Government policies that support UK pharmaceutical science and enhance export income are costing the NHS millions and undermine the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. In an essay published today by the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, health economists Professor Alan Maynard and Professor Karen Bloor describe an inflationary regulatory system that lacks accountability, is not evidence-based and subverts the efficiency of the technology appraisal work carried out by NICE, a target of pharmaceutical industry hostility since it was established in 1999. Professors ...

If you want to know the secrets of healthier eating, think of the kitchen fruit bowl. A fruit bowl makes fruit more convenient, attractive, and normal to eat than if the same fruit were in the bottom of the refrigerator. A new Cornell study analyzed 112 studies that collected information about healthy eating behaviors and found that most healthy eaters did so because a restaurant, grocery store, school cafeteria, or spouse made foods like fruits and vegetables visible and easy to reach (convenient), enticingly displayed (attractive), and appear like an obvious choice ...

Having a child diagnosed with epilepsy can be a frightening and confusing time. Now, parents share their arduous and "circuitous" journey to get referrals for pediatric epilepsy surgery once their child's disease stops responding to anti-seizure medications. The UCLA study sheds light on the difficulties parents face obtaining specialty and sub-specialty care for their children during an already stressful time. The study points to the need to develop interventions that target and remediate these barriers to comprehensive epilepsy care for children, said study first ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Individuals with Type 2 Diabetes have difficulty regulating their glucose -- or blood sugar -- levels, particularly after meals. Now, University of Missouri researchers have found that Type 2 diabetics can eat more protein at breakfast to help reduce glucose spikes at both breakfast and lunch. "People often assume that their glucose response at one meal will be identical to their responses at other meals, but that really isn't the case," said Jill Kanaley, professor and associate chair in the MU Department of Nutrition and Exercise Physiology. "For instance, ...

Weill Cornell Medical College researchers have shown for the first time that a gene previously implicated in blood vessel formation during embryonic development and tumor growth also induces immune suppression during tumor development. This finding, published April 29 in Nature Communications, opens the door for new therapeutic approaches and vaccine development in treating patients with melanoma and other advanced-staged cancers. Two decades ago, researchers discovered that a gene called Inhibitor of Differentiation 1 (Id1), which is normally found in the embryo, was ...

Chemotherapy can be very effective against small prostate tumors. Larger prostate tumors, however, accumulate cells that suppress the body's immune response, allowing the cancer to grow despite treatment. Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine now find that blocking or removing these immune-suppressing cells allows a special type of chemotherapy -- and the immune cells it activates -- to destroy prostate tumors. This novel combination therapy, termed chemoimmunotherapy, achieved near complete remission in mouse models of advanced prostate ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. - A new study using evidence from a highly detailed ice core from West Antarctica shows a consistent link between abrupt temperature changes on Greenland and Antarctica during the last ice age, giving scientists a clearer picture of the link between climate in the northern and southern hemispheres. Greenland climate during the last ice age was very unstable, the researchers say, characterized by a number of large, abrupt changes in mean annual temperature that each occurred within several decades. These so-called "Dansgaard-Oeschger events" took place ...

Video didn't killed the radio star, as the eponymous 1978 pop song predicted, and now, researchers have found, cross-channel discounts for online movie sales don't cannibalize online rentals of the same movie. Analyzing data from a major movie studio that distributes its catalog of titles online, Jing Gong, a doctoral candidate in information systems and management at Carnegie Mellon University, and her co-authors measured the impact of price discounts on own- and cross-channel sales of digital movies. They confirmed their expectation that digital movie consumers are ...

Seattle, WA, April 29, 2015 - Patients with esophageal cancer who survive 5 years after undergoing surgery might breathe a sigh of relief and become complacent about continued monitoring. In fact, there is little published information on the outcome of patients with locally advanced esophageal cancer (LAEC) who survive beyond the 5-year mark. A study that will be presented by Brendon Stiles, MD, Associate Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York-Presbyterian Hospital, at the 95th AATS Annual Meeting finds that these survivors still face ...

Danish researchers from the University of Copenhagen and Herlev Hospital have made a discovery that may change the principles for treating certain types of cancer. The discovery relates to the so-called telomeres that constitute the ends of human chromosomes. Short telomeres are related to unhealthy lifestyles, old age and the male gender - all of which are risk factors in terms of high mortality. Up until now, the assumption has been that short telomeres are related to ill health. The challenge for researchers worldwide has therefore been to find out whether or not the ...

Putnam Valley, NY. (April 28, 2015) - Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have been transplanted to successfully treat a variety of diseases and conditions. The benefit of using MSCs is their ability to self-renew and differentiate into a variety of specialized cell types, such as osteoblasts (cells contributing to bone formation), chondrocytes (cartilage cells), adipocytes (fat cells), myocardiocytes (the muscle cells that make up the cardiac muscle), and neurons (nervous system cells). MSCs have shown the ability to modulate the immune response and therefore reduce local ...

A new study by researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine has identified demographic, socioeconomic and cultural factors that contribute to a major gender disparity among U.S. men and women undergoing weight loss surgeries. Men undergo the surgeries in far lower numbers than women. The study is published in the March issue of the Journal of Laparoendoscopic & Advanced Surgical Techniques. Eighty percent of patients who undergo bariatric surgery, which involve procedures that either limit the amount of food that can be consumed or reduce ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- The adage "out of sight, out of mind" applies to electricity use, according to new research from Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy. A study of 16 years of billing records from one South Carolina utility found that residential customers using automatic bill payments consumed 4 to 6 percent more power than those who did not. Commercial electricity customers used 8 percent more. And low-income residents who enrolled in budget billing to spread the cost of seasonal peak demand across the year used 7 percent more electricity. "It's a perverse ...

