More than 500,000 people in the United States die each year of cancer-related causes. Now, emerging research has identified the mechanism behind one of the most common mutations that help cancer cells replicate limitlessly. Approximately 85 percent of cancer cells obtain their limitless replicative potential through the reactivation of a specific protein called telomerase (TERT). Recent cancer research has shown that highly recurrent mutations in the promoter of the TERT gene are the most common genetic mutations in many cancers, including adult glioblastoma and hepatocellular ...

Adolescents who sleep less or stay up later are significantly more likely to have used alcohol and marijuana over the past month when compared to their peers who report better sleep patterns, according to a new RAND Corporation study. Studying adolescents in Southern California, researchers found that the association between sleep and alcohol/marijuana use was consistent even after controlling for other known risk factors, such as depression. The findings, published online by the journal Sleep Health, were generally consistent across racial and ethnic groups. "Our ...

WASHINGTON, D.C., May 18, 2015 - Wind turbines causing cluckus interruptus in prairie chickens, tranquility at a conservation center, better blood pressure monitors with wearables, improved voice recognition software, language emergence with cochlear implants, and a vibrational analysis of graphite tennis rackets are just some of the highlights from the lay-language versions of papers to be presented at the 169th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), held May 18-22 in Pittsburgh. These summaries are posted online in the ASA's Pressroom; many contain sounds, ...

MISSOULA, MONTANA - University of Montana Assistant Professor John McCutcheon has once again discovered something new about the complex and intriguing inner workings of the cicada insect. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences recently published his findings online. In a paper titled "Genome expansion by lineage splitting and genome reduction in the cicada endosymbiont Hodgkinia," McCutcheon and his team found that the nutritional symbionts living inside long-living cicadas have become a lot more complicated. And it's not necessarily a good thing for the ...

A mass media campaign intended to help prevent suicides in California is reaching a majority of the state's adults and appears to be increasing their confidence about how to intervene with those at risk of suicide, according to new RAND Corporation research. In addition, an assessment of a companion suicide prevention program finds that for each year the program is operated, the long-term impact could be the prevention of at least 140 deaths and 3,600 suicide attempts over the next three decades. The analysis also estimates that for every $1 the state invests in the ...

WASHINGTON (May 18, 2015) -- Hospitals performing carotid artery stenting vary considerably in rates of in-hospital stroke or death--from 0 to 18 percent overall and from 1.2 to 4.7 percent when accounting for variation in health of patients at admission, according to a study published today in JACC: Cardiovascular Interventions. Using data from the American College of Cardiology's CARE Registry, the largest national registry of carotid artery stent patients, researchers assessed 19,381 procedures from 188 hospitals that each performed more than five carotid artery stenting ...

(WASHINGTON, May, 18, 2015) - Cancer patients with brain metastases who develop blood clots may safely receive blood thinners without increased risk of dangerous bleeding, according to a study, published online today in Blood, the Journal of the American Society of Hematology Cancer increases a patient's risk of developing blood clots. When a patient with cancer develops a clot, treatment with a blood thinning medication called an anticoagulant is often added to their treatment regimen in order to prevent the potentially fatal complication of blood clots traveling to ...

In recent years, the popularity of "electronic dance music" (EDM) and dance festivals has increased substantially throughout the US and worldwide. Even though data from national samples suggests drug use among adolescents in the general US population has been declining, targeted samples have shown nightclub attendees tend to report high rates of drug use, above that of the general population. In spite of increasing deaths among dance festival attendees in recent years, no nationally representative studies have examined potential associations between nightlife attendance ...

MAYWOOD, IL - As many as 12 percent of patients undergoing major, non-cardiac surgery experience an irregular heartbeat called atrial fibrillation. Post-operative atrial fibrillation (POAF) often is dismissed as a transient phenomenon. But a Loyola University Medical Center study has found that POAF can significantly increase the risk of heart attack or stroke during the first 12 months after surgery. Among bladder cancer patients who underwent a cystectomy (bladder removal) and developed POAF, 24.8 percent experienced a heart attack or stroke during the first 12 months ...

ATS 2015, DENVER ? Severe obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and excessive daytime sleepiness are associated with an increased risk of depression in men, according to a new community-based study of Australian men, which was presented at the 2015 American Thoracic Society International Conference. "An association between sleep apnea and depression has been noted in some earlier studies," said lead author Carol Lang, PhD, from the University of Adelaide, Australia. "Our study, in a large community-based sample of men, confirms a strong relationship even after adjustment for ...

New York, NY, May 18, 2015 -- The National Cancer Institute (NCI) recently announced that it had removed all prostate specific antigen (PSA) data from the SEER (Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results) and SEER-Medicare programs. The PSA data were removed after quality control checks revealed that a substantial number of PSA values included in the programs were incorrect. An editorial published in The Journal of Urology® explores the ramifications of the removal of these data for researchers, clinicians, and administrators within the health care community, as well ...

Two studies from Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center researchers add to preliminary evidence that high-dose radiation treatment, called stereotactic body radiotherapy, appears to be safe and as effective as standard radiation treatment for certain patients with pancreatic cancer whose tumors are advanced but have not spread. The studies also suggest, the researchers say, that stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) may have some advantages over traditional radiation for some patients, because doses can be delivered over the course of one week, unlike six or seven weeks with ...

