A decade of strategic efforts to improve care has had a key role in improving quality of life and added years to predicted survival for people with cystic fibrosis (CF) in the United States, according to the editors of a BMJ Quality & Safety supplement dedicated to the disease. Health outcomes for CF have improved dramatically following implementation of an innovative and aggressive plan to promote quality improvement at CF care centres. This includes benchmarking comparisons of current care with best practice; use of a patient registry to track outcomes; patient ...

Over the last 20 years, China has more than halved its tuberculosis (TB) prevalence, with rates falling from 170 to 59 per 100 000 population. This unrivalled success has been driven by a massive scale-up of the directly observed, short-course (DOTS) strategy, from half the population in the 1990s to the entire country after 2000, according to findings from a 20-year-long analysis of national survey data, published in The Lancet. "One of the key global TB targets set by the Stop TB Partnership aims to reduce tuberculosis prevalence by 50% between 1990 and 2015. This study ...

DALLAS, March 17, 2014 — Brain sensors and electronic tags that dissolve. Boosting the potential of renewable energy sources. These are examples of the latest research from two pioneering scientists selected as this year's Kavli lecturers at the 247th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society. The meeting features more than 10,000 presentations from the frontiers of chemical research, and is being held here through Thursday. Two of these talks are supported by The Kavli Foundation, a philanthropic organization ...

1. Evidence does not support guidelines on fatty acid consumption to reduce coronary risk Current evidence does not support nutritional guidelines that advocate high consumption of polyunsaturated fatty acids and low consumption of total saturated fats, according to an article being published in Annals of Internal Medicine. For cardiovascular health, nutritional guidelines generally encourage low consumption of saturated fats, high consumption of w-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids, and avoidance of trans fats. However, uncertainties in available evidence have contributed ...

Philadelphia (March 17, 2014) – Scientists from the Monell Chemical Senses Center have found that children who most prefer high levels of sweet tastes also most prefer high levels of salt taste and that, in general, children prefer sweeter and saltier tastes than do adults. These preferences relate not only to food intake but also to measures of growth and can have important implications for efforts to change children's diets. Many illnesses of modern society are related to poor food choices. Because children consume far more sugar and salt than recommended, which contributes ...

PHILADELPHIA—A new study led by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has found that the risk of hepatitis C-associated serious liver disease persists in HIV patients otherwise benefitting from antiretroviral therapy (ART) to treat HIV. It has been suggested that ART slows hepatitis C-associated liver fibrosis; however, whether rates of severe liver complications in patients co-infected with HIV and hepatitis C receiving ART were similar to those with just hepatitis C remained unclear. The study, published in the March 18 ...

Identifying biomarkers could lead to earlier detection of preeclampsia, which in turn can lead to healthier mothers and children, according to a collaborative study from the Centre of Molecular Inflammation Research (CEMIR) and the MR Cancer Group at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). Their findings, "Metabolomic Biomarkers in Serum and Urine in Women with Preeclampsia," will be published in PLOS ONE on 17 March. "We have found that the metabolism in women who experience preeclampsia is clearly different from women with normal pregnancies. The ...

A new study raises questions about current guidelines which generally restrict the consumption of saturated fats and encourage consumption of polyunsaturated fats to prevent heart disease. The research was published today, 18 March, in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine. An international research collaboration led by the University of Cambridge analysed existing cohort studies and randomised trials on coronary risk and fatty acid intake. They showed that current evidence does not support guidelines which restrict the consumption of saturated fats in order to prevent ...

DALLAS, March 17, 2014 — A color-coded smart tag could tell consumers whether a carton of milk has turned sour or a can of green beans has spoiled without opening the containers, according to researchers. The tag, which would appear on the packaging, also could be used to determine if medications and other perishable products were still active or fresh, they said. This report on the color-changing food deterioration tags was presented today as part of the 247th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society. ...

Improving the coordination of care for elderly patients with chronic diseases trims costs, reduces use of health services and cuts complications, according to a new RAND Corporation study. Studying a large group of Medicare patients, researchers found that even modest improvements in the continuity of care among patients with diabetes, congestive heart failure or emphysema were associated with sizable reductions in use of hospital emergency departments and hospitalizations. The findings, published online by JAMA Internal Medicine, suggest that improving the coordination ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — One in eight visits to a a doctor for a headache or migraine end up with the patient going for a brain scan, at a total cost of about $1 billion a year, a new University of Michigan Medical School study finds. And many of those MRI and CT scans – and costs – are probably unnecessary, given the very low odds that serious issues lurk in the patients' brains. In fact, several national guidelines for doctors specifically discourage scanning the brains of patients who complain of headache and migraine. But the new study shows the rate of brain scans for ...

A unique 39-year study of wildflower blooms in a Colorado Rocky Mountain meadow shows more than two-thirds of alpine flowers have changed their blooming pattern in response to climate change. Not only are half the flowers beginning to bloom weeks earlier, but more than a third are reaching their peak bloom earlier, and others are producing their last blooms later in the year. The bloom season, which used to run from late May to early September, now lasts from late April to late September, according to University of Maryland Biology Professor David Inouye. The wildflower ...

