VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA – A new study of Utah youth with suspected sports-related head injuries found that emergency room visits for children with sports-related head injuries have increased since the state's concussion law passed in 2011, along with a rise in head CT scans -- leading to potentially unnecessary radiation exposure. The results were announced at the Pediatric Academic Societies conference in Vancouver, British Columbia in May by William McDonnell, M.D., J.D., associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Utah. The study, completed by McDonnell ...

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA – While many parents-to-be are aware that the health of their baby starts before they've actually arrived into the world, recent research reveals that "harm" (i.e., tobacco smoke, dirty air, poor nutrition, even preeclampsia) may not present itself disease-wise until well into adulthood or when a second harmful "hit" triggers the individual's susceptibility. The results were announced at the Pediatric Academic Societies conference in Vancouver, British Columbia in May by Lisa Joss-Moore, Ph.D., University of Utah Department of Pediatrics. ...

The melting of a rather small ice volume on East Antarctica's shore could trigger a persistent ice discharge into the ocean, resulting in unstoppable sea-level rise for thousands of years to come. This is shown in a study now published in Nature Climate Change by scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). The findings are based on computer simulations of the Antarctic ice flow using improved data of the ground profile underneath the ice sheet. "East Antarctica's Wilkes Basin is like a bottle on a slant," says lead-author Matthias Mengel, ...

Chicago, IL (May 5, 2014) — A surgical method combining two techniques for removing precancerous polyps during colonoscopies can substantially reduce the recovery time and the length of hospital stays, potentially saving the health-care system millions of dollars, according to research presented today at Digestive Disease Week® (DDW). "Not only did we find that patients were discharged a day and a half earlier, we discovered other benefits, which could transform our approach to removing difficult colon polyps," said Jonathan Buscaglia, MD, the study's lead researcher ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Women face greater limits on their lifestyle and have more severe symptoms as a result of peripheral artery disease (PAD), but minimally invasive procedures used to unclog arteries are just as successful as in men. The success of procedures, such as angioplasty or stent placement, in treating women with leg PAD was revealed in a Journal of the American College of Cardiology study. The study provides a rare look at gender differences in PAD. PAD happens when fatty deposits build up in arteries outside the heart, usually the arteries supplying fresh ...

Cajal-Retzius cells are reelin-secreting neurons in the marginal zone of the neocortex and hippocampus. However, the relationship between Cajal-Retzius cells and Alzheimer's disease is unknown. Dr. Jinbo Deng and team from Henan University in China revealed that the number of Cajal-Retzius cells markedly reduced with age in both wild type and in mice over-expressing the Swedish double mutant form of amyloid precursor protein 695 (transgenic (Tg) 2576 mice). The decline in Cajal-Retzius cells in Tg2576 mice was found to occur concomitantly with the onset of Alzheimer's disease ...

The most common form of muscular dystrophy among adults is dystrophia myotonica type 1 (DM1), where approximately 1 in every 8000 is affected by the disease. The severity of the disease varies from mild forms to severe congenital forms. It is dominantly inherited and accumulates through generations, gaining increased severity and lowered age of onset. DM1 is characterised by accumulating toxic aggregates of ribonucleic acids (RNA) from a specific mutated gene (see figure 1). When this RNA, which contains thousands of CUG nucleotide repeats, builds up in the cell, it attracts ...

Huntington's disease is an autosomal-dominant inherited neurodegenerative disease with a distinct phenotype, but the pathogenesis is unclear. Although patients with a family history have more typical clinical symptoms, signs, and pathological changes, as well as an unambiguous clinical diagnosis, other diseases with dance-like movements, e.g., dentatorubral-pallidoluy-sian atrophy, spinocerebellar ataxia type 17, Huntington's disease-like-2, and neuroferritinopathy, are difficult to identify and distinguish from Huntington's disease. By mutation screening for CAG repeats ...

Animal hoarding is a psychiatric disorder that consists of accumulating large numbers of animals at home, usually cats and dogs, without providing them with a minimal standard of care. Researchers from IMIM (Hospital del Mar Research Institute) publish the first European study to provide data on this disorder, in the Journal Animal Welfare. The disorder is still largely unknown and has a negative effect on the health of both the people who suffer from it and the animals involved. "This is the first step towards public recognition of this disorder, a disorder that constitutes ...

Nanoengineers at the University of California, San Diego are asking what might be possible if semiconductor materials were flexible and stretchable without sacrificing electronic function? Today's flexible electronics are already enabling a new generation of wearable sensors and other mobile electronic devices. But these flexible electronics, in which very thin semiconductor materials are applied to a thin, flexible substrate in wavy patterns and then applied to a deformable surface such as skin or fabric, are still built around hard composite materials that limit their ...

MINNEAPOLIS, MN – May 1, 2014 – The Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation (MHIF) announced today the first implant of the world's smallest pacemaker at the Minneapolis Heart Institute. The device was implanted as part of a global clinical trial and the procedure was the first of its kind in the Midwest. One-tenth the size of a conventional pacemaker, and comparable in size to a large vitamin, the Medtronic Micra™ Transcatheter Pacing System is delivered directly into the heart through a catheter inserted in the femoral vein. Once positioned, the pacemaker is securely ...

NEW YORK – Menopausal women have long reported experiencing hot flashes, mood swings, night sweats and memory lapses, too. A new study from researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania shows preliminary evidence that the psychostimulant drug lisdexamfetamine (LDX) can aid post-menopausal women by improving attention and concentration, organization, working memory and recall. The findings will be presented by C. Neil Epperson, MD, director of the Penn Center for Women's Behavioral Wellness, on Tuesday during the American Psychiatric ...

