AURORA, Colo. (June 3, 2013) – Clinicians often wait too long before talking to elderly patients about giving up driving even though many may be open to those discussions earlier, according to a new study from the University of Colorado School of Medicine and the CU College of Nursing. "These conversations often don't happen until clinicians see a 'red flag' which could mean an accident or some physical problem that makes driving more difficult for the elderly," said Marian Betz, MD, MPH, at the CU School of Medicine and lead author of the study. "But what's interesting ...

VIDEO: Baby Logan shows off his healthy development by rolling from his tummy to his back. University of Alberta researcher Johanna Darrah, a professor of physical therapy, says infants develop the ability... Click here for more information. (Edmonton) Baby, keep on rolling. A campaign to put babies to bed on their backs to reduce the risk of sudden infant death syndrome has not impaired infants' rolling abilities, according to University of Alberta research. Johanna Darrah, ...

It's time to expand the models for blood pressure regulation, according to clinical pharmacologist Jens Titze, M.D. Titze and his colleagues have identified a new cast of cells and molecules that function in the skin to control sodium balance and blood pressure. "Hypertension research has traditionally focused on the kidney, blood vessels and brain," said Titze, associate professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt University. "But despite massive research efforts, we still do not understand in more than 90 percent of our patients why their blood pressure is elevated. We thought ...

(Lebanon, NH, 5/24/13) — Researchers at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Norris Cotton Cancer Center will present a poster on a phase I clinical trial of Nivolumab, a PD-1 receptor blocking antibody, being used in combination with other drugs in patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC) at the ASCO Annual Meeting on June 3, 2013. Metastatic renal cell carcinoma or kidney cancer is the seventh most common cancer, leading to approximately 116,000 deaths annually worldwide. In roughly one-quarter of those with mRCC, the cancer has already spread or metastasized at diagnosis. Nivolumab ...

CHICAGO – Eighty-three percent of cancer doctors report that they've faced oncology drug shortages, and of those, nearly all say that their patients' treatment has been impacted, according to a study from researchers at the Abramson Cancer Center and the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania that will be presented today at the 2013 annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (Abstract #CRA6510). The results showed that shortages – which have hit especially hard among drugs to treat pediatric, gastrointestinal and blood cancers – have ...

Baltimore - The American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) is advising anyone with Type 2 diabetes or hypertension to be evaluated for sleep apnea by a board-certified sleep medicine physician. The recommendation comes as the group of international clinicians and researchers meets in Baltimore for SLEEP 2013, the foremost gathering of sleep experts annually. Overwhelming clinical evidence has shown that patients suffering from two very common illnesses – Type 2 diabetes and hypertension – are at much higher risk for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), a dangerous condition ...

A high percentage of African-American women with breast cancer who were evaluated at a university cancer-risk clinic were found to carry inherited genetic mutations that increase their risk for breast cancer. The finding suggests that inherited mutations may be more common than anticipated in this understudied group and may partially explain why African-Americans more often develop early onset and "triple-negative" breast cancer, an aggressive and difficult-to-treat form of the disease. It also demonstrates the potential benefits of increased access to genetic counseling ...

What treatment a doctor recommends for advanced cancer not only depends on medical aspects. His relationship to the individual patients and his own view of their life situation at their age play a role. This was found out by a research team led by Dr. Jan Schildmann of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) together with colleagues from the University of Oxford. The RUB researchers also explored how patients perceive and evaluate the information they receive for clarification and decision making. The medical ethicists report in the journals "The Oncologist" and "Annals of Oncology". One ...

A new study reveals that Southeast Asian monitor lizards, representing the world's largest lizards, are harvested and traded for their skins and as pets in intangible volumes despite existing legislation – and much of this trade is illegal. Germany plays a major role in the international trade with live reptiles. On June 8th, 2013, the world's largest reptile fair will take place in Germany (Hamm, Westphalia). A team of German and Indonesian scientists recently published a first comprehensive study on the conservation and threat status of all SE-Asian species of monitor ...

The European Perinatal Health Report released by the EURO-PERISTAT project is the most comprehensive report on the health and care of pregnant women and babies in Europe and brings together data from 2010 from 26 European Union member states, plus Iceland, Norway and Switzerland. EURO-PERISTAT takes a new approach to health reporting. Rather than simply comparing countries on single indicators such as infant mortality, our report paints a fuller picture by presenting data about mortality, low birthweight and preterm birth alongside data about health care and maternal characteristics ...

If the climate continues to evolve as predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United States stands little to no chance of satisfying its current biofuel goals, according to a new study by Rice University and the University of California at Davis. The study published online in the American Chemical Society journal Environmental Science and Technology suggests that in 40 years, a hotter planet would cut the yield of corn grown for ethanol in the U.S. by an average of 7 percent while increasing the amount of irrigation necessary by 9 percent. That ...

Scientists have taken a vital step forward in understanding how cells from skin tissue can be reprogrammed to become stem cells. New research could pave the way to generate these stem cells efficiently to better understand and develop treatments for diseases such as multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease and muscular degeneration. The study of how these cells – known as induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) – were reprogramed was led by the University of Edinburgh and is published in the journal Nature. Scientists found that the process by which iPSCs are created ...

