For nearly a decade, doctors have used an implanted electronic stimulator to treat severe depression in people who don't respond to standard antidepressant therapy. Now, preliminary brain scan studies conducted by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis are beginning to reveal the processes occurring in the brain during stimulation and may provide some clues about how the device improves depression. They found that vagus nerve stimulation brings about changes in brain metabolism weeks or even months before patients begin to feel better. The ...

WASHINGTON — Black women with breast cancer were found to be three times more likely than their white counterparts to delay treatment for more than 90 days — a time delay associated with increased deaths from the disease, according to a new study led by researchers at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center. But many women chose to forgo treatment altogether, and the study, published online in the May issue of Breast Cancer Research and Treatment, suggests that low satisfaction regarding communication between black women and their doctors is a significant reason ...

MADISON – For plants and animals forced to tough out harsh winter weather, the coverlet of snow that blankets the north country is a refuge, a stable beneath-the-snow habitat that gives essential respite from biting winds and subzero temperatures. But in a warming world, winter and spring snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere is in decline, putting at risk many plants and animals that depend on the space beneath the snow to survive the blustery chill of winter. In a report published May 2 in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, a team of scientists ...

A University of Colorado Cancer Center study recently published in the journal Cell Death & Disease shows that turning up a few microRNAs a little may offer as much anti-breast-cancer activity as turning up one microRNA a lot – and without the unwanted side effects. It's a bit like the classic thought experiment known as the "tumor problem" formulated by Karl Dunker in 1945 and used frequently in the problem-solving literature: Imagine a person suffers from a malignant tumor in the center of her body. Radiation strong enough to kill the tumor kills any healthy tissue ...

SAN DIEGO – Giving patients better access to primary health care could save nearly $4 billion a year in unnecessary emergency room visits for a single common complaint – urinary tract infections – according to a study by the Vattikuti Urology Institute at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. The study set out to determine the economic burden of 10.8 million patients, with a primary diagnosis of urinary tract infection, who went to U.S. emergency rooms for treatment from the beginning of 2006 to the end of 2009. The findings will be presented May 6 at the annual meeting of ...

1. Ambrisentan Not Appropriate for Patients with Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis Ambrisentan should not be used to treat patients for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). IPF is a fatal form of chronic, progressive lung disease characterized by irreversible scarring around both lungs. IPF causes about 5,000 deaths each year and currently there is no approved treatment. Researchers do not know what causes IPF, but a protein called endothelin-1 that causes the blood vessels to contract and induces lung scarring and proliferation has been associated with the disease. Researchers ...

MINNEAPOLIS – Contrary to a widely accepted belief, African-Americans may have a higher rather than lower risk of developing multiple sclerosis (MS) than Caucasians, according to a new study in the May 7, 2013, print issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. "Our population-based study is the first of its kind to look at this question. The belief (that African- Americans have a lower risk of developing MS) was based on evidence that was problematic," said study author Annette Langer-Gould, MD, with Kaiser Permanente Southern California ...

Minneapolis, MN, May 6, 2013 – Adults with end-stage respiratory failure and pulmonary hypertension requiring ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) have been "bridged" toward lung transplantation with novel lung assist devices such as the Novalung. This and related devices work based on pumpless application of oxygenators. A presentation by David M. Hoganson, MD, and colleagues from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis at the Congenital Heart Disease Session of the 93rd AATS Annual Meeting describes the first time application of this technology to ...

PASADENA, Calif., May 6, 2013 – Multiple sclerosis is more common in black women than in white women, according to a Kaiser Permanente study published today in the journal Neurology. The findings run contrary to the widely accepted belief that blacks are less susceptible to MS, according to the researchers. Researchers examined the electronic health records of more than 3.5 million members of Kaiser Permanente Southern California between January 2008 and December 2011 and identified 496 people newly diagnosed with MS. Of these diagnosed cases, black patients had a 47 ...

Boston, Mass. –A quality improvement platform developed at Boston Children's Hospital could help health care provider groups continuously improve their medical practice, curbing costs and improving patient outcomes. Successful outcomes associated with the platform, called Standardized Clinical Assessment and Management Plans (SCAMPs) and supported by a consortium of Massachusetts payers, are featured in the May issue of Health Affairs. SCAMPs start with existing practice recommendations, but are continuously revised as clinicians learn from everyday patient encounters. ...

Research from King's College London reveals the detailed mechanism behind how stress hormones reduce the number of new brain cells - a process considered to be linked to depression. The researchers identified a key protein responsible for the long-term detrimental effect of stress on cells, and importantly, successfully used a drug compound to block this effect, offering a potential new avenue for drug discovery. The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) was co-funded by the National Institute for Health Research Biomedical Research ...

Around 150 million people globally are chronically infected with the hepatitis C virus (HCV) – a major cause of liver disease and the fastest growing cause of liver transplantation and liver cancer. 1 New prevention strategies are urgently required as people are continuing to be infected with HCV. Findings, published in Hepatology, reveal the impact of a new antiviral treatment that could potentially reduce HCV rates in some cities affected by chronic HCV prevalence by half over 15 years. In Europe, the US and other developed countries the majority of HCV infections ...

