PITTSBURGH, April 17, 2015 - A technique that removes blood clots from large brain blood vessels reduced disability after stroke in a trial conducted in Catalonia, Spain, and co-led by an expert from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. The findings will be announced today at the annual meeting of the European Stroke Organisation in Glasgow, Scotland, and published online in the New England Journal of Medicine. The results of the trial, known as REVASCAT, echo findings from other recent large studies that were stopped early when the technique, called endovascular ...

Los Angeles, CA (April 17, 2015) Though it is widely believed that the media objectifies women, women further diminish themselves by constantly comparing their bodies to others'. Regardless of how much time young women devote to viewing television, music videos and using the internet, they will compare their appearances more frequently to photos in magazines and on Facebook, finds a new paper published today in Psychology of Women Quarterly. "Our research shows that spending more time reading magazines and on Facebook is associated with greater self-objectification among ...

Stroke is the leading cause of severe long-term disability in the United States, and less than 40 percent of patients who experience the most severe form of stroke regain functional independence if they receive the standard drug intervention alone. Now a study by an international group of stroke physician-researchers has found that removal of the clot causing a severe stroke, in combination with the standard medication, improves the restoration of blood flow to the brain and may result in better long term outcomes. The findings of the Swift Prime trial (Solitaire With ...

A research paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) today confirms earlier findings that a procedure called endovascular therapy (ET) for ischemic stroke is the best treatment option for many patients by reducing the incidents of disability. This is the fourth research paper published this year that confirms the efficacy of the treatment. "Endovascular treatment using stent retrievers will become the standard of care for patients with acute ischemic stroke" says Dr. Mayank Goyal, University of Calgary, Cumming School of Medicine, Hotchkiss Brain Institute ...

Geneva, Switzerland, 17 April 2015 -- A subset of lung cancer patients can derive important clinical benefits from drugs that are more commonly used to treat melanoma, the authors of a new academic clinical trial in Europe have reported at the European Lung Cancer Conference (ELCC) in Geneva, Switzerland. Dr. Oliver Gautschi, a medical oncologist from Lucern Cantonal Hospital in Switzerland, presented the results of the retrospective EURAF cohort study, which included lung cancer patients whose tumours carried specific mutations in the BRAF gene. The study was conducted ...

Many professional golfers live a lonely isolated life in the midst of intense rivalries and on a meagre income, new research shows. Dr John Fry told the British Sociological Association's annual conference in Glasgow today [Friday 17 April] that he interviewed 20 professionals, including Ryder Cup players and a former world number one, to reveal the "particular stresses" behind the glamour of the game. Dr Fry, of Myerscough College, said that the number of tournaments held abroad had increased over recent years. "The impact of the increasingly global nature of professional ...

Demand for natural rubber fuelled by the tyre industry is threatening protected parts of Southeast Asia - according to research from the University of East Anglia (UEA). A new study published today predicts that up to 8.5 million hectares of additional rubber plantations will be required to meet demand by 2024. But expansion on this scale will have 'catastrophic' biodiversity impacts, with globally threatened unique species and ecosystems all put under threat. Researchers say that the extent of the problem is comparable to oil palm and that it is closely linked ...

The 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City in 2001 have left a legacy of chronic ill health among emergency medical services workers who came to the rescue of the victims, reveals research published online in Occupational & Environmental Medicine. Those who arrived in the immediate aftermath of the attacks are most at risk of physical and mental ailments, the findings show. The health of 2281 New York City Fire Department emergency medical services workers deployed to the scene of the World Trade Center attacks was tracked over a period of 12 years, ...

(Boston)--A Boston researcher and physician caring for individuals with substance abuse disorders, believes the term opioid substitution therapy (OST) has unintended adverse consequences for patients receiving treatment for addiction. In a correspondence to the editors of the journal Lancet, Jeffrey H. Samet, MD, MA, MPH, professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) and chief of the section of General Internal Medicine at Boston Medical Center maintains that the use of the non-medical term OST serves to reinforce the concept that this type of treatment ...

The Lancet Neurology journal is pleased to announce that the following papers will be published as part of a Series on autism spectrum disorder, ahead of the 2015 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Neurology: Gene hunting in autism spectrum disorder: on the path to precision medicine [Embargo: 6:30pm [New York time] Thursday 16 April, 2015] Neuroimaging in autism spectrum disorder: brain structure and function across the lifespan [Embargo: 6:30pm [New York time] Thursday 16 April, 2015] Gene hunting in autism spectrum disorder: on the path to precision medicine ...

Highlights Among dialysis patients, genetically related family members have about a 70% increased risk of cardiac arrest compared with unrelated dialysis patients. Spouses on dialysis do not have an increased risk. Cardiac arrest is the #1 cause of death in patients on dialysis. Washington, DC (April 16, 2015) -- The increased risk of cardiac arrest experienced by patients with kidney failure may, in part, be inherited, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN). Uncovering the genes that are ...

A new study has found that wind instrument players have a reduced risk of developing obstructive sleep apnoea. The findings, presented today (17 April 2015) at the Sleep and Breathing Conference 2015, suggest that this could be considered beneficial to those individuals who are at high risk of developing sleep apnoea. Researchers in India conducted lung function testing in 64 people who played a wind instrument and compared results to a control group of 65 people who did not play any wind instruments. All participants also completed the Berlin questionnaire, an established ...

Cancer-related post-traumatic stress is associated with very limited cognitive impairment before treatment among newly diagnosed breast cancer patients, according to a new study published April 16 in the JNCI: Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Pretreatment cognitive impairment and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder have been independently reported among cancer patients. Post-traumatic stress has also been linked to cognitive impairment. However, a clear relationship between post-traumatic stress in the setting of a cancer diagnosis and cognitive impairment ...

