Healthcare professionals are as bad as patients when it comes to knowing how to use inhalers prescribed for asthma and other respiratory conditions correctly, says an editorial in Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin (DTB). They therefore can't be relied on to teach patients how to use these devices correctly, says DTB. But as 45 million prescriptions for respiratory inhalers were dispensed in 2011 in England alone—at a cost of £900 million to the NHS—everyone needs to be more clued up on correct inhaler technique to make sure these drugs work well for patients and offer ...

Daily low dose aspirin could slow the decline in brain power among elderly women at high risk of heart disease, indicates observational research published in the online journal BMJ Open. The researchers base their findings on 681 women between the ages of 70 and 92, 601 of whom were at high risk of heart disease and stroke, defined as a 10% or greater risk on a validated risk scale (Framingham). All the women were subjected to a battery of tests to measure their physical health and intellectual capacity, including verbal fluency and memory speed, and dementia (mini ...

New Haven, Conn. — A fossil unearthed in Great Britain may end a long-running debate about the mollusks, one of life's most diverse invertebrate groups: Which evolved first, shelled forms like clams and snails, or their shell-less, worm-like relatives? The small new fossil, found in marine rocks along the English-Welsh border, provides the best fossil evidence yet that the simpler worm-like mollusks evolved from their more anatomically complex shelled brethren, rather than the other way around. The discovery reinforces previous findings from molecular sequencing studies ...

A decline in April-May rainfall over south-east Australia is associated with a southward expansion of the subtropical dry-zone according to research published today in Scientific Reports, a primary research journal from the publishers of Nature. CSIRO scientists Wenju Cai, Tim Cowan and Marcus Thatcher explored why autumn rainfall has been in decline across south-eastern Australia since the 1970s, a period that included the devastating Millennium drought from 1997-2009. Previous research into what has been driving the decline in autumn rainfall across regions like southern ...

Astronomers have made the unexpected discovery of two black holes inside an ancient cluster of stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way. The research, published today in the prestigious journal Nature, describes the detection of two black holes that are about 10 to 20 times heavier than our Sun in the globular cluster named M22. Black holes, so dense that even light can't escape them, are what is left when a massive star reaches the end of its life and collapses in on itself. Co-author Dr James Miller-Jones, from the Curtin University node of the International Centre for ...

New York, NY (October 3, 2012) — Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) researchers have identified dozens of new spontaneous genetic mutations that play a significant role in the development of schizophrenia, adding to the growing list of genetic variants that can contribute to the disease. The study, the largest and most comprehensive of its kind, was published today in the online edition of the journal Nature Genetics. Although schizophrenia typically onsets during adolescence and early adulthood, many of the mutations were found to affect genes with higher expression ...

Engineers at The University of Texas at Dallas have used advanced techniques to make the material graphene small enough to read DNA. Shrinking the size of a graphene pore to less than one nanometer – small enough to thread a DNA strand – opens the possibility of using graphene as a low-cost tool to sequence DNA. "Sequencing DNA at a very cheap cost would enable scientists and doctors to better predict and diagnose disease, and also tailor a drug to an individual's genetic code," said Dr. Moon Kim, professor of materials science and engineering. He was senior author ...

Archaeologists in Guatemala have discovered the tomb of Lady K'abel, a seventh-century Maya Holy Snake Lord considered one of the great queens of Classic Maya civilization. The tomb was discovered during excavations of the royal Maya city of El Perú-Waka' in northwestern Petén, Guatemala, by a team of archaeologists led by Washington University in St. Louis' David Freidel, co-director of the expedition. Along with David Freidel, professor of anthropology at WUSTL, the project is co-directed by Juan Carlos Pérez, former vice minister of culture for cultural heritage of ...

Athletics have always been a part of Jade Dismore's life. The 27-year-old native of South Africa grew up playing tennis and swimming; as an adult she became an avid runner and recreational volleyball player. For several years she felt soreness in her shoulder, but assumed it was nothing serious. As she began training for her first triathlon, the pain became increasingly severe. After trying to manage the pain on her own for years, Dismore decided it was time to seek medical attention. "I started feeling dull pain in my shoulder about four or five years ago and tried ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – As flu season approaches, people who get sick may not realize they can pass the flu not only to other humans, but possibly to other animals, including pets such as cats, dogs and ferrets. This concept, called "reverse zoonosis," is still poorly understood but has raised concern among some scientists and veterinarians, who want to raise awareness and prevent further flu transmission to pets. About 80-100 million households in the United States have a cat or dog. It's well known that new strains of influenza can evolve from animal populations such as ...

Pasadena, CA— A team of astronomers, led by Wendy Freedman, director of the Carnegie Observatories, have used NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to make the most accurate and precise measurement yet of the Hubble constant, a fundamental quantity that measures the current rate at which our universe is expanding. These results will be published in the Astrophysical Journal and are available online. The Hubble constant is named after 20th Century Carnegie astronomer Edwin P.Hubble, who astonished the world by discovering that our universe is expanding now and has been growing ...

CHICAGO, Oct. 3, 2012 – Yesterday U.S. Army surgeons exhibited new research findings in two poster presentations at the American College of Surgeons Clinical Congress. The poster presentation titled, "Assessment of Disease Features and Immune Response in Breast Cancer Patients with Recurrence after Receiving AE37, a HER2 Peptide Vaccine," outlined outcomes of injecting AE37, a HER-2 derived vaccine, in breast cancer survivors following completion of standard therapy. Those who received injections of AE37 were more likely to survive disease-free than the control group. ...

