Specially designed comprehensive behavioral therapy is more effective than sessions offering patient support and education in helping adults with Tourette syndrome manage their tics – sudden, repetitive motions or vocalizations – according to a study in the August issue of Archives of General Psychiatry. The findings come from a team of investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH)/Harvard Medical School, Yale University, the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, and other institutions. "The program we tested, which teaches patients new ways ...

CHICAGO – Weight training was linked with a reduced risk of type 2 diabetes in a study of male health professionals, and those men who engaged in weight training and aerobic exercise for at least 150 minutes a week had the greatest reduction in risk, according to a report published Online First by Archives of Internal Medicine, a JAMA Network publication. Regular physical activity is a cornerstone in the prevention and management of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), but the role of weight training in the primary prevention of the disease is largely unknown, according to ...

CHICAGO – Higher levels of physical activity were related to lower risk of death in patients with diabetes, according to a report published Online First by Archives of Internal Medicine, a JAMA Network publication. Increased physical activity (PA) has long been considered a key element in diabetes management. Patients with diabetes are at higher risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD) and premature death, so researchers note it is important to determine whether PA can produce similar beneficial effects in this high-risk population. While other studies have suggested that ...

Boston, MA – Men who do weight training regularly—for example, for 30 minutes per day, five days per week—may be able to reduce their risk of type 2 diabetes by up to 34%, according to a new study by Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and University of Southern Denmark researchers. And if they combine weight training and aerobic exercise, such as brisk walking or running, they may be able to reduce their risk even further—up to 59%. This is the first study to examine the role of weight training in the prevention of type 2 diabetes. The results suggest that, because ...

CHICAGO – The odds of undergoing cranial computed tomography (CT) among children with minor blunt head trauma who were at higher risk for clinically important traumatic brain injury did not appear to differ by race/ethnicity in a secondary analysis of a study of injured children, according to a report in the August issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, a JAMA Network publication. However, there may have been differences for children at intermediate or lowest risk. Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a leading cause of pediatric illness and death in the U.S., ...

CHICAGO – Treatment with growth hormone-releasing hormone appears to be associated with favorable cognitive effects among both adults with mild cognitive impairment and healthy older adults, according to a randomized clinical trial published Online First by Archives of Neurology, a JAMA Network publication. "Growth hormone-releasing hormone (GHRH), growth hormone and insulinlike growth factor 1 have potent effects on brain function, their levels decrease with advancing age, and they likely play a role in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer disease," the authors write as background ...

CHICAGO – Patients with hoarding disorder exhibited abnormal activity in regions of the brain that was stimulus dependent when deciding what to do with objects that did or did not belong to them, according to a report in the August issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, a JAMA Network publication. Hoarding disorder (HD) is defined as the excessive collection of objects and an inability to discard them. It is characterized by marked avoidance of decisions about possessions, according to the study background. David F. Tolin, Ph.D., of the Institute of Living, Hartford, ...

White children are more likely to receive cranial (head) CT scans in an emergency department following minor head trauma, compared with African-American or Hispanic children, a study published by researchers at UC Davis has found. The study findings do not indicate that CT (computed tomography) scans are underused in African-American and Hispanic children. Rather, the researchers suggested that white children may receive too many CT scans and thus may be exposed to unnecessary radiation. The results are online and appear in the August issue of the Archives of Pediatrics ...

Just as differences in song can be used to distinguish one bird species from another, the pips and squeaks bats use to find prey can be used to identify different species of bat. Now, for the first time, ecologists have developed a Europe-wide tool capable of identifying bats from their echolocation calls. The new free online tool – iBatsID – will be a major boost to conserving bats, whose numbers have declined significantly across Europe over the past 50 years. Details are published today in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Applied Ecology. Working with ...

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Aug. 6 , 2012) — University of Kentucky researchers, led by Dr. Jayakrishna Ambati, have made an exciting finding in the "dry" form of age-related macular degeneration known as geographic atrophy (GA). GA is an untreatable condition that causes blindness in millions of individuals due to death of retinal pigmented epithelial cells. The paper, "ERK1/2 Activation is a Therapeutic Target in Age-Related Macular Degeneration" appears in the current online issue of the premier journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Ambati, professor of physiology, ...

Despite advances in health care and increases in life expectancy overall, Americans with less than a high school education have life expectancies similar to adults in the 1950s and 1960s. "The most highly educated white men live about 14 years longer than the least educated black men," says S. Jay Olshansky, professor of epidemiology at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health and lead author of the study. "The least educated black women live about 10 years less than the most educated white women." The research, funded by The MacArthur Foundation ...

An international study, led by researchers at the Medical Research Council Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit (MRC LEU) at the University of Southampton, has found that obese patients who undergo bariatric surgery are not at an increased risk of broken bones in the first few years after the operation. However, the study, published in the British Medical Journal today (DATE) has shown that there is a possibility of an increase in fracture risk after three to five years. Generally, a higher Body Mass Index (BMI) protects the bone against most types of fracture because a higher ...

A Yale study of the care quality received at safety-net hospitals — which provide care for the majority of uninsured and other vulnerable populations — found that quality at these facilities is similar to non-safety-net hospitals. This is despite the unique financial challenges at safety-net hospitals in the face of rising costs and the potential impact of the health care law. Published in the August issue of Health Affairs, the study was conducted by Elizabeth E. Drye, M.D., of the Yale Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation, Joseph S. Ross, M.D., assistant professor ...

