Ann Arbor, Mich. — End-stage renal disease is one of the major public health problems among solid organ transplant recipients that is associated with death after transplant and high cost of care. Using the national data of 43,514 liver transplant recipients, researchers at University of Michigan researchers in collaboration with Arbor Research Collaborative for Health created and validated a risk score called renal risk index based upon the liver transplant recipient's characteristics at the time of transplant to predict the post- transplant end stage renal disease. ...

Out-of-pocket medical expenses will decline for most consumers who become newly insured or change their source of health insurance under the federal Affordable Care Act, according to a new RAND Corporation study. The study found that overall the Affordable Care Act will have a varied impact on health spending by individuals and families, depending primarily on their income and whether they would have been uninsured in 2016 without the program. People who will be newly insured and do not qualify for government subsidies are those who are most likely to see increased ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – The discovery of genetic differences affecting up to a third of the population could take the guesswork out of prescribing the correct dose of 25 percent of drugs currently on the market, researchers say. The scientists found two genetic variants that alter the activity level of an enzyme responsible for processing, or metabolizing, drugs ranging from the painkiller codeine to the breast cancer drug tamoxifen. The Ohio State University researchers who found these differences say that pending additional research, the variants are good candidates for ...

A person wielding a gun focuses more intently on the face of an opponent with a gun, presumably to try to determine that person's likelihood of pulling the trigger, according to a new study that builds on gun-in-hand research from the University of Notre Dame. Notre Dame Associate Professor of Psychology James Brockmole, who specializes in human cognition and how the visual world guides behavior, conducted the research at Notre Dame with Adam Biggs, currently a post-doctoral fellow in the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences and the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, and ...

Scientific data suggest that a woman reduces her risk of breast cancer by breastfeeding, having multiple children and giving birth at a younger age. A study led by the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and recently published online by Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, indicates that women of Mexican descent may not fit that profile. In fact, results suggest that women of Mexican descent with more children and those who breastfeed are more likely to be diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. During the four-year Ella Binational ...

MADISON — In June 2012, Tony Goldberg returned from one of his frequent trips to Kibale National Park, an almost 500-square-mile forest in western Uganda where he studies how infectious diseases spread and evolve in the wild. But he didn't return alone. "When I got back to the U.S., I realized I had a stowaway," says Goldberg, professor of pathobiological sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine and associate director for research in the UW-Madison Global Health Institute. "When you first realize you have a tick up your nose, it takes ...

A research team that includes a physics professor at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) has recorded a drastically reduced measurement of the Casimir effect, a fundamental quantum phenomenon experienced between two neutral bodies that exist in a vacuum. For more than 60 years, scientists have studied the peculiar electromagnetic interaction between two neutral objects. The Casimir effect, a long-standing point of study in quantum physics, refers to this unavoidable physical force that exists between the objects, even when those objects are placed ...

People place higher value on what they're waiting for; higher value makes them more patient Let's face it – no one likes to wait. We're a culture of instant gratification. But what if the very act we dislike can actually help make us more patient and help us make better financial decisions? According to a recent study by Ayelet Fishbach, Jeffrey Breakenridge Keller Professor of Behavioral Science and Marketing at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, waiting actually does make people more patient, which can provide a payoff for consumers by helping them ...

DENVER, October 1, 2013 – Chronic use of prescription painkillers, also known as opioids, among obese patients prior to bariatric surgery continues after surgery, according to a new Kaiser Permanente study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Researchers examined the electronic medical records of 11,719 obese patients who underwent bariatric surgery between 2005-2009 at one of 10 U.S. sites in the Scalable Partnering Network. Participating patients were evaluated one year before and one year after surgery. Seventy-seven percent of the obese ...

The October issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology (JACR) focuses on a variety of issues relating to clinical practice, practice management, health services and policy, and radiology education and training. Topics to be covered include the evolving role of the radiologist; the increasing role of radiologists in thoracic diagnosis; the Image Gently® Pediatric Digital Radiography Safety Checklist; managing incidental findings on abdominal and pelvic computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI); and an analysis of radiologists' imaging workload ...

PITTSBURGH—A new computational tool developed by U.S. and Israeli scientists will help scientists exploit the massive databases of gene expression experimental results that have been created over the past decade. Researchers say it could uncover new links between diseases and treatments and provide new insights into biological processes. The team, headed by Ziv Bar-Joseph of Carnegie Mellon University, reports in the October issue of the journal Nature Methods that the tool, called ExpressionBlast, enables searches based directly on experimental values, rather than keywords. ...

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, ILL. (Oct. 1, 2013) – All children should have flu shots, even if they have an egg allergy, and it's now safe to get them without special precautions. This finding is from the latest update on the safety of the flu vaccine for allergic patients, published in the October issue of the Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, the official journal of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI). The current recommendation from the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is to observe children allergic to eggs for 30 minutes ...

Over the past few decades, crop breeders have increasingly relied on the wild and weedy relatives of domesticated crops as new sources of disease resistance, drought tolerance, and other traits. But just like all wild plant species, these "crop wild relatives" (CWR) are also at risk of decline and extinction due to habitat loss, pollution, and climate change. On Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2013, two speakers will describe the latest efforts to identify and protect the wild relatives of domesticated crop plants around the globe. The presentations are part of the American Society ...

