A cancer drug that has shown promise against Alzheimer's disease in mice and has begun early clinical trials has yielded perplexing results in a novel mouse model of AD that mimics the genetics and pathology of the human disease more closely than any other animal model. The drug, bexarotene, was found to reduce levels of the neurotoxic protein amyloid-beta in experimental mice with late-stage Alzheimer's but to increase levels during early stages of disease. The finding, by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine, was reported July 16 ...

The Annals of Family Medicine today published an article detailing research showing that women with a history of pregnancy loss are at higher risk for cardiovascular disease later in adulthood than other women, work completed by physicians in the Center for Primary Care and Prevention (CPCP) at Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island. The article "Risk of Cardiovascular Disease Among Postmenopausal Women with Prior Pregnancy Loss: The Women's Health Initiative" stems from the analysis of data from the maternity experiences of a sample of 77,701 women, according to Donna Parker, ...

The 2010 Deepwater Horizon (DWH) spill in the Gulf of Mexico was the largest accidental release of oil into the ocean, with approximately 210 million gallons gushing from the blown out well. In an attempt to prevent vast quantities of oil from fouling beaches and marshes, BP applied 1.84 million gallons of chemical dispersant to oil to oil released in the subsurface and to oil slicks at the sea surface. The dispersant was thought to rapidly degrade in the environment. A new study by scientists at Haverford College and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) has found ...

CHICAGO – A new study authored by Northwestern Medicine® researchers found that reviewing electronic health records (EHRs) using algorithms can successfully identify patients with previously undiagnosed hypertension, or high blood pressure, with a high rate of accuracy. Of the 1,033 patients that were identified with the EHR algorithms and evaluated, 361 were formally diagnosed with the hypertension and 290 others were diagnosed with related blood pressure conditions such as prehypertension, white-coat hypertension or elevated blood pressure. The study, "A Technology-Based ...

LIVERPOOL, UK – 17 July 2014: An untreatable and deadly neurodegenerative disease has been modelled and treated in worms by University of Liverpool researchers, suggesting a cure could be found for humans. The scientists studied adult onset neuronal lipofuscinosis (ANCL) which usually strikes around 1 in 100,000 people in Europe and North America in their 30s and results in death by the mid-40s. There is currently no known treatment for this disease, though it has recently been identified as being caused by mutations in the gene called DNAJC5. For the first time scientists, ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – July 16, 2014 – Heart disease and stroke are the leading causes of death and disability among people with Type 2 diabetes. In fact, at least 65 percent of people with diabetes die from some form of heart disease or stroke, according to the American Heart Association. However, a new study by researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center suggests that the use of cholesterol-lowering statins may help prolong the lives of people with diabetic cardiovascular disease. The study is published in the current online edition of Diabetes Care. "Although ...

CHICAGO (July 16, 2014) – Thousands of critically ill patients on life support develop ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) each year. A new document released today by a consortium of professional organizations helps prioritize strategies to prevent this potentially fatal infection. This guidance, featured in the update of the Compendium of Strategies to Prevent Healthcare-Associated Infections in Acute Care Hospitals, is published in the August issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology and was produced in a collaborative effort led by the Society for Healthcare ...

HOUSTON – (July 16, 2014) – Being a part of a business group and participating in capital markets can have a significant positive impact on an Indian company's performance in the stock market, according to a new study on Indian entrepreneurship by emerging-economy experts at Rice University, the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad, India, and the graduate business school INSEAD Singapore. The findings contradict prior research that suggests business groups in developing economies act mainly as substitutes to poorly developed economic institutions in these countries. ...

Does practice really make perfect? It's an age-old question, and a new study from Rice University, Princeton University and Michigan State University finds that while practice won't make you perfect, it will usually make you better at what you're practicing. "This question is the subject of a long-running debate in psychology," said Fred Oswald, professor and chair of psychology at Rice and one of the study's co-authors. "Why do so few people who are involved in sports such as golf, musical instruments such as the violin or careers such as law or medicine ever reach an ...

CHICAGO (July 16, 2014) – Cases of the highly contagious, drug-resistant bacteria, carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), have increased fivefold in community hospitals in the Southeastern United States, according to a new study published in the August issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America. "This dangerous bacteria is finding its way into healthcare facilities nationwide. Even this marked increase likely underestimates the true scope of the problem given variations in hospital surveillance ...

The repetitive facilitation exercise (RFE) is one of the most common rehabilitation tactics for stroke patients attempting to regain wrist movement. Stroke hemiparesis individuals are not able to move that part of their body because they cannot create a strong enough neural signal that travels from the brain to the wrist. With RFE, however, patients get a mental boost. They are asked to think about moving. At the same time, a practitioner flexes the wrist. The goal is to send a long latency response from the stretch that arrives in the brain at the exact time the thought ...

DARIEN, IL – A new study shows that worse sleep quality predicts lower physical activity in people with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Results show that PTSD was independently associated with worse sleep quality at baseline, and participants with current PTSD at baseline had lower physical activity one year later. Further analysis found that sleep quality completely mediated the relationship between baseline PTSD status and physical activity at the one-year follow-up, providing preliminary evidence that the association of reduced sleep quality with reduced physical ...