OAKLAND, Calif., August 6, 2012 – Long-term use of commonly used blood pressure medications that increase sensitivity to sunlight is associated with an increased risk of lip cancer in non-Hispanic whites, according to a Kaiser Permanente study that appears in the current online issue of Archives of Internal Medicine. Funded by the National Cancer Institute, the study found that photosensitizing antihypertensive drugs such as nifedipine and hydrochlorothiazide were associated with cancer of the epithelial cells known as squamous cells—which are the main part of the outermost ...

Implantable cardioverter defibrillators account for one-third of the decrease in cardiac arrests caused by ventricular fibrillation in North-Holland, according to research in Circulation, an American Heart Association journal. VF is an abnormal heart rhythm that makes the heart quiver so it can't pump blood. ICDs are small electronic devices implanted in the chest that detect potentially fatal abnormal heart rhythms and try to stop them with electric shocks. Generally, only people with a high risk of sudden cardiac death — mostly those at high risk of abnormal heartbeats ...

Hospitals in areas with large minority populations are more likely to be overcrowded and to divert ambulances, delaying timely emergency care, according to a multi-institutional study focused on California. The researchers examined ambulance diversion in more than 200 hospitals around the state to assess whether overcrowding in emergency rooms disproportionately affects racial and ethnic minorities. They found that minorities are more at risk of being impacted by ER crowding and by diversion than non-minorities. The study will be published in the August issue of Health ...

Most earthquakes in the Barnett Shale region of north Texas occur within a few miles of one or more injection wells used to dispose of wastes associated with petroleum production such as hydraulic fracturing fluids, according to new research from The University of Texas at Austin. None of the quakes identified in the two-year study were strong enough to pose a danger to the public. The study by Cliff Frohlich, senior research scientist at the university's Institute for Geophysics, appears this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "You ...

AMHERST, Mass. – By some estimates, a third of the Earth's organisms by mass live in our planet's rocks and sediments, yet their lives and ecology are almost a complete mystery. This week, microbiologist James Holden at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and others report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the first detailed data about a group of methane-exhaling microbes that live deep in the cracks of hot undersea volcanoes. Holden says, "Evidence has built over the past 20 years that there's an incredible amount of biomass in the Earth's subsurface, ...

Baltimore, MD — The study of muscular system protein myostatin has been of great interest to researchers as a potential therapeutic target for people with muscular disorders. Although much is known about how myostatin affects muscle growth, there has been disagreement about what types of muscle cells it acts upon. New research from a team including Carnegie's Chen-Ming Fan and Christoph Lepper narrows down the field to one likely type of cell. Their work is published the week of August 6 by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Myostatin is known to inhibit ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – A colorful, fruit-eating bird with a black mask, pale belly and scarlet breast – never before described by science – has been discovered and named by Cornell University graduates following an expedition to the remote Peruvian Andes. The Sira Barbet, Capito fitzpatricki, is described in a paper published in the July 2012 issue of The Auk, the official publication of the American Ornithologists' Union. The new species was discovered during a 2008 expedition led by Michael G. Harvey, Glenn Seeholzer and Ben Winger, young ornithologists who had recently graduated ...

Using just an upgraded desktop computer equipped with a relatively inexpensive graphics processing card, a team of computer scientists and biochemists at the University of California, San Diego, has developed advanced GPU accelerated software and demonstrated for the first time that this approach can sample biological events that occur on the millisecond timescale. These results have the potential to bring millisecond scale sampling, now available only on a multi-million dollar supercomputer, to all researchers, and could significantly impact the study of protein dynamics ...

MINNEAPOLIS (August 6, 2012) – University of Minnesota School of Public Health researchers have found that medical group practices can reduce costs for patients with diabetes by investing in improved quality of care. In the study, which appears in the August issue of Health Affairs, University of Minnesota researchers analyzed 234 medical group practices providing care for more than 133,000 diabetic patients. After developing a "quality of care" score based on select patient care initiatives, researchers found that medical providers saved an average of $51 in health ...

In a large epidemiologic study, researchers at UCLA's Jonsson Cancer Center found that the children of U.S.-born Latina women are at higher risk of having retinoblastoma, a malignant tumor of the retina which typically occurs in children under six. The study, which focused on babies born in California, also found that offspring of older fathers were at greater risk for retinoblastoma, as were children born to women with sexually transmitted diseases and those born in multiple births, which may indicate an increased risk from in vitro fertilization. Those findings confirmed ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Most people think of seafood as either wild or farmed, but in fact both categories may apply to the fish you pick up from your grocery store. In recent years, for example, as much as 40 percent of the Alaskan salmon catch originated in fish hatcheries, although it may be labeled "all wild, never farmed." An article produced by a working group of UC Santa Barbara's National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) recommends that when a combination of seafood production techniques are used, this be acknowledged in the marketplace. ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Young children who are able to pay attention and persist on a task have a 50 percent greater chance of completing college, according to a new study at Oregon State University. Tracking a group of 430 preschool-age children, the study gives compelling evidence that social and behavioral skills, such as paying attention, following directions and completing a task may be even more crucial than academic abilities. And the good news for parents and educators, the researchers said, is that attention and persistence skills are malleable and can be taught. The ...