ANN ARBOR—University of Michigan researchers have learned how to fix a cellular structure called the Golgi that mysteriously becomes fragmented in all Alzheimer's patients and appears to be a major cause of the disease. They say that understanding this mechanism helps decode amyloid plaque formation in the brains of Alzheimer's patients—plaques that kills cells and contributes to memory loss and other Alzheimer's symptoms. The researchers discovered the molecular process behind Golgi fragmentation, and also developed two techniques to 'rescue' the Golgi structure. ...

It's a jungle in there. In the tightly woven ecosystem of the human gut, trillions of bacteria compete with each other on a daily basis while they sense and react to signals from the immune system, ingested food, and other bacteria. Problems arise when bad gut bugs overtake friendly ones, or when the immune system is thrown off balance, as in Crohn's disease, celiac disease, and colorectal cancer. Doctors have struggled to diagnose these conditions early and accurately. But now a new engineered strain of E. coli bacteria could deliver status updates from this complex ...

Using genome sequencing, National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientists and their colleagues have tracked the evolution of the antibiotic-resistant bacterium Klebsiella pneumoniae sequence type 258 (ST258), an important agent of hospital-acquired infections. While researchers had previously thought that ST258 K. pneumoniae strains spread from a single ancestor, the NIH team showed that the strains arose from at least two different lineages. The investigators also found that the key difference between the two groups lies in the genes involved in production of the bacterium's ...

Engineers would love to create flexible electronic devices, such as e-readers that could be folded to fit into a pocket. One approach they are trying involves designing circuits based on electronic fibers, known as carbon nanotubes (CNTs), instead of rigid silicon chips. But reliability is essential. Most silicon chips are based on a type of circuit design that allows them to function flawlessly even when the device experiences power fluctuations. However, it is much more challenging to do so with CNT circuits. Now a team at Stanford has developed a process to create ...

WASHINGTON, DC, and DALLAS (March 17, 2014) – The increasing number of percutaneous coronary interventions (PCIs) being performed at low-volume centers without on-site cardiac surgery backup has driven the need for new safety and quality protocols, according to an expert consensus document released today and written by a committee representing the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions (SCAI), the American College of Cardiology Foundation (ACCF) and the American Heart Association (AHA). The document outlines steps hospitals can take to provide the safest ...

Researchers from the British Antarctic Survey and University of Reading report in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on March 17 that Antarctic mosses can essentially come back to life after 1,500 completely inactive years under the ice. Prior to this finding, direct regeneration from frozen plant material had been demonstrated after 20 years at most. Beyond that, only microbes had been shown to be capable of revival after so many years on hold. "These mosses were basically in a very long-term deep freeze," says Peter Convey of the British Antarctic Survey. "This ...

A review of nearly 200 research articles (~75% published in the last ten years) shows how the issue of population growth is being downplayed and trivialized despite its fundamental role on modern crises related to unemployment, public debt, welfare (e.g., reduced access to food and water or even health and education), extinction of species and climate change. The study suggests that no foreseeable pathways, to fix or ameliorate such crises, are likely without seriously dealing with natality rates by both developed and developing nations. The paper is written by Camilo ...

A new study indicates that in younger adults experiencing heart attacks and angina, men are more likely to receive faster care compared with women. The study, published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) also found that gender-related factors affected access to care for both men and women. To understand why sex differences in mortality exist in younger men and women with acute coronary syndrome, researchers included 1123 patients aged 18 to 55 years recruited from 24 centres across Canada, 1 in the United States and 1 in Switzerland. Of the participants, ...

Researchers from the British Antarctic Survey and Reading University have demonstrated that, after over 1,500 years frozen in Antarctic ice, moss can come back to life and continue to grow. For the first time, this vital part of the ecosystem in both polar regions has been shown to have the ability to survive century to millennial scale ice ages. This provides exciting new insight into the survival of life on Earth. The team, reporting in Current Biology this week, observed moss regeneration after at least 1,530 years frozen in permafrost. This is the first study to show ...

DALLAS, March 17, 2014 — In response to drug-resistant "superbugs" that send millions of people to hospitals around the world, scientists are building tiny, "molecular drill bits" that kill bacteria by bursting through their protective cell walls. They presented some of the latest developments on these drill bits, better known to scientists as antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), at the 247th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society. The meeting, which features more than 10,000 scientific reports across disciplines ...

DALLAS, March 17, 2014 — Shale, the source of the United States' current natural gas boom, could help solve another energy problem: what to do with radioactive waste from nuclear power plants. The unique properties of the sedimentary rock and related clay-rich rocks make it ideal for storing the potentially dangerous spent fuel for millennia, according to a geologist studying possible storage sites who made a presentation here today. The talk was one of more than 10,000 presentations at the 247th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the ...

DALLAS, March 17, 2014 — Body odor is a deer hunter's worst enemy, an alert to animals that an ominous presence is lurking, but the science behind suppressing it to give hunters an edge oddly enough could help researchers develop a life-saving device for diabetes patients. Scientists today presented the latest advances that tie together these two seemingly unrelated fronts at the 247th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society. The meeting, attended by thousands of scientists, features more than 10,000 ...

VIDEO: A team of biologists and engineers at UC San Diego applied advanced mathematical tools to answer a basic question in cell biology about how cells move and discovered that the... Click here for more information. A team of biologists and engineers at the University of California, San Diego has discovered that white blood cells, which repair damaged tissue as part of the body's immune response, move to inflamed sites by walking in a stepwise manner. The cells periodically ...