During their annual Winter Study at Isle Royale National Park, scientists from Michigan Technological University counted nine wolves organized into one breeding pack and a second small group that is a remnant of a formerly breeding pack. In the Isle Royale Wolf-Moose Study’s annual report released today, the researchers say that over the past three years, they have tallied the lowest numbers of wolves ever: nine in 2011–12, eight in 2012–13 and nine in 2013–14. During the same period, predation rates—the proportion of the moose population killed by wolves—also dropped ...

STANFORD, Calif. — Something — or some things — in the blood of young mice has the ability to restore mental capabilities in old mice, a new study by Stanford University School of Medicine investigators has found. If the same goes for humans, it could spell a new paradigm for recharging our aging brains, and it might mean new therapeutic approaches for treating dementias such as Alzheimer's disease. In the study, to be published online May 4 in Nature Medicine, the researchers used sophisticated techniques to pin down numerous important molecular, neuroanatomical and ...

Levodopa is the preferred treatment for Parkinson's disease in the clinic. However, long-term use of levodopa may lead to various motor complications, among which levodopa-induced dyskinesia is the most common, severely affecting patients' quality of life. Dr. Jiancheng He and co-workers from Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine in China established a model of Parkinson's disease dyskinesia in rats, and treated these animals with Compound Formula Rehmannia. They found that Compound Formula Rehmannia alleviates levodopa-induced dyskinesia in Parkinson's disease ...

Patients with implanted artificial cochlea often complain that they cannot recognize speech well in natural environments, especially if background of noise is present. Researchers think that a poor ability to localize sound in a complex auditory environment is responsible for the weak speech perception observed under these conditions. Pentobarbital anesthesia prolongs the recovery time of responses to lagging stimulus. The effects of pentobarbital anesthesia on the precedence effect stem from decreased dissociation of gamma-aminobutyric acid from its receptor (i.e., it ...

Many previous chronobiological studies have reported on detection of circadian fluctuation in performing simple motor tasks, fine skilled movement, and anaerobic exercise. However, to the best of our knowledge, literature concerning variation of sensory function according to the circadian cycle is lacking. Therefore, Yong Hyun Kwon and co-workers from Yeungnam University College of Science and Technology in Republic of Korea observed and compared the circadian fluctuations in tactile sense, joint reposition sense and two-point discrimination in 21healthy adult subjects ...

Diffuse lesions involving the posterior quadrant (PQ) of the cerebral hemisphere (temporal, parietal, and occipital lobes) induce intractable epilepsy. These patients are potential candidates for surgical treatment. Maintenance of isolated nerve tissue activity after surgery plays a crucial role in the neuroprotective effects of neurosurgery treatment. Shaoya Yin and colleagues from Tianjin Huanhu Hospital in China selected two patients with temporal-parietal-occipital (PTO) intractable epilepsy to receive posterior quadrant disconnection. Postoperative MRI scans of the ...

Jerusalem, May 4, 2014 -- The capacity to reprogram adult patient cells into pluripotent, embryonic-like, stem cells by nuclear transfer has been reported as a breakthrough by scientists from the US and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The work, described in the journal Nature, was accomplished by researchers from the New York Stem Cell Foundation Research Institute and Columbia University and by Nissim Benvenisty, the Herbert Cohn professor of Cancer Research and director of the Stem Cell Unit at the Institute of Life Sciences at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, ...

HOUSTON -- (May 5, 2014) -- A Rice University-led analysis of the metabolic profiles of hundreds of ovarian tumors has revealed a new test to determine whether ovarian cancer cells have the potential to metastasize, or spread to other parts of the body. The study also suggests how ovarian cancer treatments can be tailored based on the metabolic profile of a particular tumor. The research, which appears online this week in Molecular Systems Biology, was conducted at the Texas Medical Center in Houston by researchers from Rice, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer ...

An interdisciplinary team of scientists from KU Leuven in Belgium has developed a new technique to examine how proteins interact with each other at the level of a single HIV viral particle. The technique allows scientists to study the life-threatening virus in detail and makes screening potential anti-HIV drugs quicker and more efficient. The technique can also be used to study other diseases. Understanding how the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) reproduces itself is crucial in the effort to fight the disease. Upon entering the bloodstream, HIV viral particles, or ...

For men with low-risk prostate cancer, low levels of testosterone may indicate a worsening of their disease. That's the conclusion of a new study published in BJU International. The findings may help physicians identify patients with low-risk prostate cancer who should receive aggressive anticancer treatment. Men with prostate cancer that is not life threatening and is only slowly progressing, can often forego treatment and instead undergo active surveillance. This involves close monitoring to ensure that their disease does not become serious and jeopardize their health. ...

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA – Increasing evidence shows that stigma – whether due to a child's weight, sexual orientation, race, income or other attribute -- is at the root of bullying, and that it can cause considerable harm to a child's mental health. Experts in pediatric mental health, bullying and ostracism will gather May 5 for a symposium titled "Stigma, Ostracism and Bullying: Dangers, Prevention and Interventions" at the Pediatric Academic Societies Annual Meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia. Researchers will present evidence of stigma associated with various ...

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA – The brains of children who were born just a few weeks early differ from those born on time, and these differences may affect learning and behavior, according to a study to be presented Monday, May 5, at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Studies have shown that children who were born between 34 and 36 weeks' gestation (late preterm) have more social, behavioral and academic problems than children born at full term (37-41 weeks). However, few studies have looked at the brain structure ...

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA – When children are admitted to the hospital, sometimes the medications they take at home are lost in the shuffle, or they may be given the wrong dose. Having a system in place at hospital admission to record and review a child's medication history results in fewer errors, potentially avoiding harm to the patient, according to a study to be presented Monday, May 5, at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The Joint Commission, which accredits and certifies more than 20,000 health care ...