BEER-SHEVA, ISRAEL July 16, 2014... While the Mediterranean diet may have broad health benefits, its impact on cognitive decline differs among race-specific populations, according to a new study published in the Journal of Gerontology. The team of researchers, including Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU Prof. Danit R. Shahar RD, Ph.D, analyzed an NIH/NIA prospective cohort study [Health ABC] conducted over eight years in the U.S. to measure the effects of adherence to a Mediterranean diet. Prof. Shahar is affiliated with the BGU S. Daniel Abraham International Center ...

Neuropsychological impairment has long been established as a fundamental characteristic of depression, but a specific pattern of impairment that is widely recognized has not been summarized. Professor Jia Hongxiao and his group from the Beijing Anding Hospital, Capital Medical University, explore major depressive disorder (MDD) from the perspective of neuropsychology. They found that the self-serving bias and self-recognition bias were impaired in individuals suffering from MDD compared with a control group. This research lays the groundwork for further study on the etiology ...

People with higher job status may be more willing to compromise privacy for security reasons and also be more determined to carry out those decisions, according to researchers. This preoccupation with security may shape policy and decision-making in areas ranging from terrorism to investing, and perhaps cloud other options, said Jens Grossklags, assistant professor of information sciences and technology, Penn State. "What may get lost in the decision-making process is that one can enhance security without the negative impact on privacy," said Grossklags. "It's more ...

Opioids – strong morphine-based painkillers – are widely prescribed to patients experiencing chronic severe pain. While these drugs are very effective for treating and managing pain, they have one particularly bothersome side effect: constipation. A new drug, called naloxegol, could bring relief. In stage 3 trials reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, KU Leuven and international researchers provide new evidence that the drug relieves constipation without dulling opioids' pain-relieving effects. Up until a decade ago, physicians rarely prescribed opioids, reserving ...

Popping the blisters on the bubble wrap might be the most enjoyable thing about moving. But now, scientists propose a more productive way to reuse the popular packing material — as a sheet of small, test tube-like containers for medical and environmental samples. Their report, which shows that analyses can take place right in the bubbles, appears in the ACS journal Analytical Chemistry. George Whitesides and colleagues explain that although bubble wrap filled with biological samples, like blood or urine, or chemicals would have to be handled carefully, the material offers ...

New Rochelle, NY, July 16, 2014–Experimental drugs proven safe but perhaps not sufficiently effective in initial testing or against a first disease target may sit gathering dust on the shelves of pharmaceutical companies. An NIH-sponsored effort based on a crowdsourcing strategy to establish collaborations between industrial and academic partners to test and develop these therapeutic compounds was met with an overwhelming response and has led to clinical testing of a broad range of pilot projects and a newly announced round of funding opportunities. These findings are described ...

Republicans search the Net for information about the weather, climate change and global warming during extremely hot or cold spells. Democrats Google these terms when they experience changes in the average temperatures. These are some of the surprising findings from a study by Corey Lang of the University of Rhode Island in the US, published in Springer's journal Climatic Change. He tracked how the temperature fluctuations and rainfall that Americans experience daily in their own cities make them scour the Internet in search of information about climate change and global ...

If you've ever tried to watch a video on a tablet on a sunny day, you know you have to tilt it at just the right angle to get rid of glare or invest in a special filter. But now scientists are reporting in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces that they've developed a novel glass surface that reduces both glare and reflection, which continue to plague even the best mobile displays today. Valerio Pruneri and colleagues note that much effort has been poured into anti-reflective and anti-glare technology. In the highly competitive digital age, any bonus feature ...

DETROIT — Researchers at Wayne State University have made a fundamental discovery and, in subsequent collaboration with scientists at La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology (LIAI), are one step closer to the goal of developing the world's first T-cell peptide-based vaccine for heart disease — the number one killer in the nation. Atherosclerosis is a chronic inflammatory disease of the arterial walls, which thicken due to accumulation of fatty materials such as cholesterols and triglycerides. Blocking of arteries supplying blood to the heart is the underlying cause ...

Scientists have discovered a new pathway the dengue virus takes to suppress the human immune system. This new knowledge deepens our understanding of the virus and could contribute to the development of more effective therapeutics. For years, the conventional approach to target the dengue virus was through vector control, which was regarded to be the most effective method. This is because the mechanics of the virus have been elusive, which in turn hampered the development of effective treatments and vaccines. Fortunately a new study, published in the prestigious journal ...

A new protein biomarker test platform developed by researchers at the University of Michigan and Indiana University promises to improve diagnostic testing. The test can accurately and simultaneously measure multiple proteins that indicate the presence of diseases like graft-versus-host disease (bone marrow transplant rejection) in only two hours, no washing steps, and using only a minute volume of blood plasma. A report on this new technology can be found online in the journal TECHNOLOGY. The protein test uses a micropatterning method developed in Shuichi Takayama's Micro/Nano/Molecular ...

As sea ice begins to melt back toward its late September minimum, it is being watched as never before. Scientists have put sensors on and under ice in the Beaufort Sea for an unprecedented campaign to monitor the summer melt. The international effort hopes to figure out the physics of the ice edge in order to better understand and predict open water in Arctic seas. "This has never been done at this level, over such a large area and for such a long period of time," said principal investigator Craig Lee, an oceanographer at the University of Washington's Applied Physics ...

On 16 July 2014 the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) published the results of a literature search for evidence-based clinical practice guidelines on the treatment of people with breast cancer. The aim of the report is to identify those recommendations from current guidelines of high methodological quality that may be relevant for the planned revision of the disease management programme (DMP). According to the results of the report, there is no compelling need for revision of any part of the DMP. However, IQWiG identified some aspects that ...