More than a third of U.S. physicians responding to a national survey indicated they often or sometimes prescribed brand-name drugs when appropriate generic substitutes were available simply because patients requested the brand-name drug. Survey respondents who had marketing relationships with industry were more likely to fulfill such patient requests than were those without those relationships. The report from investigators at the Mongan Institute for Health Policy (MIHP) at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) will appear in JAMA Internal Medicine (formerly Archives ...

Despite the decline in cancer death rates in the U.S., there is an increase in incidence rates for cancers associated with human papillomavirus (HPV) infection and more efforts are needed to increase HPV vaccination coverage levels to prevent the occurrence of these cancers in the future according to a study published January 7 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The American Cancer Society (ACS), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Cancer Institute (NCI), and the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries (NAACCR) ...

A metanalysis published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Medicine has confirmed that polymorphisms (SNP) in the gene coding for interleukin-28 (IL28B) influence natural hepatitis C viral (HCV) clearance and response to pegylated interferon-α plus ribavirin (PEG-IFN/RBV). Information about IL28B genotype could be used to provide personalized medicine and target treatment options effectively. Over 200 million people worldwide are chronically infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV) and about a quarter of these will go on to develop cirrhosis of the liver. Treatment ...

The question 'How do songbirds sing?' is addressed in a study published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Biology. High-field magnetic resonance imaging and micro-computed tomography have been used to construct stunning high resolution, 3D, images, as well as a data set "morphome" of the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata) vocal organ, the syrinx. Like humans, songbirds learn their vocalizations by imitation. Since their songs are used for finding a mate and retaining territories, birdsong is very important for reproductive success. The syrinx, located at the ...

January 8, 2013 – A multinational team of researchers made a significant step forward in trying to understand how birds produce their beautiful songs. "We used cutting-edge 3D imaging techniques to understand the complicated structure of the vocal organ of songbirds, the syrinx", says Dr. Coen Elemans, from the University of Southern Denmark, the senior author on the study. Elemans and his colleagues are publishing their findings January 8, 2013 in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Biology. Communicating with sounds is central to the life of most animals and they ...

Even though Medicare spends over $1 billion per year on breast cancer screenings such as a mammography, there is no evidence that higher spending benefits older women, researchers at Yale School of Medicine found in a study published Online First by JAMA Internal Medicine, a JAMA Network publication. Led by Cary Gross, M.D., associate professor of internal medicine at Yale School of Medicine and director of the Cancer Outcomes, Public Policy, and Effectiveness Research (COPPER) Center at Yale, the study sought to provide a comprehensive understanding of breast cancer ...

An international team of scientists has described a fossil marine predator measuring 8.6 meters in length (about 28 feet) recovered from the Nevada desert in 2010 as representing the first top predator in marine food chains feeding on prey similar to its own size. A paper with their description will appear the week of January 7, 2013 in the EE (early electronic) issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Scientists who studied the fossil include lead author Dr. Nadia Fröbisch and Prof. Jörg Fröbisch (both at Museum für Naturkunde Leibniz-Institut für Evolutions- ...

The average physician can expect to spend nearly 11 per cent of his or her career with a malpractice claim waiting to be resolved. Some specialists will spend nearly a third of their careers with open claims. The length of time it takes to resolve a malpractice claim is a stress on patients, physicians and the legal system. The time spent with open claims may be even more distressing for physicians than the financial costs of malpractice claims. "We believe that the time required to resolve malpractice claims may be a significant reason that physicians are so vocal ...

Patients who undergo surgery for oesophageal cancer have a much greater chance of long term survival if the operation is carried out by a surgeon who has performed this particular operation many times before. This according to a new, large-scale study conducted by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, and published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. In their article, the researchers conclude that oesophageal cancer surgery should be concentrated – or centralised – to fewer surgeons. Surgery is the most widely established curative treatment for oesophageal ...

Writing in PNAS, a University of Manchester physicist has discovered that some games are simply impossible to fully learn, or too complex for the human mind to understand. Dr Tobias Galla from The University of Manchester and Professor Doyne Farmer from Oxford University and the Santa Fe Institute, ran thousands of simulations of two-player games to see how human behaviour affects their decision-making. In simple games with a small number of moves, such as Noughts and Crosses the optimal strategy is easy to guess, and the game quickly becomes uninteresting. However, ...

People from low socio-economic positions in Britain eat more salt than the well off, irrespective of where they live, states a paper led by Warwick Medical School published on Tuesday in the BMJ Open journal . The research was carried out by the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Nutrition , based in the Division of Mental Health & Wellbeing of Warwick Medical School at the University of Warwick. The study looked at the geographical distribution of habitual dietary salt intake in Britain and its association with manual occupations and educational attainments, ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (January 7, 2013) – In an approach with the potential to aid therapeutic vaccine development, Whitehead Institute scientists have shown that enzymatically modified antibodies can be used to generate highly targeted, potent responses from cells of the immune system. The approach, referred to as "sortagging," relies on the bacterial enzyme sortase A to modify antibodies to carry various payloads, such as peptides, lipids, fluorophores, and proteins. In this case, the scientists, whose findings are reported online this week in the journal PNAS, attached ...

PHILADELPHIA - While approximately one in five Parkinson's disease patients experience impulse control disorder symptoms, the disease itself does not increase the risk of gambling, shopping, or other impulsivity symptoms, according to research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. A new study is the first to show in a large sample that people with untreated Parkinson's were no more likely to have an increased impulsivity than people without the disease. Published in the January 8, 2013, print issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of ...