Scientists at USC have discovered a new type of drug for the treatment of ovarian cancer that works in a way that should not only decrease the number of doses that patients need to take, but also may make it effective for patients whose cancer has become drug-resistant. The drug, which so far has been tested in the lab on ovarian cancer cells and on mice tumors, was unveiled last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). "We need a new generation of drugs," said Shili Xu, a USC graduate student and lead author of the PNAS paper. "We need to ...

New research proves the validity of one of the most promising approaches for combating Alzheimer's disease (AD) with medicines that treat not just some of the symptoms, but actually stop or prevent the disease itself, scientists are reporting. The study, in the journal ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters, also identifies a potential new oral drug that the scientists say could lead the way. Wenhui Hu and colleagues point out that existing drugs for AD provide only "minimal" relief of memory loss and other symptoms, creating an urgent need for new medicines that actually combat ...

If applied to the $5-billion-per-year dietary supplement industry, "quality by design" (QbD) — a mindset that helped revolutionize the manufacture of cars and hundreds of other products — could ease concerns about the safety and integrity of the herbal products used by 80 percent of the world's population. That's the conclusion of an article in ACS' Journal of Natural Products. Ikhlas Khan and Troy Smillie explain that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates dietary supplements as a category of foods, rather than drugs. Manufacturers are responsible for ...

Scientists are describing what may be a "complete solution" to cleaning up oil spills — a superabsorbent material that sops up 40 times its own weight in oil and then can be shipped to an oil refinery and processed to recover the oil. Their article on the material appears in ACS' journal Energy & Fuels. T. C. Mike Chung and Xuepei Yuan point out that current methods for coping with oil spills like the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster are low-tech, decades-old and have many disadvantages. Corncobs, straw and other absorbents, for instance, can hold only about 5 times their ...

Billions of people around the world today will unknowingly perform a chemical reaction first reported 100 years ago. And the centennial of the Maillard reaction — which gives delightful flavor to foods ranging from grilled meat to baked bread to coffee — is the topic of a fascinating article in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News. C&EN is the weekly news magazine of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society. Sarah Everts, C&EN senior editor, explains in the article that French chemist Louis-Camille Maillard took a first stab ...

Certificate of Need, a form of state government regulation designed to keep mortality rates and health care costs down, appears to do neither for heart bypass surgery, according to a health economics researcher at Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine (BCM). Her findings are reported in an article appearing in today's online edition of the journal Medical Care Research and Review. Lead author Vivian Ho, the chair in health economics at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy and a professor of medicine at BCM, found that states that removed Certificate ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- The colorful leaves piling up in your backyard this fall can be thought of as natural stores of carbon. In the springtime, leaves soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, converting the gas into organic carbon compounds. Come autumn, trees shed their leaves, leaving them to decompose in the soil as they are eaten by microbes. Over time, decaying leaves release carbon back into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. In fact, the natural decay of organic carbon contributes more than 90 percent of the yearly carbon dioxide released into Earth's atmosphere ...

After a series of Philadelphia hospitals started closing their maternity units in 1997, infant mortality rates increased by nearly 50 percent over the next three years. The mortality rates subsequently leveled off to the same rate as before the closures, but pediatric researchers say their results underscore the need for careful oversight and planning by public health agencies in communities experiencing serious reductions in obstetric services. Between 1997 and 2007, 9 of 19 obstetric units closed in Philadelphia, resulting in 40 percent fewer obstetric beds. Other research ...

A simple new test, in which the patient swallows a string, can monitor treatment of eosinophilic esophagitis as effectively as an invasive, expensive and uncomfortable procedure that risks complications, particularly in children. Researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine, working in collaboration with clinician-investigators at the University of Colorado Denver/Children's Hospital Colorado and Lurie Children's Hospital in Chicago, reported their findings in a study published recently online in the journal Gut. Eosinophilic esophagitis, ...

MAYWOOD, Ill. – Gender-specific group therapy is effective for treating depressed women with Type 2 diabetes, according to a study published in the latest issue of the Annals of Behavioral Medicine and funded by the National Institute of Nursing Research. Evidence suggests that antidepressants may disrupt blood-sugar control and can be associated with increased weight gain; therefore, other treatment options are needed for depression. "Using antidepressants to treat depression, although important, can be associated with side effects that make compliance an issue for people ...

Amsterdam, The Netherlands, October 3, 2012 – Milk consumption has been linked to improved health, with decreased risks of diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and colon cancer. A group of scientists in Sweden found that lactoferricin4-14 (Lfcin4-14), a milk protein with known health effects, significantly reduces the growth rate of colon cancer cells over time by prolonging the period of the cell cycle before chromosomes are replicated. In a new study, investigators report that treatment with Lfcin4-14 reduced DNA damage in colon cancer cells exposed to ultraviolet (UV) light. ...

STANFORD, Calif. — Not everyone is able to be hypnotized, and new research from the Stanford University School of Medicine shows how the brains of such people differ from those who can easily be. The study, published in the October issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, uses data from functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging to identify how the areas of the brain associated with executive control and attention tend to have less activity in people who cannot be put into a hypnotic trance. "There's never been a brain signature of being hypnotized, and we're ...

The fifteenth tropical depression of the Atlantic Ocean hurricane season was born on Oct. 3 an NASA's Terra satellite captured an image of it as it came to be. NASA's Terra satellite passed over newborn Tropical Depression 15 on Oct. 3 at 8:52 a.m. EDT in the central Atlantic Ocean and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument captured an image of the storm. Shortly after the image was created, forecasters at the National Hurricane Center looking at the MODIS and other satellite data determined that the low pressure area had become a depression. On ...