CHICAGO – Use of the botanical product silymarin, an extract of milk thistle that is commonly used by some patients with chronic liver disease, did not provide greater benefit than placebo for patients with treatment-resistant chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, according to a study in the July 18 issue of JAMA. Chronic hepatitis C virus infection affects almost 3 percent of the global population and may lead to cirrhosis, liver failure, and liver cancer. A large proportion of patients do not respond to certain treatments for this infection, and many others cannot ...

Stress can promote breast cancer cell colonization of bone, Vanderbilt Center for Bone Biology investigators have discovered. The studies, reported July 17 in PLoS Biology, demonstrate in mice that activation of the sympathetic nervous system – the "fight-or-flight" response to stress – primes the bone environment for breast cancer cell metastasis. The researchers were able to prevent breast cancer cell lesions in bone using propranolol, a cardiovascular medicine that inhibits sympathetic nervous system signals. Metastasis – the spread of cancer cells to distant organs, ...

CHICAGO – Physicians tend to share patients with colleagues who have similar personal traits and practice styles, and there is substantial variation in physician network characteristics across geographic areas, according to a study in the July 18 issue of JAMA. Physicians are embedded in informal networks that result from their sharing of patients, information, and behaviors. "These informal information-sharing networks of physicians differ from formal organizational structures (such as a physician group associated with a health plan, hospital, or independent practice ...

CHICAGO – Among patients with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (MS), treatment with the widely-prescribed drug to treat MS, interferon beta, was not associated with less progression of disability, according to a study in the July 18 issue of JAMA. "A key feature of MS is clinical progression of the disease over time manifested by the accumulation of disability. Interferon beta drugs are the most widely prescribed disease-modifying drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of relapsing-onset MS, the most common MS disease course," ...

Fewer people died or needed expensive long-term care when their physicians focused on the top risk factors for stroke and dementia, according to research reported in the Journal of the American Heart Association (JAHA). dementia The primary care doctors in the German study focused on high blood pressure, smoking, high cholesterol, diabetes, irregular heartbeat (atrial fibrillation) and depression. The researchers found that during a five-year period, the need for long-term care was cut 10 percent in women and 9.6 percent in men. Based on data collected in a comparison ...

Breast cancer mortality statistics in Sweden are consistent with studies that have reported that screening has limited or no impact on breast cancer mortality among women aged 40-69, according to a study published July 17 in the Journal of The National Cancer Institute. Since 1974, Swedish women aged 40-69 have increasingly been offered mammography screening, with nationwide coverage peaking in 1997. Researchers set out to determine if mortality trends would be reflected accordingly. In order to determine this, Philippe Autier, M.D., of the International Prevention ...

VANCOUVER – Diagnostic tests are increasingly capable of identifying plaques and tangles present in Alzheimer's disease, yet the disease remains untreatable. Questions remain about how these tests can be used in research studies examining potential interventions to treat and prevent Alzheimer's disease. Experts from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania will today participate in a panel at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference 2012 (AAIC 2012) discussing ways to ethically disclose and provide information about test results to asymptomatic ...

Even when its clot-dissolving powers are removed, the stroke drug tPA can still protect brain cells from the loss of oxygen and glucose induced by a stroke, researchers have discovered. The finding suggests that a modified version of tPA could provide benefits to patients who have experienced a stroke, without increasing the risk of bleeding. The results will be published in the Journal of Neuroscience. "We may have been giving the right medication, for the wrong reason," says senior author Manuel Yepes, MD, associate professor of neurology at Emory University School ...

Radiation from Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster may eventually cause anywhere from 15 to 1,300 deaths and from 24 to 2,500 cases of cancer, mostly in Japan, Stanford researchers have calculated. The estimates have large uncertainty ranges, but contrast with previous claims that the radioactive release would likely cause no severe health effects. The numbers are in addition to the roughly 600 deaths caused by the evacuation of the area surrounding the nuclear plant directly after the March 2011 earthquake, tsunami and meltdown. Recent PhD graduate John Ten ...

BOSTON – A new way of mapping how physicians share patients provides opportunities for improving the quality of medical care and organizing the nature of care delivery, according to researchers from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School. In a study published in the July 18 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers suggest this new way of systematically looking at how physicians are organized into patient-sharing networks can shed light on practice variation, aid in the spread of innovation and help form natural groups ...

More children are surviving cancer in Britain than ever before according to new research published in the cancer journal Annals of Oncology [1] today (Wednesday). The improvement in survival has been driven by the increasing numbers taking part in clinical trials since 1977 when the UK Children's Cancer Study Group (UKCCSG) [2] was established. The UKCCSG's principal aim was to set up a comprehensive portfolio of national and international trials for the majority of children's cancers. As result, between 1978 and 2005 two-thirds of children diagnosed with cancer in Britain ...

It is a cellular component so scarce, some scientists even doubted its existence, and many others gave up searching for its molecular structure. Now a team led by researchers at Johns Hopkins has defined the protein structural composition of mitoKATP, a potassium channel in the mitochondria of the heart and other organs that is known to protect against tissue damage due to a heart attack or stroke. Importantly, the newly found channel strongly improves heart cell survival, demonstrating an essential life-saving role. In a report to be published in the journal Circulation ...

