Transnational tobacco companies' investments in smokeless tobacco products, such as snus (a moist tobacco product that is placed under the upper lip), in Europe are not due to a concern for the health impacts of smoking but are instead driven purely by business interests according to new research by Silvy Peeters and Anna Gilmore from the University of Bath UK and the UK Centre for Tobacco Control Studies, published this week in PLOS Medicine. To inform the policy debate surrounding snus, which is banned from sale in the European Union (EU) under legislation that is ...

A team of researchers led by Professor Joseph Heitman has discovered procreation between genetically identical fungi Cryptococcus neoformans can result in genetic changes and diversity in their offspring, lending insight into how they can evolve to cause and spread disease. These results are published 10 September 2013 in the open access journal PLOS Biology. "These studies turn our view of the functions of sex by 180 degrees and reveal that sex doesn't just mix up already existing genetic diversity, but can actually create it from scratch," said Professor Heitman, Chair ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Though some might disagree, most biologists think the purpose of sex is to create diversity among offspring. Such diversity underpins evolution, enabling organisms to acquire new combinations of traits to adapt to their environment. However, scientists have been perplexed to find that many fungi and microorganisms procreate with exact replicas of themselves, where the expected outcome would simply be more of the same. Now researchers have found the act of sex between such genetically identical organisms can itself be mutagenic, meaning it can create ...

Neuroscientists at Western University (London, Canada) have made a remarkable new discovery revealing the underlying molecular process by which opiate addiction develops in the brain. Opiate addiction is largely controlled by the formation of powerful reward memories that link the pleasurable effects of opiate-class drugs to environmental triggers that induce drug craving in individuals addicted to opiates. The research is published in the September 11th issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. The Addiction Research Group led by Steven Laviolette of the Schulich School ...

PHILADELPHIA — Using a highly sensitive technology called NanoString, researchers have identified seven targets that could potentially be used to develop new immunotherapies for patients with metastatic melanoma, according to a study published in Clinical Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. "We identified seven potential candidate genes that deserve further consideration as targets for melanoma immunotherapy," said Richard Morgan, Ph.D., staff scientist at the Tumor Immunology Section of the Center for Cancer Research, National ...

Heart disease patients with positive attitudes are more likely to exercise and live longer, according to new research in the American Heart Association journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes. Researchers used a questionnaire to assess the moods of 600 ischemic heart disease patients in a Denmark hospital. Five years later, researchers found: The most positive patients exercised more and had a 42 percent less chance of dying for any reason during the follow-up period; deaths were less than 10 percent. Among patients with less positive attitudes, 50 ...

Cost, fear and a lack of information are barriers for minorities in urban communities to learn and perform CPR, according to new research in the American Heart Association journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes. In a small study, researchers interviewed 42 residents in Columbus, Ohio. The majority of participants were age 30 or older, African-American and female. Participants attended six focus groups and were asked about their knowledge of and training in CPR. Almost half of the participants lived in economically struggling, high-crime neighborhoods, ...

Barcelona, Spain: Obstructive lung disease (OLD) has been linked with a decline in cognitive functioning, including memory and information processing. A new study, which will be presented today (11 September 2013) at the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Annual Congress, suggests that impaired cognitive functioning could be an important factor in OLD. Previous research has found that people with OLD, including COPD, often experience global cognitive impairments, but this new study – using the UK Biobank Resource – focused on which domain-specific cognitive functions ...

In an examination of the effect of financial incentives on hypertension care at 12 outpatient clinics, physician-level (individual) financial incentives, but not practice-level or combined incentives, resulted in greater blood pressure control or appropriate response to uncontrolled blood pressure, according to a study in the September 11 issue of JAMA. None of the incentives resulted in greater use of guideline-recommended medications compared with controls. "As part of the Affordable Care Act, the U.S. government has introduced pay for performance to all hospitals paid ...

A pay-for-performance program in electronic-health-records-(EHR)-enabled small practices led to modest improvements in cardiovascular care processes and outcomes, according to a study in the September 11 issue of JAMA. "Most evaluations of pay-for-performance (P4P) incentives have focused on large-group practices," according to background information in the article. Small practices, where the majority of patients still receive care nationally, historically have provided lower-quality care—especially solo practices—and may have greater obstacles to improving care because ...

Among patients with diabetes, use of an outpatient electronic health record (EHR) in an integrated healthcare delivery system was associated with modest reductions in emergency department visits and hospitalizations, but was not associated with a change in office visit rates, according to a study in the September 11 issue of JAMA. The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act authorizes up to $27 billion during 10 years to promote meaningful use of EHRs, with penalties for lack of EHR use beginning in 2015. With these substantial incentives, ...

Four weeks of treatment with a combination of the drug pentoxifylline and the corticosteroid prednisolone did not improve 6-month survival compared with prednisolone alone in 270 patients with severe alcoholic hepatitis, according to a study in the September 11 issue of JAMA. Treatment of severe forms of alcoholic hepatitis is extremely challenging because of the poor outcome. European and U.S. guidelines recommend the use of prednisolone or pentoxifylline in patients with severe alcoholic hepatitis. Nevertheless, a substantial proportion of patients die after 6 months ...

