices, can have on the tested treatment. A recent meta-analysis of six such clinical trials, led by Caltech's Erik Snowberg, professor of economics and political science, and his colleagues Sylvain Chassang ...

Thousands of stone tools from the early Upper Paleolithic, unearthed from a cave in Jordan, reveal clues about how humans may have started organizing into more complex social groups by planning tasks and specializing in different technical skills. The Journal of Human Evolution published a study of the artifacts from Mughr el-Hamamah, or Cave of the Doves, led by Emory University anthropologists Liv Nilsson Stutz and Aaron Jonas Stutz. "We have achieved remarkably accurate estimates of 40,000 to 45,000 years ago for the earliest Upper Paleolithic stone tools in the ...

(Boston)--Men with benign prostate enlargement who used finasteride (also known as proscar and propecia) to treat their condition, experienced worsening erectile dysfunction (ED) that did not resolve with continued treatment. In addition, they experienced a reduction in their testosterone levels leading to hypogonadism (little to no production of sex hormones). However, men who used tamsulosin (flomax) experienced none of these adverse side effects. The findings, currently available online in the journal Hormone Molecular Biology and Clinical Investigation, were led by ...

Animals wearing new tagging and tracking devices give a real-time look at their behavior and at the environmental health of the planet, say research associates at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in the June 12 issue of Science magazine. "We suggest that a golden age of animal tracking science has begun," they predict. "The upcoming years will be a time of unprecedented, exciting discoveries." Driven, in part, by consumer demand in the past five years, radio-tracking technology has been replaced by smaller GPS tags that allow scientists to accurately track ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - In a recent study, nearly half of all veterans who died from drug overdoses while prescribed opioids for pain were also receiving benzodiazepines, or benzos, which are common medications for the treatment of anxiety, insomnia and alcohol withdrawal. Veterans prescribed higher doses of benzodiazepines while concurrently receiving opioids were at greater risk of overdose death than those on lower doses of benzodiazepines. The results of the study by researchers from Rhode Island Hospital, Boston Medical Center, and the Veteran Affairs Ann Arbor Healthcare ...

This news release is available in Spanish. From the east of France all the way to Russia the hazel dormouse now inhabits practically the whole of Europe. However, on the Iberian Peninsula it is absent just where its first remains were found and which had come from the Miocene, an epoch in which it developed between 23 and 5 million years ago. After spreading to other parts of Europe, it was no longer found in the peninsular fossil register since the start of the Pliocene (at least 4.5 million years ago.) Yet on the Gipuzkoan site of Lezetxiki (Arrasate-Mondragon) ...

Clinicians are challenged every day to make difficult decisions regarding patients' suicide risk. Using Veterans Health Administration (VHA) health system electronic medical record data, Veterans Affairs (VA) and National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) scientists were able to identify very small groups of individuals within the VHA's patient population with very high, predicted suicide risk -- most of whom had not been identified for suicide risk by clinicians. Such methods can help the VHA to target suicide prevention efforts for patients at high risk, and may have ...

Physical activity decreases substantially over time in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) at all levels of severity, according to a new study from researchers in Germany. This decline in physical activity is accompanied by a worsening of lung function and health status, and sustained physical inactivity is associated with progression of both exercise intolerance and muscle depletion. "Physical inactivity is associated with morbidity and mortality in COPD, but the association between objectively measured physical activity and other disease components ...

WASHINGTON --Simply asking the question, "Do you want more pain medication?" resulted in satisfactory pain control in 99 percent of emergency department patients participating in a study. The study of a new evidence-based protocol to treat acute, severe pain in emergency department patients was published online yesterday in Annals of Emergency Medicine ("Efficacy of an Acute Pain Titration Protocol Driven by Patient Response to a Simply Query: 'Do You Want More Pain Medication?'"). "The crowded conditions in most emergency departments in the U.S. are not conducive to ...

A recent study from the University of Eastern Finland in collaboration with Deakin University, Australia, shows that recurrent major depressive disorder (MDD) in men is associated with lower bone density. The use of antidepressants was also associated with lower bone mineral density (BMD), but this association was dependent on the person's weight and site of bone measurement. Osteoporosis is a common disorder and an underlying factor in fragility fractures. Especially in women, the menopause increases the risk of osteoporosis. Other risk factors include low levels of ...

The team headed by Dr. Kathrin Suttner, who, together with Prof. Dr. Carsten Schmidt-Weber, heads the airway immunology research group at the Helmholtz Zentrum München and Technische Universität München, concentrated its work on the so-called naive CD4+ T cells. They are a precursor form of T cells and form the basis for immunological memory*. Impaired development of these cells can influence the entire immune system and lead to illnesses such as allergies and asthma. Protein atlas on T cell precursors The scientists specifically examined proteins on ...

Clinicians at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich have elucidated a mechanism involved in determining the lifespan of antibody-producing cells, and identified a promising new biomarker for monitoring autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis and lupus erythematosus. The so-called humoral immune response is mediated by plasma cells and plays a central role in combating infections. Plasma cells secrete antibodies - a class of proteins that specifically recognize infectious pathogens and facilitate their destruction. Individual plasma cells make only a single ...

Rome, Italy, 12 June 2015: The results of a systematic review of published studies presented today at the European League Against Rheumatism Annual Congress (EULAR 2015) Press Conference showed that biologics improve both absenteeism (not showing up for work) and presenteeism (being at work but not functioning fully) in patients with chronic inflammatory arthritides. Rheumatic conditions are the most frequently cited reason for absence from work, and these findings suggest that biologics could significantly reduce the economic burden of these diseases. Chronic inflammatory ...

Rome, Italy, 12 June 2015: The results of a study presented today at the European League Against Rheumatism Annual Congress (EULAR 2015) Press Conference showed that people with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) are less likely to be protected by hepatitis B vaccination than the general population. Within the trial only 11% of those with the condition responded to the vaccine, compared with 83% of those without RA, suggesting that people with RA may still be at risk of infection in spite of vaccination. "The majority of RA patients tested as part of our study were not protected ...

Rome, Italy, 12 June 2015: The results of a study presented today at the European League Against Rheumatism Annual Congress (EULAR 2015) showed that inspiratory muscle training (IMT) significantly improves lung strength and efficiency in patients with ankylosing spondylitis (AS), a condition often associated with breathing difficulties. These findings demonstrate that just eight weeks of IMT provide greater improvements in lung function than conventional treatment options. AS is a painful and progressive form of arthritis caused by chronic inflammation of the joints ...

Rome, Italy, 12 June 2015: The results of a study presented today at the European League Against Rheumatism Annual Congress (EULAR 2015) demonstrated for the first time that treatment-naive patients with early Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) have myocardial and vascular abnormalities, even at the earliest stage of their disease. These findings suggest that patients may develop early cardiomyopathy (disease of the heart muscle), increasing their risk of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality from the time of their diagnosis. Cardiomyopathy is a serious condition and a leading ...

Rome, Italy, 12 June 2015: The results of a study presented today at the European League Against Rheumatism Annual Congress (EULAR 2015) identified that the cytokine (cell signalling protein) Interleukin-1β (IL-1β) is a crucial factor in the development of blood-induced cartilage damage. This finding opens up the possibility that a treatment targeting IL-1β could provide a new way to protect cartilage after a joint bleed, which in turn should significantly reduce subsequent disability.1 Exposure of joint cartilage to blood can occur after joint trauma, ...