Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have completed the first comprehensive survey of e-cigarettes for sale online and the results, they believe, underscore the complexity in regulating the rapidly growing market for the electronic nicotine delivery devices. The survey, published in a June 16 special supplement of the journal Tobacco Control, found that 10 new e-cigarette brands entered the Internet marketplace every month, on average, from 2012 to 2014, and that there are currently 466 e-cigarette brands online, offering more than ...

Boston, MA – Most Europeans who have tried electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) are young, current smokers, or those who recently tried quitting regular cigarettes, according to a new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). Nearly 30 million Europeans have tried the battery-operated cigarettes, in spite of the fact that not much is known about their potential risks to health or whether they help smokers trying to quit. The study will appear online on June 16, 2014 in Tobacco Control. It is the largest study to date on e-cigarette use in the European Union. "As ...

How much commuting can you tolerate? A new study by MIT researchers shows that across countries, people assess their commutes by the time it takes them to complete the trip, generally independent of the distance they have to travel — as long as they have a variety of commuting options to chose from. The study, which compares commuting practices in five locations on four continents, also demonstrates the methodological validity of using mobile phone data to create an accurate empirical picture of commuting. "Every country has had its own different way of doing things ...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- The Great White Shark is not endangered in the Eastern North Pacific, and, in fact, is doing well enough that its numbers likely are growing, according to an international research team led by a University of Florida researcher. George Burgess, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research, said the wide-ranging study is good news for shark conservation. The study, to be published June 16 in the journal PLOS ONE, indicates measures in place to protect the ocean's apex predator are working. Scientists reanalyzed 3-year-old research that indicated ...

Boston, MA — A new poll by The Boston Globe and Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) finds, eight years into the state's universal health insurance legislation enacted in 2006, 63% of Massachusetts residents support the law and 18% oppose it, while 7% are not sure, and 12% have not heard or read about the law. The percentage of residents supporting the law remains unchanged since a 2011 Boston Globe/HSPH poll. Support for the law varies by party affiliation, with 77% of Democrats, 60% of Independents, and 49% of Republicans saying they support the legislation. The poll ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – June 16, 2014 – For decades, common medical wisdom has been "the lower the better" in treating the approximately one in three people in this country who have high blood pressure. But does that approach result in reduced risk for dangerous heart events? In a study published in the June 16 online edition of JAMA Internal Medicine, researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center found that lowering systolic blood pressure below 120 does not appear to provide additional benefit for patients. Systolic pressure is the top number in a standard blood pressure ...

Bottom Line: Use of beta (β)-blockers in patients who have not had a recent heart attack but were undergoing nonemergency coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) surgery was not associated with better outcomes. Author: William Brinkman, M.D., of the Cardiopulmonary Research Science and Technology Institute, Dallas, and colleagues. Background: The use of preoperative β-blockers has been associated with a reduction in perioperative mortality for patients undergoing CABG surgery in previous observational studies. Preoperative β-blocker therapy is a national ...

Bottom Line: A multipart intervention increased adherence rates of annual fecal occult blood testing (FOBT) for colorectal cancer (CRC) screening in vulnerable populations. Author: David W. Baker, M.D., M.P.H., of the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University, Chicago, and colleagues. Background: The vast majority of CRC screening in the U.S. is by colonoscopy, although studies suggest that FOBT can achieve similar reductions in CRC mortality. Colorectal cancer screening rates are lower among Latinos and people living in poverty. Expanded use of FOBT ...

Bottom Line: Breastfeeding by mothers treated with antiepileptic drug (AED) therapy was not associated with adverse effects on cognitive function in children at 6 years. Author: Kimford J. Meador, M.D., of Stanford University, California, and colleagues for the Neurodevelopmental Effects of Antiepileptic Drugs (NEAD) Study Group. Background: Some concern has been raised that breastfeeding by mothers being treated with AED therapy may be harmful to the child because some AEDs can cause neuronal apoptosis (cell death) in immature animal brains. How the Study Was ...

WASHINGTON — One of the most comprehensive looks at the use of hormone therapy in women over 65 with non-metastatic breast cancer found some welcome news. Except for frail patients, most participants in the large study complied with their oncologists' recommendations to treat their estrogen-positive breast cancer with hormone therapy — either an aromatase inhibitor or tamoxifen. These drugs prevent tumors from using estrogen to fuel growth. But the study, reported online June 16th in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, also found that non-white women were much more likely ...

Bottom Line: Very-low-birth-weight (VLBW) babies who undergo major surgery appear to have an increased risk of death or subsequent neurodevelopmental impairment (NDI). Author: Frank H. Morriss, Jr., M.D., M.P.H., of the University of Iowa, Iowa City, and colleagues. Background: Some animal studies suggest general anesthesia for surgery can increase the risk for neurocognitive or behavioral deficits. This has raised some concerns about exposing infants to general anesthesia for surgery. How the Study Was Conducted: The authors examined the association between ...

Bottom Line: Military personnel with concussive traumatic brain injury (TBI) caused by a blast or a nonblast-related event had similar outcomes, including headache severity and depression. Author: Christine L. Mac Donald, Ph.D., of the Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, and colleagues. Background: It has been estimated that in the U.S. military about 20 percent of the deployed force experienced a head injury in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of those injured, about 83 percent had a mild, uncomplicated TBI or concussion. Blast injuries were the ...

