Researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center studied patients with metastatic gastric cancer and found that those who have both surgery and radiation have better survival than those who receive one or no form of treatment. The study appeared in an online issue of Cancer. "There were an estimated 21,000 new cases of gastric cancer in the United States in 2010 and 11,000 deaths from the disease," said Ravi Shridhar, M.D., Ph.D., of the Radiation Oncology Department at Moffitt. "Most gastric cancers are diagnosed at advanced stages, when surgery may not be an option." Until ...

It's common knowledge that a child who misses a meal can't concentrate in school. But what happens years down the road? Does that missed meal have any bearing on health in adulthood? A new University of Nebraska-Lincoln study shows that missed meals in childhood can be linked to experiencing pain and depression in adulthood. Depression and chronic pain are experienced by 44 percent of working-aged adults and the study shows a correlation between childhood conditions and pain and depression in adulthood. The study by UNL sociologist Bridget Goosby examines how childhood ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Inspired by a chemical that fungi secrete to defend their territory, MIT chemists have synthesized and tested several dozen compounds that may hold promise as potential cancer drugs. A few years ago, MIT researchers led by associate professor of chemistry Mohammad Movassaghi became the first to chemically synthesize 11,11'-dideoxyverticillin, a highly complex fungal compound that has shown anti-cancer activity in previous studies. This and related compounds naturally occur in such small amounts that it has been difficult to do a comprehensive study of ...

Yttria stabilized zirconia, also known as YSZ, is a material of great interest because of its relatively high oxygen-ion based conductivity. In particular, it finds applications in electrochemical devices, such as solid oxide fuel cells and oxygen sensors. In a study published in EPJ B, Kia Ngai, from the University of Pisa in Italy, and colleagues from the Complutense University in Madrid, Spain, devised a model of the oxygen-ion dynamics that contribute to the conductivity of YSZ. The problem is that fuel cells currently operate above 700 ºC, which strongly limits their ...

Light from two massive stars that exploded hundreds of millions of years ago recently reached Earth, and each event was identified as a supernova. A supernova discovered Feb. 6 exploded about 450 million years ago, said Farley Ferrante, a graduate student at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, who made the initial observation. The exploding star is in a relatively empty portion of the sky labeled "anonymous" in the faint constellation Canes Venatici. Home to a handful of galaxies, Canes Venatici is near the constellation Ursa Major, best known for the Big Dipper. A ...

Chronic or acute, liver failure can be deadly. Toxins take over, the skin turns yellow and higher brain function slows. "There is no effective therapy at the moment to deal with the toxins that build up in your body," said Neil Talbot, a Research Animal Scientist for the USDA Agricultural Research Service. "Their only option now is to transplant a liver." Talbot thinks a line of special liver cells could change that. In an interview with the American Society of Animal Science, he discussed how a line of pig liver cells called PICM-19 could perform many of the same functions ...

Bethesda, MD - The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) is once again calling on Congress and the President to work together to prevent sequestration, the automatic across-the-board budget cuts that are scheduled to go into effect on March 1st. "These automatic spending cuts will stop science advances in their tracks and cost highly trained researchers their jobs," said FASEB President, Judith S. Bond, PhD. A new analysis (http://bit.ly/V9Ra2s) produced by FASEB calculated the impact of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) sequestration ...

PHILADELPHIA — An increasing body mass index was associated with a higher risk for colorectal cancer with a specific molecular characteristic, and inversely, physical activity was linked to a decreased risk for that same cancer, according to data published in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. "We know that exercise and avoiding obesity decrease colorectal cancer risk, but little is known about why," said Shuji Ogino, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of pathology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and associate professor in the Department ...

Syphilis still affects large numbers of pregnant women world-wide, causing serious health problems and even death to their babies, yet this infection could be prevented by early testing and treatment, according to a study by international researchers published in this week's PLOS Medicine. Researchers, led by Lori Newman from the World Health Organization, estimate that in 2008, 1.4 million pregnant women around the world were infected with syphilis, 80% of whom had attended antenatal care services. The researchers reached this figure by using information on the number ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — New research from the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center finds that the protein HER2 plays a role even in breast cancers that would traditionally be categorized as HER2-negative – and that the drug Herceptin, which targets HER2, may have an even greater role for treating breast cancer and preventing its spread. About 20 percent of women with breast cancer have tumors labeled HER2-positive. And since the drug Herceptin has come on the scene, it has had a tremendous impact on survival for these women, particularly when it is given in the ...

An analysis of breast cancer trends in the U.S. finds a small but statistically significant increase in the incidence of advanced breast cancer for women 25 to 39 years of age, without a corresponding increase in older women, according to a study appearing in the February 27 issue of JAMA. "In the United States, breast cancer is the most common malignant tumor in adolescent and young adult women 15 to 39 years of age, accounting for 14 percent of all cancer in men and women in the age group. The individual average risk of a woman developing breast cancer in the United ...

In an analysis of data on patients who underwent bariatric surgery 2004-2009, there was no significant difference in the rates of complications and reoperation for Medicare patients before vs. after a 2006 Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services policy that restricted coverage of bariatric surgery to centers of excellence, according to a study appearing in the February 27 issue of JAMA. "Prompted by concerns about perioperative safety with bariatric surgery, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a national coverage decision in 2006 that limited coverage ...