Making eye contact has long been considered an effective way of drawing a listener in and bringing him or her around to your point of view. But new research shows that eye contact may actually make people more resistant to persuasion, especially when they already disagree. The new findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. "There is a lot of cultural lore about the power of eye contact as an influence tool," says lead researcher Frances Chen, who conducted the studies at the University of Freiburg, Germany, ...

New research shows that making eye contact, long considered an effective way of bringing someone to your point of view, may actually make people more resistant to persuasion, especially when they already disagree. "There is a lot of cultural lore about the power of eye contact as an influence tool," says University of British Columbia Prof. Frances Chen, who conducted the research at the University of Freiburg in Germany. "But our findings show that direct eye contact makes skeptical listeners less likely to change their minds, not more, as previously believed." Chen ...

This news release is available in German and German. About two million people in Europe suffer from chronic inflammatory bowel diseases, which are characterized by progressive tissue destruction and that often necessitate removal of sections of the intestine. The exact causes of Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, the most common forms of these diseases, are still largely unknown. In addition to genetic and environmental as well as lifestyle factors, a disturbed intestinal microbiota is responsible for triggering the disease. Complete recovery is often not possible. ...

MAYWOOD, Il. – A nuclear bomb or nuclear reactor accident can produce a deadly combination of radiation exposure and injuries such as burns and trauma. Now the first study of its kind in 50 years is providing new insights into this phenomenon, called combined radiation injury (CRI). Researchers at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine have shown how CRI causes the intestines to leak bacteria into surrounding tissue. The study also showed that radiation and burns have a synergistic effect that make them far more deadly when they act in combination. The ...

A new study has found that "waviness" in forests of vertically-aligned carbon nanotubes dramatically reduces their stiffness, answering a long-standing question surrounding the tiny structures. Instead of being a detriment, the waviness may make the nanotube arrays more compliant and therefore useful as thermal interface material for conducting heat away from future high-powered integrated circuits. Measurements of nanotube stiffness, which is influenced by a property known as modulus, had suggested that forests of vertically-aligned nanotubes should have a much higher ...

U.S. Forest Service and partner scientists are keeping a watchful eye on forest health. As fall colors replace the lush greenness of spring and summer, researchers recognize telltale signs of change in healthy forests. A new publication highlights specific examples where researchers have used ForWarn, a state-of-the-art forest change recognition and tracking system, to detect disturbances and track forest recovery. ForWarn uses NASA satellite imagery to develop real-time maps that assist forest managers in the continental United States. Since 2010, ForWarn has detected ...

Hemin and sickle cell disease-associated acute chest syndrome development Acute chest syndrome (ACS) is a complication of sickle cell disease that is characterized by sudden pain and difficulty breathing. Sickle cell disease can also cause red blood cells to suddenly breakdown and release their contents, which may trigger the onset of ACS. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Solomon Fiifi Ofori-Acquah and colleagues at Emory University asked if hemin, a product released by red blood cells during lysis, triggers ACS in a mouse model of sickle cell ...

Acute chest syndrome (ACS) is a complication of sickle cell disease that is characterized by sudden pain and difficulty breathing. Sickle cell disease can also cause red blood cells to suddenly breakdown and release their contents, which may trigger the onset of ACS. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Solomon Fiifi Ofori-Acquah and colleagues at Emory University asked if hemin, a product released by red blood cells during lysis, triggers ACS in a mouse model of sickle cell disease. They found that hemin injection caused labored breathing, acute lung ...

Type 2 diabetes is a chronic condition that is characterized by resistance to or insufficient production of insulin, a hormone that controls sugar movement into cells. In certain tissues, insulin resistance has been associated with dysfunction of mitochondria, which supply most of the cell's chemical energy. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, C. Ronald Kahn and colleagues at Harvard Medical School evaluated mitochondrial involvement in insulin resistance. They found that heat shock protein 60 (HSP60), which is involved in mitochondrial protein import ...

A new study finds that papers with data shared in public gene expression archives received increased numbers of citations for at least five years. The large size of the study allowed the researchers to exclude confounding factors that have plagued prior studies of the effect and to spot a trend of increasing dataset reuse over time. The findings will be important in persuading scientists that they can benefit directly from publicly sharing their data. The study, which adds to growing evidence for an open data citation benefit across different scientific fields, is entitled ...

ATLANTA -- Breast cancer incidence rates increased slightly among African American women from 2006 to 2010, bringing those rates closer to the historically higher rates among white women, according to a new analysis by American Cancer Society researchers. The explanation behind the rise is unclear. The finding is published in Breast Cancer Statistics, 2013 published in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society. The report and its consumer version, Breast Cancer Facts & Figures 2013-2014, are published biennially and provide ...

A review of dozens of studies on the use of statin medications to prevent heart attacks shows that the commonly prescribed drugs pose no threat to short-term memory, and that they may even protect against dementia when taken for more than one year. The Johns Hopkins researchers who conducted the systematic review say the results should offer more clarity and reassurance to patients and the doctors who prescribe the statin medications. The question of whether statins can cause cognition problems has become a hot topic among cardiologists and their patients following changes ...