WASHINGTON, DC - A drug commonly taken to prevent seizures in epilepsy may surprisingly protect the eyesight of people with multiple sclerosis (MS), according to a study released today that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 67th Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, April 18 to 25, 2015. "About half of people with MS experience at some point in their life a condition called acute optic neuritis, in which the nerve carrying vision from the eye to the brain gets inflamed," said study author Raj Kapoor, MD, with the National Hospital for Neurology and ...

The rapid increase in use of e-cigarettes has led to heated debates between opponents who question the safety of these devices and proponents who claim the battery-operated products are a useful cessation tool. A study, published online on April 16 in the American Journal of Public Health, suggests proponents are in error. University of California, San Diego School of Medicine researchers found that smokers who used e-cigarettes were 49 percent less likely to decrease cigarette use and 59 percent less likely to quit smoking compared to smokers who never used e-cigarettes. ...

Boston, MA - Who decides who can carry concealed firearms legally? Should local police chiefs have a say? Massachusetts police chiefs think so. A new survey finds that a large majority of Massachusetts police chiefs favor continuing to give local police discretion in whether or not to grant concealed carry hand gun permits in their jurisdiction. Massachusetts is one of nine states with a "may-issue" concealed carry permit law, which gives a police chief discretion in issuing a gun permit; most other states have "shall-issue" laws that limit police discretion. In about half ...

Putnam Valley, NY. (Mar. 16, 2015) - Osteoarthritis (OA), a debilitating and painful degenerative disease, strikes an estimated 14 percent of adults 25 years of age and older, a third of adults age 65 and older in the U.S. alone. Those who suffer from OA may one day have a new and effective cell therapy, thanks to a team of Czech researchers who studied the effectiveness of using an OA patient's own adipose (fat) cells in a unique transplant therapy aimed at reducing the symptoms of this prevalent and difficult to treat condition as well as healing some of the damage caused ...

Using a novel methodology of epigenetic quantitative analysis, Dartmouth-Hitchcock's Norris Cotton Cancer Center's interdisciplinary team of investigators led by Camilo Fadul, MD, found no correlation between regulatory T cells (Tregs) and survival in the tumor microenvironment or blood, even when adjusting for well-known prognostic factors. Titled, "Regulatory T Cells Are Not a Strong Predictor of Survival for Patients with Glioblastoma," the findings were published in Neuro-Oncology. "The traditional methods to quantify Tregs may be subjective and result in variability ...

HANOVER, N.H. - Facebook users with so-called optimistic bias think they're less likely than other users to experience cyberbullying, depression and other negative social and psychological effects from using the site, a Dartmouth-Cornell study finds. The study suggests that optimistic bias, or an intrinsic tendency to imagine future events in a favorable light that enhances positive self-regard - in other words, wishful thinking - leaves those Facebook users vulnerable to the negative realities of social media. The findings appear in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, ...

"We contend that the health awareness day has not been held to an appropriate level of scrutiny given the scale at which it has been embraced," write Jonathan Purtle, DrPH and Leah Roman, MPH in a peer-reviewed commentary published online ahead of print today in the American Journal of Public Health. Purtle, an assistant professor at the Drexel University School of Public Health, and Roman, a public health consultant, were prompted to investigate the prevalence of evaluation data for health awareness days based on their observation of two trends: On one hand, health awareness ...

Researchers at the MIT Media Lab are developing a new wearable device that turns the user's thumbnail into a miniature wireless track pad. They envision that the technology could let users control wireless devices when their hands are full -- answering the phone while cooking, for instance. It could also augment other interfaces, allowing someone texting on a cellphone, say, to toggle between symbol sets without interrupting his or her typing. Finally, it could enable subtle communication in circumstances that require it, such as sending a quick text to a child while ...

Selective breeding of maize over the last century to create hybrids with desirable shoot characteristics and increased yield may have contributed indirectly to the evolution of root systems that are more efficient in acquiring nutrients, such as nitrogen, from the soil, according to researchers. Their results suggest that future breeding efforts that directly select for positive root traits could lead to yield gains needed to help feed a growing world population, while reducing pollution from excess nitrogen and reducing farmers' fertilizer costs. About half of the ...

Putnam Valley, NY. (Mar. 16, 2015) - Osteoarthritis (OA), a debilitating and painful degenerative disease, strikes an estimated 14 percent of adults 25 years of age and older, a third of adults age 65 and older in the U.S. alone. Those who suffer from OA may one day have a new and effective cell therapy, thanks to a team of Czech researchers who studied the effectiveness of using an OA patient's own adipose (fat) cells in a unique transplant therapy aimed at reducing the symptoms of this prevalent and difficult to treat condition as well as healing some of the damage caused ...

The likelihood of Asian carp eggs being kept in suspension and hatching in the St. Joseph River in Michigan has been further evaluated using a model that examines a range of multiple flow and water temperature scenarios. Results illustrate the highest percentage of Asian carp eggs at risk of hatching occurs when the streamflow is low and when the water temperature is high. This new study by the University of Illinois and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is published in the Journal of Great Lakes Research. "In this study, the Fluvial Egg Drift Simulator (FluEgg) model ...

Biological diversity brings beauty and variety to our lives and to the world around us. It also could be the key to keeping ecosystems strong, according to a new University of Minnesota study published April 17 in the journal Science. The study, led by Yann Hautier a Marie Curie Fellow associated with the College of Biological Sciences at the University of Minnesota and with the University of Oxford, U.K., looked at 28 years' worth of data on plant growth, number of species, ecosystem stability and exposure to changes in nitrogen, carbon dioxide, fire, grazing and water ...