In contrast to the commonly adopted surveillance intervals in current abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) screening programs, surveillance intervals of several years may be clinically acceptable for the majority of patients with small AAA, as the smallest AAAs often do not appear to change significantly over many years, according to a meta-analysis of previous studies reported in the February 27 issue of JAMA. "The survival rate following rupture of an abdominal aortic aneurysm is only 20 percent, making AAAs an important cause of mortality," according to background information ...

Among patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction, long-term treatment with the medication spironolactone improved left ventricular diastolic function but did not affect maximal exercise capacity, patient symptoms, or quality of life, according to a study appearing in the February 27 issue of JAMA. "Heart failure (HF) with preserved ejection fraction [EF; the percentage of blood that is pumped out of a filled ventricle as a result of a heartbeat is 50 percent or greater] accounts for more than 50 percent of the total HF population," according to background ...

Boston - Atrial fibrillation is the most common type of abnormal heart rhythm, affecting 2.5 million Americans. If left undetected or untreated, atrial fibrillation can lead to stroke. Determining who is at increased risk for atrial fibrillation has been difficult, especially among individuals without established heart disease. But now, researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital have devised and tested a simple atrial fibrillation risk prediction model, based on six easily obtained factors: a woman's age, height, weight, blood pressure, alcohol consumption and smoking ...

Alcohol consumption could be much higher than previously thought, with more than three quarters of people in England drinking in excess of the recommended daily alcohol limit, according to a new paper in the European Journal of Public Health. The study, conducted by researchers in the UCL Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, is the first to investigate the potential public health implications related to the under-reporting of alcohol consumption. International studies have shown that self-reported alcohol consumption only accounts for between 40 and 60 per cent ...

A novel tool exploits baker's yeast to expedite the development of new drugs to fight multiple tropical diseases, including malaria, schistosomiasis, and African sleeping sickness. The unique screening method uses yeasts which have been genetically engineered to express parasite and human proteins to identify chemical compounds that target disease-causing parasites but do not affect their human hosts. Parasitic diseases affect millions of people annually, often in the most deprived parts of the world. Every year, malaria alone infects over 200 million people, killing ...

The largest randomised study of the vitamin niacin in patients with occlusive arterial disease (narrowing of the arteries) has shown a significant increase in adverse side-effects when it is combined with statin treatment. Results from the HPS2-THRIVE study (Heart Protection Study 2 – Treatment of HDL to Reduce the Incidence of Vascular Events), including the reasons patients stopped the study treatment, are published online today (Wednesday) in the European Heart Journal [1]. Niacin has been used for decades to help increase levels of "good" HDL cholesterol and to ...

People with HIV are less able to recognise facial emotion than non-infected people finds a study published in the launch edition of BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Psychology. Reduction in their ability to recognise fear in others is linked to a similar loss in immediate recall, while those with a lower general neurocognitive performance also had a reduced ability to recognise happiness. The mechanism behind recognition of facial emotion is complex, involving many different areas of the brain, including the frontostriatal pathway and amygdala. The frontostriatal ...

The powerful venom of the saw-scaled viper Echis carinatus contains both anticoagulants and coagulants finds a study published in the launch edition of BioMed Central's open access journal Journal of Venomous Animals and Toxins including Tropical Diseases (JVATiTD). These may be a source of potent drugs to treat human disease. The saw-scaled viper family Echis, responsible for most snake attacks on humans, are recognizable by the 'sizzling' noise they make, produced by rubbing together special serrated scales, when threatened. Echis venom causes coagulopathy, which can ...

The results are consistent with previous studies from Finland and Sweden and indicate that the association is not confined to Scandinavian populations. However, the authors stress that the risk may still be overestimated, and they call for longer term monitoring of the cohort of children and adolescents exposed to Pandemrix to evaluate the exact level of risk. In 2009, pandemic influenza A (H1N1) virus spread rapidly, resulting in millions of cases and over 18,000 deaths in over 200 countries. In England the vaccine Pandemrix was introduced in October 2009. By March 2010, ...

As such, the researchers say "it should not be used as a tool to achieve improvements in generic health related quality of life or psychological outcomes." Telehealth uses technology to help people with health problems live more independently at home. For example, blood pressure or blood glucose levels can be measured at home and electronically transmitted to a health professional, reducing the need for hospital visits. For long term conditions, telehealth has been promoted to reduce healthcare costs while improving health related quality of life, but evidence to support ...

Depression is a major cause of disability worldwide and effective management of this is a key challenge for health care systems. Evidence suggests 'low-intensity' interventions provide significant clinical benefit. Initial severity of depression is one of the key variables determining who gets 'low' or 'high' intensity treatment, but this is largely based on epidemiological studies and clinical experience rather than high quality evidence. An international collaboration of researchers therefore carried out a meta-analysis of several studies involving 2470 patients with ...

A study published today in Biology Letters found that ship noise affects crab metabolism, with largest crabs faring worst, and found little evidence that crabs acclimatise to noise over time. The team from the Universities of Bristol and Exeter found that crabs exposed to recordings of ship noise showed an increase in metabolic rate, indicating elevated stress. In the real world this could have implications for growth and, if the metabolic cost of noise causes crabs to spend more time foraging to compensate, could also increase the risk of predation. Researcher Matt ...

MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL (February 26, 2013) – Researchers from the College of Pharmacy and Medical School working within the Masonic Cancer Center, University of Minnesota, have partnered to identify genetic variations that may help signal which acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients will benefit or not benefit from one of the newest antileukemic agents. Their study is published today in Clinical Cancer Research. In the latest study, U of M researchers evaluated how inherited genetic polymorphisms in CD33, a protein that naturally occurs in most leukemia cells, could affect ...