A study of peanut consumption showed that including them as a part of a high fat meal improved the post-meal triglyceride response and preserved endothelial function. "Peanuts are a healthy snack when eaten as part of a healthy diet," said lead researcher Xiaoran Liu, a graduate student in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at The Pennsylvania State University. The purpose of this research was to evaluate vascular function after a high fat meal challenge. Overweight males (n = 15) were randomized to either a peanut meal containing 3 oz. of ground peanuts (as ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. - A new analysis reported in JAMA Psychiatry raises serious questions about the increasingly common use of second-generation antidepressant drugs to treat anxiety disorders. It concludes that studies supporting the value of these medications for that purpose have been distorted by publication bias, outcome reporting bias and "spin." Even though they may still play a role in treating these disorders, the effectiveness of the drugs has been overestimated. In some cases the medications, which are among the most widely prescribed drugs in the world, are ...

MADISON - Research has discovered a role for prolactin, the hormone that stimulates milk production in nursing mothers, in the bond between parents. The study relied on hormone analyses of urine from cotton-top tamarins, a small, endangered monkey native to Colombia. They live in monogamous family groups where both parents help care for the young, which is similar to humans. The study found a link between prolactin levels and sexual activity and cuddling among paired adults. Although this was a first for prolactin, it has previously been found for oxytocin, a hormone ...

The decades worth of data that has been collected about the billions of neurons in the brain is astounding. To help scientists make sense of this "brain big data," researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have used data mining to create http://www.neuroelectro.org, a publicly available website that acts like Wikipedia, indexing physiological information about neurons. The site will help to accelerate the advance of neuroscience research by providing a centralized resource for collecting and comparing data on neuronal function. A description of the data available and ...

MADISON - Even during a good year, soybean farmers nationwide are, in essence, taking a loss. That's because changes in weather patterns have been eating into their profits and taking quite a bite: $11 billion over the past 20 years. This massive loss has been hidden, in effect, by the impressive annual growth seen in soybean yields thanks to other factors. But that growth could have been 30 percent higher if weather variations resulting from climate change had not occurred, according to a study by University of Wisconsin-Madison agronomists published last month in Nature ...

BOSTON -A study led by Boston Medical Center (BMC) researchers demonstrates that while new therapies to treat Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) are highly effective, they are cost-effective and provide the greatest value in specific groups of HCV-infected patients. The findings of the study, led by Benjamin P. Linas, MD, MPH, from BMC's section of infectious diseases and the Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM), are published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The study focused on the combination of sofosbuvir and ribavirin for treatment of HCV genotypes 2 and 3, which ...

CLEVELAND - Adding to the clinical benefits and improved patient outcomes associated with minimally invasive surgery, Medtronic highlighted a study published in the March 25 online edition of JAMA Surgery. The new study demonstrated that patients who underwent laparoscopic colectomy procedures required fewer days of health care utilization and the health care system spent less on their acute and follow-up care than those who underwent traditional open surgery. "We found that the use of minimally invasive laparoscopic approaches in a select group of patients undergoing ...

(Boston, MA) March 30, 2015 - A new study presented today at Experimental Biology 2015 confirms that vegetable consumption is very low among women of childbearing age (WCBA), and that the nutrient-rich white potato is an important vegetable to this population's diet, particularly among subgroups with the lowest intake. The results are consistent with the Institute of Medicine findings that mean total vegetable consumption of women ages 19 to 50 years is extremely low--with intakes at just 50% of the 2.5 cup equivalents per day recommended for most WCBA by the 2010 Dietary ...

WASHINGTON D.C., March 30, 2015 - Plants living in arid, mountainous and humid regions of the planet often rely on their leaves to obtain the moisture they need for survival by pulling mist out of the air. But how exactly they manage this feat has been a bit of a mystery--until now. By studying the morphology and physiology of plants with tiny conical "hairs" or microfibers on the surface of their leaves, such as tomatoes, balsam pears and the flowers Berkheya purpea and Lychnis sieboldii, a team of researchers in Japan uncovered water collection-and-release secrets that ...

Cholesterol-lowering statins have transformed the treatment of heart disease. But while the decision to use the drugs in patients with a history of heart attacks and strokes is mostly clear-cut, that choice can be a far trickier proposition for the tens of millions of Americans with high cholesterol but no overt disease. Now a report from preventive cardiologists at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere offers a set of useful tips for physicians to help their patients make the right call. The report, published March 30 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, combines ...

TORONTO, March 30, 2015 - In their latest brain imaging study on women at risk for Alzheimer's disease, York University researchers have found deterioration in the pathways that serve to communicate signals between different brain regions needed for performing everyday activities such as driving a car or using a computer. "We observed a relationship between the levels of deterioration in the brain wiring and their performance on our task that required simultaneous thinking and moving; what we see here is a result of communication failure," explains Professor Lauren Sergio ...

SAN ANTONIO, Texas, U.S.A. (March 30, 2015) -- Patients with chronic kidney disease may be treated with a class of medications called Renin Angiotensin Aldosterone System inhibitors (RAASI's). Although these drugs protect the heart and kidney, a significant percentage of patients develop a dangerous side effect -- high potassium levels in the blood (hyperkalemia). Elevated potassium puts patients at risk of death from cardiac arrhythmias. Lacking a drug to treat the problem, doctors either stop these beneficial drugs or may use kidney dialysis to quickly lower the potassium. At ...