Some of the earliest results from The Environmental Determinants of Diabetes in The Young (TEDDY) study - a major Europe-USA consortium exploring the causes of type 1 diabetes in children – has found no evidence for viral infection as a cause of the rapid-onset form of the condition. The research appears in Diabetologia, the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) and is by Professor Anette-Gabriele Ziegler of the German Research Centre for Environmental Health (Helmholtz Zentrum München), Munich, Germany, and colleagues across the USA and Europe, ...

VIDEO: Cally Harper of Brown University explains how the bats she studied have evolved to lap up extra nectar using blood-filled "hairs " on their tongues. She also discusses how they could... Click here for more information. PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Nectar-feeding bats and busy janitors have at least two things in common: They want to wipe up as much liquid as they can as fast as they can, and they have specific equipment for the job. A study in the ...

NEW YORK, NY (May 6, 2013) – A team of New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF) Research Institute scientists report today the generation of patient-specific bone substitutes from skin cells for repair of large bone defects. The study, led by Darja Marolt, PhD, a NYSCF-Helmsley Investigator and Giuseppe Maria de Peppo, PhD, a NYSCF Research Fellow, and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, represents a major advance in personalized reconstructive treatments for patients with bone defects resulting from disease or trauma. This advance ...

New York, NY, May 6, 2013—Combining Medicare's hospital, physician, and prescription drug coverage with commonly purchased private supplemental coverage into one health plan could produce national savings of $180 billion over a decade while improving care for beneficiaries, according to a new study by researchers at The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and The Commonwealth Fund published today in the May edition of Health Affairs. Under the proposed plan, called "Medicare Essential," Medicare beneficiaries could save a total of $63 billion between 2014 and ...

This news release is available in Russian. Analysis by the nonprofit American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) confirms the release of oil into the waters of the Caspian Sea off Turkmenistan, and demonstrates an innovative new use of publicly available imaging technology. The work describes "hundreds of instances in which petroleum discharge has taken place near drilling platforms in the Caspian Sea, and another leak adjacent to oil fields on the shores of the Turkmenbashi Gulf," said Susan Wolfinbarger, director of the AAAS Geospatial Technologies ...

Having a neighborly chat improves seed germination, finds research in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Ecology. Even when other known means of communication, such as contact, chemical and light-mediated signals, are blocked chilli seeds grow better when grown with basil plants. This suggests that plants are talking via nanomechanical vibrations. Monica Gagliano and Michael Renton from the University of Western Australia attempted to grow chilli seeds (Capsicum annuum) in the presence or absence of other chilli plants, or basil (Ocimum basilicum). In the absence ...

Certain types of anti-depressants have been linked to an increase in the risk of Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) finds a study in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Medicine. Awareness of this link should improve identification and early treatment of CDI. CDI is one of the most common hospital acquired infections and is responsible for more than 7000 deaths annually in the USA alone. Several types of medications are thought to increase risk of CDI, including anti-depressants, and given that depression is the third most common medical condition worldwide a ...

LA JOLLA, CA – Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have reported successful preclinical tests of a new vaccine against heroin. The vaccine targets heroin and its psychoactive breakdown products in the bloodstream, preventing them from reaching the brain. "Heroin-addicted rats deprived of the drug will normally resume using it compulsively if they regain access, but our vaccine stops this from happening," said George F. Koob, who chairs TSRI's addiction research group, the Committee on the Neurobiology of Addictive Disorders. If the vaccine works as well ...

STANFORD, Calif. - Researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine have developed a new technique to see how different types of cells interact in a living mouse. The process uses light-emitting proteins that glow when two types of cells come close together. Using the technique, the team was able to pinpoint where in the body metastatic cancer cells ended up after they broke off from an initial tumor site, using readily available lab reagents. The team chose chemicals that are easily available in most life sciences laboratories because they wanted to develop a technique ...

DURHAM, N.C. – Continuing analysis of an HIV vaccine trial undertaken in Thailand is yielding additional information about how immune responses were triggered and why the vaccine did not protect more people. In a study appearing May 6, 2013, in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an international team of researchers led by the Duke Human Vaccine Institute describe a previously unknown interaction between antibodies that worked to block the vaccine's protective powers. The vaccine trial, known as RV144, used two investigational vaccines in combination, ...

A slowdown in the growth of U.S. health care costs could mean that Americans could save as much as $770 billion on Medicare spending over the next decade, Harvard economists say. In a May 6 paper published in Health Affairs, David Cutler, the Otto Eckstein Professor of Applied Economics, and co-author Nikhil Sahni, a senior researcher in Harvard's Economics Department, point to several factors, including a decline in the development of new drugs and technologies and increased efficiency in the health care system, to explain the recent slowdown. If those trends continue ...

PITTSBURGH, May 6, 2013 – An ingredient that naturally occurs in breast milk might be used to prevent premature babies from developing a deadly intestinal condition that currently is largely incurable, according to researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC in this week's online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The story begins with a baby who is born too early, meaning before 36 weeks gestation, said senior author David Hackam, M.D., Ph.D., Watson Family Professor ...

A research letter by Brian Wansink, Ph.D., and Aner Tal, Ph.D., of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., suggests that hungry grocery shoppers tend to buy higher-calorie products. The research included a laboratory study in which 68 paid participants were asked to avoid eating five hours prior to the study, although during some of the sessions some of the participants were given crackers so they would no longer feel hungry. A follow-up field study tracked the purchases of 82 participants at different times of the day when they were most likely to be full or hungry. According ...