PORTLAND, Ore. - A new study released today found that drugs used to treat multiple sclerosis have soared in price in the past two decades, in some cases more than 700 percent, even though newer drugs have come to the market - a process that normally should have stabilized or reduced the cost of at least the older medications. There are no multiple sclerosis drugs now available in the United States with a list price below $50,000 a year, which is two to three times more than the price in Canada, Australia or the United Kingdom. The group of drugs available to treat this ...

When Microsoft released the Kinect for Xbox in November 2010, it transformed the video game industry. The most inexpensive 3-D camera to date, the Kinect bypassed the need for joysticks and controllers by sensing the user's gestures, leading to a feeling of total immersion into the game. Microsoft sold 8 million Kinect units within 60 days, making it the fastest-selling electronic device ever. "But then something interesting happened," said Oliver Cossairt, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Northwestern University's McCormick School ...

Northwestern University scientists have developed the first liquid nanoscale laser. And it's tunable in real time, meaning you can quickly and simply produce different colors, a unique and useful feature. The laser technology could lead to practical applications, such as a new form of a "lab on a chip" for medical diagnostics. To understand the concept, imagine a laser pointer whose color can be changed simply by changing the liquid inside it, instead of needing a different laser pointer for every desired color. In addition to changing color in real time, the liquid ...

TORONTO, April 20, 2015-- Although National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) guidelines consider 18F-PET/CT (FDG PET/CT) appropriate for systemic staging of newly diagnosed stage III breast cancer, the technique may not be equally valuable for all breast cancer histologies. Researchers at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center found that while FDG PET/CT is valuable for systemic staging of stage III ductal breast cancer, it adds little to the systemic staging of ILC. "We are evaluating patient and disease factors that affect the value of FDG PET/CT for systemic ...

PULLMAN, Wash. - Text messaging that connects teens with sexual health educators is effective for delivering sexual health information, according to a recent study in The Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University. The research abstract is online and the work will appear in an upcoming print issue of the journal Health Education and Behavior. "What we found is that teens identified as 'at-risk' use this text messaging service at a higher rate that other teens," said Jessica Willoughby, lead investigator on the project and an assistant professor ...

Children with hemophilia A require three to four infusions each week to prevent bleeding episodes, chronic pain and joint damage. The effect on quality of life can be significant, due to time and discomfort associated with infusions. For these reasons, under dosing is common, leaving children at increased risk for bleeding episodes and even death. This extended half-life factor VIII enables patients to receive one or two infusions each week without an increased risk of bleeding. The first report on the safety and efficacy of this therapy in children under 12 years old ...

Ahmad M. Khalil, PhD, knew the odds were against him -- as in thousands upon thousands to one. Yet he and his team never wavered from their quest to identify the parts of the body responsible for revving up one of the most aggressive forms of breast cancer, HER2+. This month in Breast Cancer Research and Treatment, Khalil and his colleagues at Case Western Reserve University proved the power of persistence; from a pool of more than 30,000 possibilities, they found 38 genes and molecules that most likely trigger HER2+ cancer cells to spread. By narrowing what was once ...

TORONTO, April 24, 2015-- Preliminary results of a study of patients with prostate cancer show that MR tractography may be a reliable quantitative imaging biomarker to assess prostate cancer treatment response to androgen deprivation and radiation therapy, according to a team of researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Quantitative evaluation shows higher tract densities after androgen deprivation and radiation therapy, reflecting gland shrinkage and subsequent fibrosis. Twenty-two patients with elevated prostate-specific ...

Stem cells naturally cling to feeder cells as they grow in petri dishes. Scientists have thought for years that this attachment occurs because feeder cells serve as a support system, providing stems cells with essential nutrients. But a new study that successfully grew stem cells with dead, or fixed, feeder cells suggests otherwise. The discovery, described in the Journal of Materials Chemistry B, challenges the theory that feeder cells provide nutrients to growing stem cells. It also means that the relationship between the two cells is superficial, according to ...

Aid workers who provide shelter following natural disasters, such as hurricanes or earthquakes, should consider long-term archaeological information about how locals constructed their homes in the past, and what they do when they repair and rebuild. Archaeologists and international humanitarian organizations are both involved in recovery, with the former doing this for the past, and the latter for the present. So says Alice Samson of the University of Cambridge in the UK, leader of an archaeological overview of building practices used in the Caribbean 1,400 to 450 years ...

New research published today in the journal Nature Communications represents a potentially fundamental shift in our understanding of how nerve cells in the brain generate the energy needed to function. The study shows neurons are more independent than previously believed and this research has implications for a range of neurological disorders. "These findings suggest that we need to rethink the way we look at brain metabolism," said Maiken Nedergaard, M.D., D.M.Sc., co-director of the University of Rochester Center for Translational Neuromedicine and lead author of ...

(April 15th, 2015) Coeliac disease is one of the most common life-long conditions in Europe, yet many people remain undiagnosed and lengthy diagnostic delays may be putting lives at risk. Today, doctors are being urged to consider testing for Coeliac disease in anyone showing signs and symptoms of the condition and to consider screening everyone in high-risk groups. A paper published in this month's special Coeliac disease (CD) issue of the UEG Journal assessed the viability of screening for CD in the general population and concluded that screening of first-degree relatives ...

