Evaluation of diagnostic studies is often a challenge in diseases that are not defined by a specific test. Assessment of the accuracy of diagnostic tests is essential because they may be used to define who is considered to have a disease and receive treatment for it. However, measuring the accuracy of a diagnostic test requires an accurate gold standard, which defines which patients truly have and do not have the disease. Studies of diseases not defined by a specific test often rely on expert panels to establish the gold standard. In a systematic review and analysis of ...

New research led by Marco Prado, PhD, of Western University has identified a pathway used by the brain to try to protect itself from toxicity that occurs with Alzheimer's disease (AD). Prado and his colleagues at the Robarts Research Institute and at the A.C. Camargo Cancer Center in Brazil have done extensive work on the role of prion protein. They found that toxicity of amyloid-β peptides, one of the major culprits in AD, can be decreased by preventing it from interacting with the prion protein. When a protein called stress-inducible phosphoprotein 1 (STI1) interacts ...

Vitelliform macular dystrophy, also known as Best disease, is one of a group of vision-robbing conditions called bestrophinopathies that affect children and young adults. Caused by inherited mutations in the BEST1 gene, these diseases cause severe declines in central vision as patients age. With a new study, University of Pennsylvania researchers report "encouraging" findings that mark the first clear step in developing a gene therapy that could prevent vision loss or event restore vision in individuals suffering from these conditions. The research, conducted in dogs, ...

"No organization recommends prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening in men older than 75 years. Nevertheless, testing rates remain high," write Elizabeth Jaramillo, M.D., of the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, and colleagues in a Research Letter appearing in the October 16 issue of JAMA. The authors examined whether PSA screening rates would vary substantially among primary care physicians (PCPs) and if the variance would depend on which PCP patients used. Using complete Medicare Part A and B data for Texas, the researchers selected PCPs whose patient ...

For patients with diabetes and coronary artery disease in more than one artery, treatment with coronary artery bypass graft surgery provided slightly better health status and quality of life between 6 months and 2 years than procedures using drug-eluting stents, although beyond 2 years the difference disappeared, according to a study in the October 16 issue of JAMA. Although previous studies have demonstrated that coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery is generally preferred over percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI; procedures such as balloon angioplasty or ...

In an analysis that included more than 40,000 women exposed to the nausea medication metoclopramide in pregnancy, use of this drug was not associated with significantly increased risk of major congenital malformations overall, spontaneous abortion, and stillbirth, according to a study in the October 16 issue of JAMA. More than 50 percent of pregnant women experience nausea and vomiting, typically early in their pregnancy. The care of most women is managed conservatively, but 10 percent to 15 percent of those with nausea and vomiting will eventually receive drug treatment. ...

The survey provides the most robust prevalence measure to date - and identifies abnormal prion protein across a wider age group than found previously and in all genotypes. An accompanying editorial says that although the disease remains rare, "infection" may be relatively common and doctors need to understand the public health measures that are in place to protect patients. Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) is a degenerative brain disease – often called the human form of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or "mad cow disease." It emerged after widespread ...

During the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq from 2003 to 2011, for every three people killed by violence, two died as a result of the collapse of the infrustructure that supports health care, clean water, nutrition, and transportation, according to new estimates in a study from the University of Washington Department of Global Health published Oct. 15 in the open access journal PLOS Medicine. All told, the researchers estimate nearly a half million people died from causes that could be attributed to the war. Researchers from Johns Hopkins University, Simon Fraser ...

The authors recommend closer monitoring for kidney problems in patients with 3% or more of their body surface area affected to help detect and treat signs early and suggest careful consideration of medications which may cause kidney disease in this at risk patient population. Psoriasis is a common, chronic inflammatory disease of the skin and joints that affects 2-4% of the general population. Increasing evidence suggests that psoriasis is associated with diabetes and heart disease independent of traditional risk factors. Some doctors think psoriasis may also be associated ...

Professor Clare Bambra and Dr Alison Copeland from Durham University argue that "the more affluent, healthier south east will benefit most and the poorer, less healthy north will lose out substantially." And they urge worried BMJ readers to respond to the consultation. NHS funding is allocated to areas on the principle of providing "equal opportunity of access for equal need," they explain. To help achieve this, the current NHS allocation formula incorporates a deprivation related measure, known as the "health inequality weighting." But the relative roles of deprivation ...

An ambitious new study describes the full chain of events by which ocean biogeochemical changes triggered by manmade greenhouse gas emissions may cascade through marine habitats and organisms, penetrating to the deep ocean and eventually influencing humans. Previous analyses have focused mainly on ocean warming and acidification, considerably underestimating the biological and social consequences of climate change. Factoring in predictable synergistic changes such as the depletion of dissolved oxygen in seawater and a decline in productivity of ocean ecosystems, the ...

An article by researchers at the University of Exeter has shed light on the link between depression and poor parenting. The article identifies the symptoms of depression that are likely to cause difficulties with parenting. The findings could lead to more effective interventions to prevent depression and other psychological disorders from being passed from parent to child. Although the link between depression and poor parenting has previously been identified, this is the first time that researchers have brought together multiple studies in order to identify the reasons ...