CHICAGO --- In low-income and minority communities where colonoscopies may be prohibitively expensive for many residents, less-invasive, more frequent testing combined with automated reminders, can yield dramatic improvements in colorectal cancer (CRC) screening rates, according to a new Northwestern Medicine® study. The study found that community health center patients who received follow-up -– that is, outreach by mail, automated telephone and text messages, and calls by a health center staff member if no response was given in three months -- were more than twice as ...

(PHILADELPHIA) – A team of researchers led by Penn Medicine anesthesiologists have pinpointed the "top five" most common perioperative procedures that are supported by the least amount of clinical evidence, in an effort to direct providers to make more cost-effective treatment decisions. Their findings are published in the current issue of JAMA Internal Medicine. The team surveyed anesthesiologists, many of them in academic practice, to identify the most common activities that should be questioned in the field, using practice parameters developed by the American Society ...

Explosions are the most common cause of traumatic brain injuries in veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. A new study shows that military personnel with mild brain trauma related to such blasts had outcomes similar to those with mild brain injury from other causes, according to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. However, nearly 80 percent of patients in both categories of brain trauma suffered moderate to severe overall disability within a year after injury. The analysis appears June 16 in JAMA Neurology. "We are interested ...

SEATTLE—People living in poverty are less likely to be screened regularly for colorectal cancer—and more likely to develop the disease and die from it. How to end these disparities—and raise screening rates, lower disease rates, and prevent deaths? A promising way is to mail fecal immunochemical tests (a newer kind of stool test) to populations, Beverly B. Green, MD, MPH, and Gloria D. Coronado, PhD, wrote in the June 17 JAMA Internal Medicine. Dr. Green is a Group Health physician and an associate investigator at Group Health Research Institute. Dr. Coronado is a senior ...

Cancer clinicians and a chaplain at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center have developed a new tool to help doctors, nurses and other health care providers talk to dying patients and families who are, literally, praying for a miracle. The AMEN (Affirm, Meet, Educate, No matter what) protocol, a script that can be used by medical staff, offers a way to negotiate these challenging conversations to affirm or acknowledge a patient's hope, share the patient's wish with others, continue to educate the patient and family about medical issues, and assure them that their health ...

Well-child visits are the foundation of pediatric primary care in the U.S. Accounting for more than one-third of all outpatient visits for infants and toddlers, the appointments are intended to give doctors the opportunity to identify health, social, developmental and behavioral issues that could have a long-term impact on children's lives. However, several studies have shown that the current system of well-child care leaves room for improvement. One major concern is that well-child care guidelines issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics call for physicians to provide ...

HOUSTON – (June 16, 2014) – How does a stem cell decide what path to take? In a way, it's up to the wisdom of the crowd. The DNA in a pluripotent stem cell is bombarded with waves of proteins whose ebb and flow nudge the cell toward becoming blood, bone, skin or organs. A new theory by scientists at Rice University shows the cell's journey is neither a simple step-by-step process nor all random. Theoretical biologist Peter Wolynes and postdoctoral fellow Bin Zhang set out to create a mathematical tool to analyze large, realistic gene networks. As a bonus, their open-access ...

MANHATTAN, KANSAS — Kansas State University diagnosticians are helping the cattle industry save millions of dollars each year by developing earlier and accurate detection of E. coli. Lance Noll, master's student in veterinary biomedical science, Greensburg; T.G. Nagaraja, university distinguished professor of diagnostic medicine and pathobiology; and Jianfa Bai, assistant professor in the Kansas State Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, are leading a project to improve techniques for detecting pathogenic Shiga toxin-producing E. coli O157:H7. A U.S. Department of Agriculture ...

It's broadly assumed that cells degrade and recycle their own old or damaged organelles, but researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Kennedy Krieger Institute have discovered that some neurons transfer unwanted mitochondria – the tiny power plants inside cells – to supporting glial cells called astrocytes for disposal. The findings, published in the June 17 online Early Edition of PNAS, suggest some basic biology may need revising, but they also have potential implications for improving ...

Boulder, Colo., USA – A Canadian team lead by Stephen Grasby reports the discovery of the highest latitude perennial spring known in the world. This high-volume spring demonstrates that deep groundwater circulation through the cryosphere occurs, and can form gullies in a region of extreme low temperatures and with morphology remarkably similar to those on Mars. The 2009 discovery raises many new questions because it remains uncertain how such a high-volume spring can originate in a polar desert environment. Grasby and colleagues encountered the northernmost perennial ...

A study by University of Iowa researchers confirms that pathological gambling runs in families and shows that first-degree relatives of pathological gamblers are eight times more likely to develop this problem in their lifetime than relatives of people without pathological gambling. "Our work clearly shows that pathological gambling runs in families at a rate higher than for many other behavioral and psychiatric disorders," says Donald W. Black, MD, professor of psychiatry in the UI Carver College of Medicine. "I think clinicians and health care providers should be alerted ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Giving low doses of a particular targeted agent with a cancer-killing virus might improve the effectiveness of the virus as a treatment for cancer, according to a study led by researchers at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC – James). Viruses that are designed to kill cancer cells – oncolytic viruses – have shown promise in clinical trials for the treatment of brain cancer and other solid tumors. This cell and animal study suggests that combining low ...

Confirming what neurocomputational theorists have long suspected, researchers at the Dignity Health Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Ariz. and University of California, San Diego School of Medicine report that the human brain locks down episodic memories in the hippocampus, committing each recollection to a distinct, distributed fraction of individual cells. The findings, published in the June 16 Early Edition of PNAS, further illuminate the neural basis of human memory and may, ultimately, shed light on new treatments for diseases and conditions that adversely ...