April 24, 2015 - A simple method of testing "twilight vision" gives reliable results in identifying people who have decreased visual acuity under low light conditions, according to a study in the May issue of Optometry and Vision Science, official journal of the American Academy of Optometry. The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer. Using filters to test at a light level 100 times lower than for daylight visual acuity testing, vision care professionals can obtain "reliable and repeatable" measurements of twilight vision, report Jason S. Ng, OD, PhD, and colleagues ...

MAYWOOD, Il. - The recent Great Recession was accompanied by a significant and sustained increase in major depression in U.S. adults, according to a Loyola study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. Prevalence of major depression increased from 2.33 percent during the years 2005-2006 to 3.49 percent in 2009-2010 to 3.79 percent in 2011-2012, according to the study by Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine researchers. Prevalence of less-severe depression increased from 4.1 percent in 2005-2006 to 4.79 percent in 2009-2010, but then declined ...

Leesburg, VA, April 24, 2015--Digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) increases the rate of cancer detection in women with dense breast tissue by as much as 67%, according to new research from the Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia. "There are a lot of data showing that screening with DBT increases cancer detection, but much less is known about the effect of density and lesion type on detection rates," said coauthor Caroline Ling. "We found a striking increase in detection among women with dense breasts called back for mass and asymmetry relative to nondense breasts." The ...

Functional analysis of a cell, which is the fundamental unit of life, is important for gaining new insights into medical and pharmaceutical fields. For efficiently studying cell functions, it is essential to reconstruct cellular microenvironments by parallel manipulation of single cells. Various cell manipulation techniques including fluidic, optical, and electrical techniques have been developed. However, all these techniques lack flexibility with respect to changes in the cellular types, number, and places. In addition, the manipulations, which have been conducted in ...

While seeking targets to attack Huntington's disease, an incurable inherited neurodegenerative disorder, neurobiologists of the research group led by Professor Erich Wanker of the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in the Helmholtz Association found what they were looking for. Using a filtering strategy borrowed from criminologists, the researchers systematically filtered interaction networks of various biological databases. In several steps, they increasingly narrowed down their search until they ultimately found the protein (CRMP1). In subsequent lab experiments ...

Dropping off a child at kindergarten for the first time can be one of the most memorable yet terrifying experiences of parenthood. Among the many concerns parents face is the worry whether your child will make friends - a key factor, research shows, in reducing anxiety, depression and the likelihood of being bullied. For parents of children with disabilities, the concern is even greater as four-out-of-10 of their children will enter kindergarten without the social skills necessary to develop close friendships. The response from schools has been to create inclusive classrooms, ...

A new technique that identifies how genes are controlled could help scientists spot errors in the genetic code which trigger disease, a study suggests. The method focusses on those parts of DNA - known as enhancer regions - which regulate the activity of genes and direct the production of proteins that have key functions within the body. Errors in protein production can result in a wide range of diseases in people, researchers say. The new method could help researchers pinpoint the source of disease-causing mutations in enhancers. Until now, these genetic errors ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Nearly half of American hospitals aren't taking key steps to prevent a kind of gut infection that kills nearly 30,000 people annually and sickens hundreds of thousands more - despite strong evidence that such steps work, according to a new study. While nearly all of the 398 hospitals in the study use a variety of measures to protect their patients from Clostridium difficile infections, 48 percent haven't adopted strict limits on the use of antibiotics and other drugs that can allow the dangerous bug to flourish, the researchers report. Hospital ...

This news release is available in German. The world is a risky place. But our subjective fears and anxieties are often at odds with the evidence. New findings by scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and the University of Konstanz show that subjective fears about potential risks may be amplified in social exchange. Their findings have now been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). In our information society, information about risks such as Ebola and measles can spread like wildfire - be it through ...

A team of Belgian philosophers and plant biotechnologists have turned to cognitive science to explain why opposition to genetically modified organisms (GMOs) has become so widespread, despite positive contributions GM crops have made to sustainable agriculture. In a paper published April 10 in Trends in Plant Science, they argue that the human mind is highly susceptible to the negative and often emotional representations put out by certain environmental groups and other opponents of GMOs. The researchers urge the general public to form opinions on GMOs on a case-by-case ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Orphaned children in low- and middle-income countries face a high risk of trauma, with physical and sexual abuse being by far the most prevalent traumatic events. New research shows that orphaned boys in these settings are just as likely to experience abuse as girls. As a result, the study authors suggest targeting more support services and prevention programs toward protecting vulnerable boys. Researchers from Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill found that physical and sexual abuse affects 12 percent of girls and 14 ...

Thinking "time is money" can be a barrier for people to act in environmentally friendly ways, even for tasks like recycling that take mere seconds, according to UBC research. As Earth Day approaches on April 22, this dynamic has led to an unsettling outcome. "Putting a price tag on time leaves individuals to focus on their own needs and goals, as opposed to the needs and goals of others, including the environment," says Ashley Whillans, PhD student in UBC's Department of Psychology and lead author of a paper on the subject. In one of the paper's studies, a group of ...

The gold standard for analyzing the behavior of fusion plasmas may have just gotten better. Mario Podestà, a staff physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), has updated the worldwide computer program known as TRANSP to better simulate the interaction between energetic particles and instabilities - disturbances in plasma that can halt fusion reactions. The program's updates, reported this week in the journal Nuclear Fusion, could lead to improved capability for predicting the effects of some types of instabilities in future ...