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 ...

PASADENA, Calif. – Oct. 14, 2013 – The impact of bariatric surgery on risk factors for cardiovascular disease depends on a variety of factors, including the type of surgery, sex of the patient, ethnic background, and pre-surgery body mass index, according to a Kaiser Permanente study published today in Annals of Surgery. Researchers examined the electronic health records of more than 4,000 Kaiser Permanente patients in Southern California who had bariatric surgery for weight loss between 2009 and 2011 to determine what factors led to remission– or reduction – of metabolic ...

Clinical researchers from Sydney's Garvan Institute of Medical Research and St. Vincent's Hospital have shown that a form of weight loss surgery, known as 'gastric banding', brings about reversal of diabetes in some patients, and dramatic improvement of glucose tolerance in others, within 12 weeks. Type 2 diabetes is a complex metabolic disorder that develops over time, with the body becoming progressively less able to control blood sugar levels. High blood sugars cause damage to tissues and organs, and can lead to very serious complications such as kidney failure and ...

In a study, published online today in the journal Age and Ageing, of over 270 patients newly diagnosed with minor strokes or transient ischaemic attack (TIA), only a minority sought medical help within the timeframe recommended by the Royal College of Physicians. This is despite the high profile FAST campaign, which was taking place at the time that the study was conducted. Rapid assessment and treatment of patients with TIA or minor stroke reduces the risk of early recurrent stroke. The Royal College of Physicians' Guidelines suggests that TIA patients who are deemed ...

An international team of scientists have identified potentially dangerous amounts of methamphetamine analog in the workout supplement Craze, a product widely sold across the U.S. and online. The study, published in Drug Testing and Analysis, was prompted by a spate of failed athletic drug tests. The results reveal the presence of methamphetamine analog N,α- DEPEA, which has not been safely tested for human consumption, in three samples. "In recent years banned and untested drugs have been found in hundreds of dietary supplements. We began our study of Craze after ...

People with ADHD and dependency rarely respond as they should to ADHD drugs. A randomised study from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden now shows that it is possible to obtain the desired efficacy by administering the drug in higher doses. The results of the study are published in the scientific journal Addiction. ADHD is much more common in people who use drugs than in the population at large. ADHD can be treated with methylphenidate, a CNS stimulant used for both children and adults. However, no previous studies have been able to show that methylphenidate is effective ...

Researchers of the Spanish research council (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, CSIC) and the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares (CNIC) have discovered that inhibiting the protein Rcan1 in mice reduces the burden of atherosclerosis, one of the commonest cardiovascular diseases. The results of their study, published in the prestigious journal EMBO Molecular Medicine, suggest that Rcan1 is a potential target for future drug treatments for this disease, and the team is already working to develop this potential. The study analyzed the molecular ...

Villi are small epithelial protrusions that serve to increase the surface area of the gut for efficient nutrient absorption. The mechanism of their formation during development was recently revealed by a study published in Science. The investigations, carried out by two research groups at Harvard University, were complemented by computational modelling carried out at the University of Jyväskylä and funded by the Academy of Finland. Villification (villus formation) has previously been hypothesised to be based on an active mechanism coordinated by growth factors. The present ...

DETROIT – Emergency Departments across Michigan are better prepared to handle a disaster today than they were seven years ago, according to a Henry Ford Hospital study. The study found that 84 percent of emergency departments said they are more prepared to handle a terrorist attack or natural disaster than they were in 2005. They've also enhanced their preparedness efforts by adding decontamination rooms, stockpiling antidotes for nerve gas and cyanide, and storing more respiratory protection supplies. At the same time, emergency departments acknowledged they could ...

Researchers around Dr. Michael Hirtz from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and Dr. Aravind Vijayaraghavan from the University of Manchester have developed a new method to produce artificial membranes: Using a nanoscaled tip, they write tailored patches of phospholipid membrane onto a graphene substrate. The resulting biomimetic membranes, i.e. membranes simulating biological structures, allow for the specific investigation of functions of cell membranes and the development of novel applications in medicine and biotechnology, such as biosensors. The method is now presented ...