A class of molecules called microRNAs may offer cancer patients two ways to combat their disease. Researchers at Princeton University have found that microRNAs — small bits of genetic material capable of repressing the expression of certain genes — may serve as both therapeutic targets and predictors of metastasis, or a cancer's spread from its initial site to other parts of the body. The research was published in the journal Cancer Cell. MicroRNAs are specifically useful for tackling bone metastasis, which occurs in about 70 percent of patients with late-stage cancer, ...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 15, 2013 – Imagine giving a presentation to a roomful of important customers when suddenly the projector fails. You whip out your smartphone, beam your PowerPoint presentation onto the conference room screen, and are back in business within seconds. This career-saving application and others like it are the promise of a new generation of ultra-small projectors. Now researchers from Japan and Poland have taken an important step toward making such devices more versatile and easier to integrate into portable electronic devices. The team has created a small ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass-- About a dozen years ago, scientists discovered that a hormone called ghrelin enhances appetite. Dubbed the "hunger hormone," ghrelin was quickly targeted by drug companies seeking treatments for obesity — none of which have yet panned out. MIT neuroscientists have now discovered that ghrelin's role goes far beyond controlling hunger. The researchers found that ghrelin released during chronic stress makes the brain more vulnerable to traumatic events, suggesting that it may predispose people to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Drugs that reduce ...

Bethesda, Md. (Oct. 15, 2013)—The hormone prolactin is probably best known for its role in stimulating milk production in mothers after giving birth. But prolactin also has an important function in the liver. This organ has the highest number of prolactin receptors in the body, ports that allow this hormone to enter liver cells. There, prolactin signals these cells to multiply and new blood vessels to grow to fuel this organ's expansion. Wondering if these properties might be useful to encourage the liver to regrow after surgery to remove part of it—sometimes necessary ...

New research illuminates definitive brain alterations in troops with Gulf War Illness (GWI) thought to result from the exposure to neurotoxic chemicals, including sarin gas, during the first Persian Gulf War. "More than 250,000 troops, or approximately 25% of those deployed during the first Persian Gulf War, have been diagnosed with Gulf War Illness (GWI). Although medical professionals have recognized the chronic and often disabling illness for almost two decades, brain changes that uniquely identify GWI have been elusive until now," explained principal investigator ...

A small, wireless capsule has been developed that can restore the sense of touch that surgeons are losing as they shift increasingly from open to minimally invasive surgery. During open surgery, doctors rely on their sense of touch to identify the edges of hidden tumors and to locate hidden blood vessels and other anatomical structures: a procedure they call palpation. But this practice is not possible in minimally invasive surgery where surgeons work with small, specialized tools and miniature cameras that fit through small incisions in a patient's skin. In order to ...

GALVESTON, Texas – Many primary care doctors continue to administer the prostate-specific antigen test to even their oldest patients despite the fact that no medical organization recommends prostate cancer screening for men older than 75, according to new research from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. In a research letter published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, UTMB researchers found a high variability in standard PSA-ordering practice among primary care physicians. Some doctors ordered the test for their older male patients regularly, ...

Drs. Michael Hahn and Daniel Wolf Savin, research scientists at Columbia University's Astrophysics Laboratory in New York, NY, found evidence that magnetic waves in a polar coronal hole contain enough energy to heat the corona and moreover that they also deposit most of their energy at sufficiently low heights for the heat to spread throughout the corona. The observations help to answer a 70-year-old solar physics conundrum about the unexplained extreme temperature of the Sun's corona – known as the coronal heating problem. Hahn and Savin analyzed data from the Extreme ...

BOSTON (15 October 2013) – Today, the Population Council presented findings from a Phase 3 clinical trial that was designed to demonstrate the safety, efficacy, and acceptability of the Council's investigational one-year contraceptive vaginal ring (CVR). The results were presented during an oral session at the 69th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine. The study presented today (Study 300B) is part of an extensive clinical trial package that will be submitted as part of a New Drug Application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The application ...

The expansion of publicly-funded preschool education is currently the focus of a prominent debate. The research brief "Investing in Our Future: The Evidence Base on Preschool Education," authored by an interdisciplinary group of early childhood experts, reviews rigorous evidence on why early skills matter, which children benefit from preschool, the short- and long-term effects of preschool programs on children's school readiness and life outcomes, the importance of program quality, and the costs versus benefits of preschool education. The research brief was funded by ...

Despite the common fear that those annoying tip-of-the-tongue moments are signals of age-related memory decline, the two phenomena appear to be independent, according to findings published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Anecdotal evidence has suggested that tip-of-the-tongue experiences occur more frequently as people get older, but the relationship between these cognitive stumbles and actual memory problems remained unclear, according to psychological scientist and lead author Timothy Salthouse of the University of Virginia: "We ...

PORTLAND, Ore. — A research team led by Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) and the University of California, Davis, reveals that childhood gunshot injuries, while uncommon, are more severe, require more major surgery, have greater mortality and higher per-patient costs than any other mechanism for childhood injury – particularly among adolescent males. The study is published online in the journal Pediatrics. "There has been little science and lots of misinformation cited on the topic of gunshot injuries in children," said Craig Newgard, M.D., M.P.H., principal ...

DARIEN, IL – Three new studies show just how critical it is for adults to seek treatment for a sleep illness and aim for seven to nine hours of sleep each night in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle. One study of 2,240 adults is the first to examine the link between obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and mortality in Asians. Results show that all-cause mortality risk was 2.5 times higher and cardiovascular mortality risk was more than 4 times higher among people with severe OSA. The results are consistent with previous studies in the U.S. and other countries. Another ...