Many new developments and initiatives have been introduced to improve the quality and translational value of animal research, and must continue with support from the wider scientific community. These are the conclusions of a new article in PLOS Medicine this week by Carlijn Hooijmans and colleagues from the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre, Netherlands, who summarize these new developments. Focusing on the quality of study conduct, reporting, and replication; systematic reviews and meta-analyses; and study registration, publication bias, and data sharing, the ...

STANFORD, Calif. - Clinical trials of drug treatments for neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's often fail because the animal studies that preceded them were poorly designed or biased in their interpretation, according to a new study from an international team of researchers. More stringent requirements are needed to assess the significance of animal studies before testing the treatments in human patients, the researchers say. The team - led by John Ioannidis, MD, DSc, a professor of medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine and an expert ...

A new study published in the open access journal PLOS Biology suggests that the scientific literature could be compromised by substantial bias in the reporting of animal studies, and may be giving a misleading picture of the chances that potential treatments could work in humans. Testing a new therapeutic intervention (such as a drug or surgical procedure) on human subjects is expensive, risky and ethically complex, so the vast majority are first tested on animals. Unfortunately, cost and ethical issues constrain the size of animal studies, giving them limited statistical ...

There are six procedural things hospital teams can do to help heart failure patients avoid another hospital stay in the 30 days after they're discharged — and if all six are followed, patients are even more likely to avoid readmission, according to new research in the American Heart Association's journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes. Each step alone had some impact, but researchers discovered that if all six recommendations are followed, readmissions could drop as much as 2 percent. The study's lead author said that may seem like a small number, but ...

In a study of adults recruited and followed up over the past 3 decades in the United States, longer duration of overall and abdominal obesity beginning in young adulthood was associated with higher rates of coronary artery calcification, a subclinical predictor of coronary heart disease, according to a study in the July 17 issue of JAMA. "Subclinical atherosclerosis, identified by the presence of coronary artery calcification (CAC), progresses over time, and predicts the development of coronary heart disease events," according to background information in the article. ...

An analysis of West Nile virus epidemics in Dallas County in 2012 and previous years finds that the epidemics begin early, after unusually warm winters; are often in similar geographical locations; and are predicted by the mosquito vector index (an estimate of the average number of West Nile virus-infected mosquitoes collected per trap-night), information that may help prevent future outbreaks of West Nile virus-associated illness, according to a study in the July 17 issue of JAMA. "After declining over the prior 5 years, mosquito-borne West Nile virus infection resurged ...

Lyle R. Petersen, M.D., M.P.H., of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Public Health Service, Department of Health and Human Services, Fort Collins, Colo., and colleagues conducted a review of the medical literature and national surveillance data to examine the ecology, virology, epidemiology, clinical characteristics, diagnosis, prevention, and control of West Nile virus. "West Nile virus has become endemic in all 48 contiguous United States as well as all Canadian provinces since its discovery in North America in New York City in 1999. It has produced ...

Among patients who experienced in-hospital cardiac arrest requiring vasopressors (drugs that increase blood pressure), use of a combination therapy during cardiopulmonary resuscitation resulted in improved survival to hospital discharge with favorable neurological status, according to a study in the July 17 issue of JAMA. "Neurological outcome after cardiac arrest has been the main end point of several randomized clinical trials (RCTs). Neurologically favorable survival differs from overall survival. Among cardiac arrest survivors, the prevalence of severe cerebral ...

In a study that included more than 10,000 men with nonmetastatic prostate cancer, use of androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) was associated with a significantly increased risk of acute kidney injury, with variations observed with certain types of ADTs, according to a study in the July 17 issue of JAMA. "Androgen deprivation therapy is the mainstay treatment for patients with advanced prostate cancer. While this therapy has been traditionally reserved for patients with advanced disease, ADT is increasingly being used in patients with less severe forms of the cancer, such ...

"Multiple hospitalizations for complications from a terminal illness may be burdensome for elderly patients and reflect poor quality care," write Joan M. Teno, M.D., M.S., of the Warren Alpert School of Medicine of Brown University, Providence, R.I., and colleagues, who conducted a study to examine whether the occurrence of multiple hospitalizations for the complications of infections or dehydration was associated with survival. As reported in a Research Letter, the study population was identified using data from the national Minimum Data Set repository, which includes ...

People with high blood pressure, who don't take their anti-hypertensive drug treatments when they should, have a greatly increased risk of suffering a stroke and dying from it compared to those who take their medication correctly. A study of 73,527 patients with high blood pressure, published online today (Wednesday) in the European Heart Journal [1], found that patients who did not adhere to their medication had a nearly four-fold increased risk of dying from stroke in the second year after first being prescribed drugs to control their blood pressure, and a three-fold ...

DALLAS – July 16, 2013 – UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have unlocked some of the mysteries of West Nile virus outbreaks and shown that use of a mosquito vector-index rating system works well to identify the best time for early intervention. West Nile infections in humans can cause long-term neurological damage and even death. The investigation analyzed a decade of West Nile infections, weather, and housing data. The 2012 data – from the nation's largest West Nile outbreak that occurred in Dallas County, Texas – revealed that the best way to avoid an outbreak ...

WHAT: The length of time a young adult is obese is associated with the development of silent, or subclinical, heart disease in middle age, independent of body mass index (BMI) or waist circumference, according to National Institutes of Health-supported research. Each year that a young adult is obese increases that person's risk of developing coronary artery calcification, a subclinical predictor of heart disease, by 2 to 4 percent. These findings were published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Obesity is a risk factor for subclinical heart ...

Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Maryland have shown how to make nanoscale measurements of critical properties of plasmonic nanomaterials—the specially engineered nanostructures that modify the interaction of light and matter for a variety of applications, including sensors, cloaking (invisibility), photovoltaics and therapeutics. Their technique is one of the few that allows researchers to make actual physical measurements of these materials at the nanoscale without affecting the nanomaterial's function. Plasmonic ...

Researchers from UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center have discovered that specific types of bacteria that live in the gut are major contributors to lymphoma, a cancer of the white blood cells. Published online ahead of press today in the journal Cancer Research, the study was led by Robert Schiestl, member of the Jonsson Cancer Center and professor of pathology and laboratory medicine, environmental health sciences, and radiation oncology. In rodents, intestinal bacteria influence obesity, intestinal inflammation and certain types of epithelial cancers. (Epithelial ...

Magnets could be a tool for directing stem cells' healing powers to treat conditions such as heart disease or vascular disease. By feeding stem cells tiny particles made of iron oxide, scientists at Emory and Georgia Tech can use magnets to attract the cells to a particular location in the body after intravenous injection. The results are published online in the journal Small and will appear in an upcoming issue. The paper was a result of collaboration between the laboratories of W. Robert Taylor, MD, PhD, and Gang Bao, PhD. Taylor is professor of medicine and biomedical ...

Environmental conditions have a much stronger influence on the mix of microbes living in various parts of your body than does competition between species. Instead of excluding each other, microbes that fiercely compete for similar resources are more likely to cohabit the same individual. This phenomenon was discovered in a recent study of the human microbiome – the vast collection of our resident bacteria, fungi, and other tiny organisms. The findings were published in the early online edition of PNAS, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– A chemical analysis of oil sheens recently found floating at the ocean's surface near the site of the Deepwater Horizon disaster indicates that the source is pockets of oil trapped within the wreckage of the sunken rig. First reported to the U.S. Coast Guard by British Petroleum (BP) in mid-September 2012, the oil sheens raised public concern that the Macondo well, which was capped in July 2010, might be leaking. However, both the Macondo well and the natural oil seeps common to the Gulf of Mexico were confidently ruled out, according to researchers ...

A drug already approved to treat multiple sclerosis may also hold promise for treating cardiac hypertrophy, or thickening of the cardiac muscle--a disorder that often leads to heart failure, researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine report. The findings are published in the July 16 issue of Circulation: Heart Failure. Cardiac hypertrophy is a slow thickening of the heart muscle that shrinks the interior volume of the heart, forcing the organ to work harder to pump a diminishing volume of blood. "There comes a day when the heart just ...

CHICAGO – Adding just a small amount of everyday herbs and spices to vegetables and reduced-calorie meals may make those foods more appetizing to consumers, which could ultimately help Americans cut down on dietary fat and choose more foods in line with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, according to research presented at the 2013 Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) Annual Meeting & Food Expo® John Peters, Ph.D., professor of medicine at the University of Colorado and chief of strategy and innovation at the school's Anschutz Health and Wellness Center, presented ...

CHICAGO—Almonds may still be considered one of the highest energy food sources but it's not about how much you bite off, instead it's about how much you chew, according to a July 14 panel discussion at the 2013 Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) Annual Meeting & Food Expo® held at McCormick Place. "Particle size has bioaccessibility of the energy of the food that is being consumed," said Dr. Richard Mattes (CQ), professor of foods and nutrition at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Ind. "The more you chew, the less is lost and more is retained in the body." Each ...

(Edmonton) Moms-to-be who gain too much weight early into their pregnancy are nearly three times as likely to give birth to bigger and fatter babies, warns a University of Alberta researcher. A study of 172 expectant mothers found that women who gained excessive weight during the first half of pregnancy gave birth to heavier and longer babies with more body fat than babies of women who either did not gain as much weight or put it on later in their pregnancy. The results underscore the need to educate expectant mothers about the dangers of early weight gain during pregnancy ...

The following highlights summarize research papers that have been recently published in Journal of Geophysical Research-Biogeosciences (JGR-G), Journal of Geophysical Research-Oceans (JGR-C), Journal of Geophysical Research-Solid Earth (JGR-B), and Water Resources Research (WRR). In this release: Why freshwater organisms survived the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs Constraining bubbling of methane from thermokarst lakes Low-cost solution optimizes water quality of reservoir effluent Characterizing the dynamics of geyser eruptions Seismic studies provide new detail ...

PHILADELPHIA – They say you can pick your friends, but not your family. The same may hold true for related proteins. The protein TAp73 is a relative of the well-known, tumor-suppressor protein p53. It shares extensive common gene sequences with p53 and, as suggested by some previous studies, it may function similar to p53 to prevent tumor formation. However, unlike p53, which is the most commonly mutated gene in human tumors, TAp73 is rarely mutated, and instead is frequently overexpressed in a wide range of human tumors, including breast, colon, lung, stomach, ovarian, ...

More than a decade ago, Thomas Vogt and Yongjae Lee, then colleagues at Brookhaven National Laboratory, uncovered a counter-intuitive property of zeolites. When they put these porous minerals in water, and then put the water under high pressure, the tiny cavities within the zeolites actually grew in size. Pressure failed to crush, and even caused expansion. In the years since, Vogt and Lee, now at the University of South Carolina and Yonsei University (Seoul), respectively, have followed up with cation exchange experiments, placing a series of alkali metal ions into the ...