Changing the size of cell-carrying spheres may surmount the difficulties that have bedeviled diabetes researchers trying to ferry insulin-producing islet cells into hosts as a way to treat type 1 diabetes. New findings published in the journal Nature Materials suggest that for the spherical capsules, bigger may be better. Tiny gel capsules carrying islet cells allow insulin to seep out, and nutrients to get in, through microscopic holes. The holes are small enough, however, to isolate and protect the encapsulated cells from the cells of host's immune system, which would ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. -- Researchers at Oregon State University are pursuing a new concept in treatment of epithelial cancer, especially head and neck cancer, by using two promising "analogs" of an old compound that was once studied as a potent anti-tumor agent, but long ago abandoned because it was too toxic. The analogs are more highly selective than the parent compound, pactamycin, which originally was found to kill all cells, from bacteria to mammals, by inhibiting their protein synthesis. The pactamycin analogs, which were developed with biosynthetic engineering, also ...

Largest study of its type shows people associate science with men in all 66 nations studied Dominance of men in science stereotypes strongest in Scandinavian countries, especially the Netherlands Gender-science stereotypes weaker in nations with more female scientists Interactive table providing comprehensive rankings for all 66 nations EVANSTON, Ill. --- The Netherlands had the strongest stereotypes associating science with men more than women, according to a new Northwestern University study that included data from nearly 350,000 people in 66 nations. These ...

Jumping spiders were already known to see in remarkably high resolution, especially considering that their bodies are less than a centimeter long. Now, researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on May 18 have figured out how spiders in the colorful genus Habronattus see in three color "channels," as most humans do. "The eyes of jumping spiders could not be more different from those of butterflies or birds, and yet all three tune the color sensitivities using pigments that filter light," says Nathan Morehouse of the University of Pittsburgh. "It's ...

Researchers have uncovered the first geologic evidence that New Zealand's southern Hikurangi margin can rupture during large earthquakes. The two earthquakes took place within the last 1000 years, and one was accompanied by a tsunami, according to the study published in the Bulletin of the Seimological Society of America (BSSA). The earthquakes took place roughly 350 years apart, according to the analysis by Kate Clark of GNS Science and colleagues. This may mean that the time between large earthquakes in this region is shorter than scientists have thought. The current ...

In a first-of-its-kind clinical trial, physician-scientists at University Hospitals (UH) Case Medical Center Seidman Cancer Center and Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine found that a new non-invasive technology for colon cancer screening is a promising alternative to colonoscopy for African Americans. The study recruited patients to compare the effectiveness of stool DNA (sDNA) testing with colonoscopy for detecting large colon polyps. SDNA is a test that detects colon cancer in its earliest stages, based on analysis of stool DNA. Developed in the laboratory ...

(Philadelphia, PA) - Today's academic medical centers (AMCs) need to embrace the changing healthcare marketplace or run the risk of becoming the next Kodak - a former industrial giant that became obsolete when it failed to adapt to a shifting technological landscape. That is the premise of a commentary published this month electronically ahead of the print edition of Academic Medicine, the journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges. The commentary is authored by Verdi DiSesa, MD, MBA, Chief Operating Officer of the Temple University Health System (TUHS) and ...

PHILADELPHIA - An important link between the human body clock and the immune system has relevance for better understanding inflammatory and infectious diseases, discovered collaborators at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Trinity College, Dublin. In a study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they report how a critical white blood cell called the macrophage, when exposed to bacteria, makes the biological clock inside the macrophage stop, allowing it to become inflamed. The complex mechanism they ...

ATS 2015, DENVER - Patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), a coronary artery widening procedureused to treat heart disease, are at high risk for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), according to new research presented at the 2015 American Thoracic Society International Conference. "Our findings, in a large, multicenter sample of patients, reinforce the known association between OSA and cardiovascular disease," said researcher Luciano Drager, MD, PhD, of the University of São Paulo School of Medicine in Brazil. "Nearly half of the patients in our ...

Researchers have found that adding genetic information to a former or current smoker's clinical risk profile results in a reclassification of their risk for lung cancer in about one in four patients. Preliminary findings from their lung cancer screening feasibility study also suggests that those whose genetic and clinical risk placed them in the highest risk category were more likely to adhere to follow-up computed tomography (CT) scans during screening. The results of this study, conducted at El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, CA, follows on the heels of the National ...

ATS 2015, DENVER -- Pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) treatment could be a valuable addition to comprehensive therapy in patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) syndrome, according to a new study. The study was presented at the 2015 American Thoracic Society International Conference. "In our study with 40 newly diagnosed OSA patients and a control group, pulmonary rehabilitation helped reduce body mass index, certain body circumferences, and improve pulmonary function," said researcher Katerina Neumannova, MSc, PhD, Palacky University, Faculty of Physical Culture, Olomouc, ...

Studies have shown that both air pollution and impaired lung function can cause cognitive deficits, but it was unclear whether air pollution diminishes cognition by reducing breathing ability first or whether air pollution represents an independent risk factor for cognitive deficit. Now a new study conducted by German and Swiss researchers has answered that question: air pollution directly affects cognition and is not mediated by lung function. The researchers, who analyzed data from a study of 834 elderly German women, will present their findings at ATS 2015 in Denver, ...

ATS 2015, DENVER--Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), being female, and certain scores on the St. George's Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ) were associated with exacerbations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in subjects using long-acting controller medication, according to a study presented at the 2015 American Thoracic Society International Conference. "Knowing these factors can help clinicians identify subjects at risk for acute exacerbations of their COPD," said Robert Busch, MD, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston. Although inhaled medications ...