Boston, MA -- In the wake of the horrific school shootings in Newtown, Conn. in December, three Harvard experts say the best way to curb gun violence in the U.S. is to take a broad public health approach, drawing on proven, evidence-based strategies that have successfully reduced other public health threats like smoking, car crashes, and accidental poisonings. The authors make the case for a comprehensive public health approach to gun violence in a viewpoint article published online January 7, 2013 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). For instance, ...

Working with fruit flies, Johns Hopkins scientists have decoded the activity of protein signals that let certain nerve cells know when and where to branch so that they reach and connect to their correct muscle targets. The proteins' mammalian counterparts are known to have signaling roles in immunity, nervous system and heart development, and tumor progression, suggesting broad implications for human disease research. A report of the research was published online Nov. 21 in the journal Neuron. To control muscle movements, fruit flies, like other animals, have a set of ...

University of Iowa biologist Daniel Eberl and his colleagues have shown that one of the mechanisms involved in hearing is similar to the battery in your car. And if that isn't interesting enough, the UI scientists advanced their knowledge of human hearing by studying a similar auditory system in fruit flies—and by making use of the fruit fly "love song." To see how the mechanism of hearing resembles a battery, you need to know that the auditory system of the fruit fly contains a protein that functions as a sodium/potassium pump, often called the sodium pump for short, ...

Philadelphia, Pa. (January 7, 2013) - Athletes with concussions must be held out of practice or play until all symptoms have resolved, to avoid the risk of further injury during the vulnerable period before the brain has recovered. That's among the key recommendations in the new American Medical Society for Sports Medicine (AMSSM) position statement on concussions in sport, which appears in the January issue of Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. At a time of increased concern ...

PHILADELPHIA — Directed assembly is a growing field of research in nanotechnology in which scientists and engineers aim to manufacture structures on the smallest scales without having to individually manipulate each component. Rather, they set out precisely defined starting conditions and let the physics and chemistry that govern those components do the rest. An interdisciplinary team of researchers from the University of Pennsylvania has shown a new way to direct the assembly of liquid crystals, generating small features that spontaneously arrange in arrays based on ...

New York, NY—January 7, 2013—Columbia Engineering's Computer Science PhD candidate Ang Cui and Computer Science Professor Salvatore Stolfo have found serious vulnerabilities in Cisco VoIP (voice over internet protocol) telephones, devices used around the world by a broad range of networked organizations from governments to banks to major corporations, and beyond. In particular, they have discovered troubling security breaches with Cisco's VoIP phone technology. At a recent conference on the security of connected devices, Cui demonstrated how they can easily insert malicious ...

PHILADELPHIA – Roughly half of all black and Hispanic patients who enter publicly funded alcohol treatment programs do not complete treatment, compared to 62 percent of white patients, according to a new study from a team of researchers including the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Comparable disparities were also identified for drug treatment program completion rates. The study, published in the latest issue of Health Affairs, shows that completion disparities among racial groups are likely related to differences in socioeconomic status and, ...

CHICAGO --- Women who are obese at the start of their pregnancy may be passing on insufficient levels of vitamin D to their babies, according to a new Northwestern Medicine® study. The study found that babies born to lean mothers had a third higher amount of vitamin D compared to babies born to obese moms. Vitamin D is fat-soluble, and previous studies have found that people who are obese tend to have lower levels of the vitamin in their blood. In this study, both obese and lean mothers had very similar levels of vitamin D at the end of their pregnancies, yet obese ...

Philadelphia, Pa. (January 7, 2013) – Surveys suggest that while most US physicians are willing to play a role in responding to natural and manmade disasters, most do not feel adequately prepared to fulfill that role. Toward helping physicians and health care systems understand and fulfill their obligation to provide medical care in disasters, the January Southern Medical Journal is a special issue on disaster medicine and physician preparedness. The official journal of the Southern Medical Association, the SMJ is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters ...

AURORA, Colo. (Jan. 7, 2013) A new study out by researchers at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, found large differences in the criteria that states use to determine eligibility for Part C early intervention services for infants and toddlers who have developmental delays. A developmental delay is any significant lag in a child's development as compared with typical child development. Current eligibility criteria for Part C services vary from state to state. With their colleagues, Steven Rosenberg, PhD, associate professor, University of Colorado Department ...

The quest for a twin Earth is heating up. Using NASA's Kepler spacecraft, astronomers are beginning to find Earth-sized planets orbiting distant stars. A new analysis of Kepler data shows that about 17 percent of stars have an Earth-sized planet in an orbit closer than Mercury. Since the Milky Way has about 100 billion stars, there are at least 17 billion Earth-sized worlds out there. Francois Fressin, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), presented the analysis today in a press conference at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Long Beach, ...

Comets trailing wispy tails across the night sky are a beautiful byproduct of our solar system's formation, icy leftovers from 4.6 billion years ago when the planets coalesced from rocky rubble. The discovery by astronomers at the University of California, Berkeley, and Clarion University in Pennsylvania of six likely comets around distant stars suggests that comets – dubbed "exocomets" – are just as common in other stellar systems with planets. Though only one of the 10 stars now thought to harbor comets is known to harbor planets, the fact that all these stars have ...