"Monitoring of linear growth is a well-established part of pediatric health care in the developed world. Although monitoring aims to support early diagnosis and timely treatment of disorders affecting growth, such disorders are often diagnosed late," write Ulla Sankilampi, M.D., Ph.D., of Kuopio University Hospital, Kuopio, Finland, and colleagues. As reported in a Research Letter, the authors compared the effectiveness of a novel computerized and automated growth monitoring (AGM) strategy integrated into an electronic health record (EHR) system in the primary care setting ...

A recently completed substudy of a larger clinical trial found that pre-exposure prophylaxis -- a new strategy to prevent HIV infection by prescribing a daily antiretroviral drug to at-risk individuals -- can be a powerful tool when participants take their medications. The trial of this strategy, also called PrEP, enrolled uninfected individuals in East Africa with an HIV-positive sexual partner and found that a combination of objective monitoring of how often participants took their daily medications and intensive counseling of those with lower rates of adherence prevented ...

HOUSTON (Sept. 11, 2013) – When health care pundits began to suggest that pay-for-performance would solve some of health care's woes, Dr. Laura Petersen, professor of medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and director of the Houston VA Health Services Research and Development Center of Excellence, had questions. How do we know that it will solve those problems? she asked. How do we know whether or not it will create new problems? And how will we structure these payments? As a recognized expert in the area of health care services and quality, she set out to find the ...

Camouflaged creatures can perform remarkable disappearing acts but new research shows that predators can learn to read camouflage. The study, which used human subjects as predators searching for hidden moths in computer games, found that the subjects could learn to find some types of camouflaged prey faster than others. The research was carried out by the University of Exeter and the University of Cambridge and is published in the journal PLOS ONE. Moths with high contrast markings - that break up the shape of the body, like that of a zebra or giraffe - were best at ...

Scientists have discovered where plants build tannins, complex chemicals used by plants for defence and protection. The source is the tannosome, a newly discovered organelle that is found in most land plants. All living things are made from cells; whether they are single-celled organisms like amoeba, or enormous entities like Giant Redwoods (in which millions of cells make up the body of the organism). Although cells may become specialised for particular roles in an organism, they each undertake many different tasks. Internally each cell is furnished with a range of smaller ...

The London borough of Newham is famed for producing talents such as Idris Elba, Plan B and Mo Farrah, whilst also playing host to the Olympic Stadium and West Ham United Football Club. Now an international group of researchers have found that its residents have the smallest carbon footprint in the UK. In a study of 434 municipalities across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, they showed that according to data taken from 2004, the lifestyle of each person in Newham caused an average of 10.21 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) to be emitted into the atmosphere ...

Obesity raises the chances of complications and medical interventions in childbirth. But a new study by Oxford University shows the risks are not the same for all obese women. For otherwise healthy women, the increase in risk with obesity may not be as great as previously suspected. 'The increased risk was fairly modest for obese women who did not have conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes or a previous caesarean section, and the risks were quite low if the woman had given birth previously,' says lead researcher Dr Jennifer Hollowell of the National Perinatal ...

OAKLAND, Calif., September 10, 2013 — The use of electronic health records in clinical settings was associated with a decrease in emergency room visits and hospitalizations for patients with diabetes, according to a study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Researchers examined the medical records of 169,711 diabetic patients over 1 year of age in the Kaiser Permanente diabetes clinical registry before and after the implementation of Kaiser Permanente HealthConnect®, the organization's comprehensive EHR system. They found that patients ...

Some things are not always what they seem—even in space. For 30 years, scientists believed a large near-Earth object was an asteroid. Now, an international team including Joshua Emery, assistant professor of earth and planetary sciences at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has discovered it is actually a comet. Called 3552 Don Quixote, the body is the third largest near-Earth object—mostly rocky bodies, or asteroids, that orbit the Sun in the vicinity of Earth. About 5 percent of near-Earth objects are thought to be "dead" comets that have shed all the water and ...

New research has revealed the hidden past of crocodiles, showing for the first time how these fierce reptiles evolved and survived in a dinosaur dominated world. While most modern crocodiles live in freshwater habitats and feed on mammals and fish, their ancient relatives were extremely diverse – with some built for running around like dogs on land and others adapting to life in the open ocean, imitating the feeding behaviour of today's killer whales. Research published today [11 September] in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B shows, for the first time, ...

The science behind the tingling sensation caused by eating a popular Asian spice has been explained by researchers at UCL. The study, which is published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, helps shed light on the complex interactions between the senses of taste and touch, and could lead to a greater understanding of the causes of the tingling sensations experienced by many chronic pain patients. Widely used in Asian cooking, the Szechuan pepper was found to mimic the sense of touch in the brain. It chemically activates light-touch fibres on the lips and ...

WHAT: Researchers have developed two tests that can discern within three days whether the malaria parasites in a given patient will be resistant or susceptible to artemisinin, the key drug used to treat malaria. The tests were developed by researchers from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, working with French and Cambodian colleagues in Cambodia. They offer a more rapid, less costly advantage over current drug-responsiveness tests, which require malaria patients to be hospitalized for blood draws ...

New Rochelle, NY, September 10, 2013—Use of stimulant medications to treat Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in children and adolescents has increased significantly over the past several years. This trend toward increased use of prescription stimulants extends beyond ADHD to other types of neuropsychiatric disorders in children and teens as well, including Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), according to a study published in Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology (JCAP), a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is ...