If a lump is found in the breast of an adolescent girl, she often will undergo an excisional biopsy. However, breast cancer is rare in adolescents, and the vast majority of teenage breast lumps turn out to be benign masses that are related to hormones and often go away over time. A recent Loyola University Health System study published in the Journal of Ultrasound in Medicine suggests that a breast ultrasound examination might eliminate the need for biopsy in many cases. Loyola radiologists studied 37 teen girls with a total of 45 breast lumps to determine whether ...

The DNA molecule is chemically unstable giving rise to DNA lesions of different nature. That is why DNA damage detection, signaling and repair, collectively known as the DNA damage response, are needed. The DNA damage response is immensely important, for example, for ensuring the highest possible quality of the DNA before replication - duplication of the DNA prior to cell division. If the damaged DNA is replicated, the risk of cancer and other diseases increases significantly due to mutations. All in all this may lead to the death of a cell itself. DNA repair consists ...

Fasting in combination with chemotherapy has already been shown to kill cancer cells, but a pair of new studies in mice suggests that a less-toxic class of drugs combined with fasting may kill breast, colorectal and lung cancer cells equally well. If shown to work in humans, this combination could replace chemotherapy and make fasting a potent component of a long-term strategy to treat cancer, according to senior author Valter Longo of USC. Human clinical trials in the United States and Europe are already studying the effectiveness and safety of Longo's strategy of ...

TORONTO, March 30, 2015 - In their latest brain imaging study on women at risk for Alzheimer's disease, York University researchers have found deterioration in the pathways that serve to communicate signals between different brain regions needed for performing everyday activities such as driving a car or using a computer. "We observed a relationship between the levels of deterioration in the brain wiring and their performance on our task that required simultaneous thinking and moving; what we see here is a result of communication failure," explains Professor Lauren Sergio ...

March 30, 2015 - New estimates suggest that 20 to 30 percent of opioid analgesic drugs prescribed for chronic pain are misused, while the rate of opioid addiction is approximately 10 percent, reports a study in the April issue of END ...

New guidelines from the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care to help prevent and manage obesity in children and youth recommend regular growth monitoring at routine health care visits as well as a focus on family lifestyles and health behaviours. The guidelines, published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal), are aimed at helping primary care practitioners address this major public health issue. Growth monitoring includes measuring weight, height or length, calculating body mass index and plotting these according to age using the measures on the WHO ...

SAN FRANCISCO--Located in the Marmara Sea, major earthquakes along the North Anatolian Fault (NAF) system have repeatedly struck what is current-day Istanbul and the surrounding region, but determining the recurrence rate has proven difficult since the faults are offshore. Cores of marine sediment reveal an earthquake history of the Cinarcik Segment, a main branch of NAF, and suggest a seismic gap where the next earthquake is likely to rupture, as detailed in a new study published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (BSSA). The area has experienced ...

Researchers have been fascinated for a long time by learning and memory formation, and many questions are still open. Bochum-based neuroscientists Prof Dr Denise Manahan-Vaughan and Dr Hardy Hagena have discovered a key building block for this complex process. A particular neurotransmitter receptor, namely the metabotropic glutamate receptor 5, is a switch for activating opposing forms of plasticity in the hippocampus, a brain region vital for memory forming. They reported in the current edition of "The Journal of Neuroscience". Synapses between neurons process different ...

While the body of evidence for feeding recommendations for children continues to evolve, one constant remains: Children do not eat enough vegetables. In fact, more than 90% of young children fail to meet vegetable recommendations, and these patterns often persist into adolescence and adulthood, making it important to understand the factors involved in establishing feeding patterns in early childhood. Are children not eating their vegetables because of texture, lack of role modeling, negative sensory experience, delayed introduction, bitter taste, infrequent exposure, rejection ...

A new star rating system can help hockey players to know just how well each helmet on the market can protect them from suffering head injuries and concussions during the course of a season. The "Hockey STAR" (Summation of Tests for the Analysis of Risk) rating is an extension of a similar rating system developed for football helmets. It was developed by researchers from Virginia Tech in the US, led by Bethany Rowson, and reported on in Springer's journal Annals of Biomedical Engineering. More ice hockey players suffer concussion while playing hockey than their counterparts ...

Researchers at MIT and Northwestern University have developed a new peer-to-peer networking tool that enables sufferers of anxiety and depression to build online support communities and practice therapeutic techniques. In a study involving 166 subjects who had exhibited symptoms of depression, the researchers compared their tool with an established technique known as expressive writing. The new tool yielded better outcomes across the board, but it had particular advantages in two areas: One was in training subjects to use a therapeutic technique called cognitive reappraisal, ...

PHILADELPHIA -- Intensive care units across the United States vary widely in how they manage the care of patients who have set preexisting limits on life-sustaining therapies, such as authorizing do-not-resuscitate (DNR) orders and prohibiting interventions such as feeding tubes or dialysis, according to new research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Their work is published in the current issue of JAMA Internal Medicine. "We've long known that end-of-life and critical care varies across nations, regions and centers, whether from ...

Bacteria have been discovered in the bladders of healthy women, discrediting the common belief that normal urine is sterile. This finding and its implications were addressed in an editorial published by researchers from Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine (SSOM) in the latest issue of European Urology. "Clinicians previously equated the presence of bacteria in urine to infections. The discovery of bacteria in the urine of healthy females provides an opportunity to advance our understanding of bladder health and disease," said Alan Wolfe, PhD, lead author ...