Intestinal bacteria may have a greater influence on us than was previously thought. In a study published in the prestigious journal Nature on 29 May, researchers at the Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Sweden and Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, show that patients with type 2 diabetes have an altered gut microbiota. Their findings have led to a new model to identify patients at increased risk of developing diabetes. The human body contains ten times more bacteria than human cells. Most of these bacteria comprise the normal gut microbiota. Our bodies ...

This news release is available in German. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Jena, Germany, discovered that the ability of Manduca sexta moths to recognize changes in the profile of volatile compounds released by plants being attacked by Manduca caterpillars allows them to lay their eggs on plants that are less likely to be attacked by insects and other predators, and to avoid competing against other caterpillars of the same species for resources. The results of field experiments and neurobiological studies were now published in the open ...

PULLMAN, Wash. - Lindsay Ellsworth is prescribing a new, mood-boosting therapy for teenagers in drug and alcohol treatment: shelter dogs. On Friday afternoons, about four dogs from the Spokane Humane Society take a field trip to Excelsior Youth Center as a group of teenage boys eagerly await their arrival. Ellsworth, a doctoral candidate in animal sciences at Washington State University, organizes the meet-ups where participants can help brush, feed and play with the dogs. "We found one of the most robust effects of interacting with the dogs was increased joviality," ...

Some research has shown that the effects of changes in the climate may be weak or even non-existent. This makes it easy to conclude that climate change will ultimately have less impact than previous warnings have predicted. But it could also be explained as direct and indirect effects cancelling each other out, as scientists from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, show in a paper recently published in PNAS, the esteemed US scientific journal. To investigate how different climate impacts interact, an experiment was conducted at Kristineberg Marine Research Station. ...

Oil palm plantations in Malaysia are causing threatened forest frogs to disappear, paving the way for common species to move in on their turf, scientists have revealed. The study, carried out by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) describes how forests converted to palm oil plantations are causing threatened forest dwelling frogs to vanish, resulting in an overall loss of habitat that is important for the conservation of threatened frog species in the region. Scientists travelled to Peninsular Malaysia where they spent two years studying communities of frog species ...

In four out of ten cases, long-term stress suffered by women leads to some form of physical complaint. This is shown by a study of 1,500 women carried out at the Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Within the Population Study of Women in Gothenburg, researchers at the University of Gothenburg's Sahlgrenska Academy have followed around 1,500 women since the late 1960s. The latest study within the project, which focuses primarily on stress linked to psychosomatic symptoms, showed that one in five middle-aged women had experienced constant or frequent ...

More time in front of the TV set and higher exposure to TV adverts may lead to increased consumption of sweetened beverages among children. This is the conclusion of a new study from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. The parents of more than 1,700 two- to four-year-olds in Sweden responded to questions about their children's TV and screen habits and consumption of sweetened drinks. About one parent in seven indicated that they tried to reduce their children's exposure to TV adverts; the same parents stated that their children were less prone to drink soft drinks ...

Laser researchers in Munich are challenging a basic assumption of engineering: "You can't have it all." They have shown that for certain kinds of laser applications in biomedical imaging, material processing, and communications, a new approach could deliver the desired capabilities with no problematic tradeoffs: in compact, inexpensive, efficient and long-lived devices that produce ultrashort, high-energy light pulses. This research is a close collaboration between members of the Electrical Engineering and Information Technology Department at the Technische Universitaet ...

In his article, "Pathoetiology of multiple sclerosis: are we barking up the wrong tree?", Peter K. Stys of the Hotchkiss Brain Institute, University of Calgary, argues that while the majority of the medical research community currently approaches MS as an autoimmune disease (much like Lupus and Rheumatoid Arthritis), for which the trigger is the immune system attacking a particular part of the nervous system, the features of the disease are equally well explained by approaching MS as a neurodegenerative disease (such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's), which is followed by ...

A new approach may be able to reduce by more than half the time it takes health officials to identify Salmonella strains, according to researchers in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences. The finding may significantly speed up the response to many outbreaks of foodborne illness, allowing epidemiological investigators to identify the exact strains of Salmonella that make people sick and to more quickly find -- and eliminate -- the source of the disease. "There are more than a million estimated cases of salmonellosis annually in the United States, resulting in ...

A multi-institutional team of researchers have pinpointed the genetic traits of the cells that give rise to gliomas – the most common form of malignant brain cancer. The findings, which appear in the journal Cell Reports, provide scientists with rich new potential set of targets to treat the disease. "This study identifies a core set of genes and pathways that are dysregulated during both the early and late stages of tumor progression," said University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) neurologist Steven Goldman, M.D., Ph.D., the senior author of the study and co-director ...

The flora and fauna of the American west coast is generally believed to be well explored and studied. However, a new study and a taxonomic assessment of the octocorals from the north eastern Pacific Ocean proves such assumptions wrong, with two new beautiful and colourful species of soft corals alongside a new genus. The study was published in the open access journal Zookeys. "It is remarkable that in a region previously thought to be as familiar and well known as the west coast of North America – with its numerous large urban centers and major marine laboratories – revisionary ...

This news release is available in German. It is obvious from the data of the KASCADE-Grande experiment at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) that the so-called "knee" of the cosmic rays, a bend in the energy spectrum at high energies, is located at different energies for light and heavy particles. As regards light particles, the scientists have now found that the energy spectrum flattens again beyond the knee and forms a type of "ankle". This structure indicates that cosmic radiation particles with energies beyond the knee are accelerated in galaxies other ...