What do you do when a patient needs a blood transfusion but you don't have their blood type in the blood bank? It's a problem that scientists have been trying to solve for years but haven't been able to find an economic solution - until now. University of British Columbia chemists and scientists in the Centre for Blood Research have created an enzyme that could potentially solve this problem. The enzyme works by snipping off the sugars, also known as antigens, found in Type A and Type B blood, making it more like Type O. Type O blood is known as the universal donor and ...

DETROIT - Nearly half of foodborne illnesses in the U.S. from 1998 through 2008 have been attributed to contaminated fresh produce. Prevention and control of bacterial contamination on fresh produce is critical to ensure food safety. The current strategy remains industrial washing of the product in water containing chlorine. However, due to sanitizer ineffectiveness there is an urgent need to identify alternative antimicrobials, particularly those of natural origin, for the produce industry. A team of researchers at Wayne State University have been exploring natural, ...

Black and Hispanic patients will less frequently than white patients start hemodialysis with an arteriovenous fistula (connecting an artery to a vein for vascular access), a procedure for initial blood flow access known to result in superior outcomes compared with either catheters or arteriovenous grafts, according to a report published online by JAMA Surgery. End-stage kidney disease affected more than 593,000 people in the United States in 2010 and more than 383,000 of them were treated with hemodialysis, a process that replaces the blood filtering usually done by the ...

A high-dose treatment of sodium nitrite, 6 percent, with citric acid, 9 percent, creams applied twice daily was more effective than placebo for treating the common sexually transmitted disease of anogenital warts, according to an article published online by JAMA Dermatology. The warts are caused by infection with human papillomavirus (HPV) types 6 and 11 in more than 90 percent of cases. Topical therapies and surgical removal of the warts are associated with local adverse reactions that include itching, burning, pain and erosions. Recurrence with existing therapies is ...

ITHACA, N.Y. - Imagine a hand-held electronic device - accessible, portable and nearly universal - that could reduce pain and discomfort for patients, and allow doctors the freedom to use less powerful and potentially risky medications to complement anesthesia. Now reach in your pocket, because chances are you already own one. According to new research from a team led by Communications and Information Science Professor Jeff Hancock and Cornell doctoral student Jamie Guillory (now at RTI International), the simple act of texting someone on a mobile phone during a minor ...

The National Emphysema Treatment Trial (NETT) was a multicenter, randomized, controlled clinical trial comparing the efficacy of lung volume reduction surgery (LVRS) plus medical management with rehabilitation to medical management plus rehabilitation in patients with severe emphysema. In 2003, the results of NETT demonstrated that LVRS could improve lung function in patients with emphysema, and that the procedure led to improved survival. Yet, adoption of LVRS has been very slow with concerns expressed regarding safety and long-term efficacy. In this presentation, Dr. ...

Every day, thousands of people need donated blood. But only blood without A- or B-type antigens, such as type O, can be given to all of those in need, and it's usually in short supply. Now scientists are making strides toward fixing the situation. In ACS' Journal of the American Chemical Society, they report an efficient way to transform A and B blood into a neutral type that can be given to any patient. Stephen G. Withers and colleagues note that currently, blood transfusions require that the blood type of the donor match that of the recipient. If they aren't the same, ...

Marketers often use positive emotions such as hope, pride, love, and compassion interchangeably to encourage people to donate to charitable causes. But these distinct emotions can lead to different results, and love alone has the power to inspire giving to those with whom the giver has no connection, according to a new study in the Journal of Marketing Research. "Love is unique among positive emotions in fostering a feeling of connectedness," write authors Lisa A. Cavanaugh (University of Southern California), James R. Bettman (Duke University), and Mary Frances Luce ...

When consumers taste cheap wine and rate it highly because they believe it is expensive, is it because prejudice has blinded them to the actual taste, or has prejudice actually changed their brain function, causing them to experience the cheap wine in the same physical way as the expensive wine? Research in the Journal of Marketing Research has shown that preconceived beliefs may create a placebo effect so strong that the actual chemistry of the brain changes. "Studies have shown that people enjoy identical products such as wine or chocolate more if they have a higher ...

The global industrial sector accounts for more than half of the total energy used every year. Now scientists are inventing a new artificial photosynthetic system that could one day reduce industry's dependence on fossil fuel-derived energy by powering part of the sector with solar energy and bacteria. In the ACS journal Nano Letters, they describe a novel system that converts light and carbon dioxide into building blocks for plastics, pharmaceuticals and fuels -- all without electricity. Peidong Yang, Michelle C. Y. Chang, Christopher J. Chang and colleagues note that ...

Psychology, biology, and mathematics have come together to show that the occurrence of altruism and spite - helping or harming others at a cost to oneself - depends on similarity not just between two interacting individuals but also to the rest of their neighbours. According to this new model developed by researchers DB Krupp (Psychology) and Peter Taylor (Mathematics and Statistics, Biology) at Queen's and the One Earth Future Foundation, individuals who appear very different from most others in a group will evolve to be altruistic towards similar partners, and only ...

Logic would dictate that consumers receiving new market information would jump at the chance to adjust their investments accordingly. In practice, however, many people associate change with loss of control. They crave the idea of permanence or closure to such an extent that they would rather freeze decisions in place even if, ironically, this puts them more at risk, according to a new study in the Journal of Marketing Research. "The need for closure plays a central role in the way people make decisions," write authors David Disatnik and Yael Steinhart of Tel Aviv University. ...