Johns Hopkins researchers say they have discovered a cause-and-effect relationship between two well-established biological risk factors for schizophrenia previously believed to be independent of one another. The findings could eventually lead researchers to develop better drugs to treat the cognitive dysfunction associated with schizophrenia and possibly other mental illnesses. Researchers have long studied the role played in the brain's neurons by the Disrupted-in-Schizophrenia 1 (DISC1) gene, a mutation with one of the strongest links to an increased risk of developing ...

A detailed study of heart muscle function in mice has uncovered evidence to explain why exercise is beneficial for heart function in type 2 diabetes. The research team, led by scientists at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, found that greater amounts of fatty acids used by the heart during stressful conditions like exercise can counteract the detrimental effects of excess glucose and improve the diabetic heart's pumping ability in several ways. The findings also shed light on the complex chain of events that lead to diabetic cardiomyopathy, a form of heart ...

July 17, 2012, Shenzhen, China – BGI, the world's largest genomics organization, announced today that it has successfully developed a new filtering tool, PDXomics, which performs accurate and specific classification of the mixed reads derived from the host and tumor xenografts. Through the full utilization of this robust tool, researchers could develop the specific patient-derived xenografts (PDX) and advance the oncology drug discovery, biomarker development and their future applications. Xenograft models serve as an important tool for many areas of biomedical research, ...

Finding renewable and economic sources of energy are one of the most important concerns for the continuation of the human species. New research, published in BioMed Central's open access journal Biotechnology for Biofuels, has produced a novel strain of yeast with improved xylose tolerance and metabolism, and consequently improved ethanol production. Bioethanol is considered one of cleanest renewable replacements for fossil fuel. However using glucose from crops, such as sugar cane or starch crops, uses up resources which could otherwise be used to produce food. Xylose ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – Silymarin or "milk thistle," a popular herbal dietary supplement that many people take for liver ailments, works no better than placebo in patients with chronic hepatitis C infection. That's the conclusion of a multicenter clinical trial published in the July 18, 2012 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. "Patients ask me about milk thistle all the time," said Michael W. Fried, MD, lead author of the study, a professor in the University of North Carolina School of Medicine and director of the UNC Liver Center. "Now I can tell ...

Several types of job carried out by future fathers may be linked to an increased risk of birth defects in their babies, suggests research published online in Occupational and Environmental Medicine. Previous research has linked certain occupations with a higher risk of birth defects in offspring. But it has tended to lump together very different types of defects and occupations, in order to achieve large sample sizes, with the attendant potential to skew the results, say the authors. They base their findings on data from the ongoing US National Birth Defects Prevention ...

Workplace exposure to organic solvents is linked to several types of heart defects at birth, indicates research published online in Occupational and Environmental Medicine. Organic solvents are widely used for dissolving or dispersing substances, such as fats, oils, and waxes, as well as in chemical manufacturing. They are found in paints, varnishes, adhesives, degreasing/cleaning agents, dyes, polymers, plastic, synthetic textiles, printing inks and agricultural products. Most organic solvents are highly volatile and enter the body through the lungs, but can also ...

Adding vitamin B12 to standard hepatitis C virus (HCV) treatment significantly boosts the body's ability to keep the virus at bay, indicates a pilot study published online in the journal Gut. The effects were particularly strong in patients whose infection was proving difficult to treat effectively, the findings showed. Between 60% and 80% of those infected with the viral liver infection HCV will go on to develop chronic hepatitis, and roughly a third of them will progress to cirrhosis and terminal liver disease. Standard treatment of interferon (peg IFN) and ribavarin ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Inspired by nature, an international research team has created synthetic pores that mimic the activity of cellular ion channels, which play a vital role in human health by severely restricting the types of materials allowed to enter cells. The pores the scientists built are permeable to potassium ions and water, but not to other ions such as sodium and lithium ions. This kind of extreme selectivity, while prominent in nature, is unprecedented for a synthetic structure, said University at Buffalo chemistry professor Bing Gong, PhD, who led the study. The ...

Researchers with the UBC Hospital MS Clinic and Brain Research Centre at Vancouver Coastal Health and the University of British Columbia have published important data in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) about the impact of a common drug therapy on the progression of multiple sclerosis for people with the relapsing‑remitting form of the disease. The study, led by Drs. Helen Tremlett, Afsaneh Shirani, Joel Oger and others, shows no strong evidence that a group of drugs, beta interferons (β-IFNs), prescribed to treat MS had a measurable ...

The researchers reflect on their work as well as how the U.S. system for funding research makes the United States a leader. "Because of the opportunities provided by federal research funding, we are developing a generation of scientists that has no competitor on planet Earth," says Erik Dutson, executive medical director of the Center for Advanced Surgical and Interventional Technology at the University of California, Los Angeles. They also talk about the risks of decreased funding. "If you have a population of scientists that [don't] have the resources to train the ...

A study of teenage girls with eating disorders has shown that reduced essential fatty acid levels returned to normal once the girls increased their weight to a healthy level. The research, published in the August issue of Acta Paediatrica, suggests that it is not necessary to give omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid supplements to adolescent girls with eating disorders. "Essential fatty acid status is altered in eating disorders that result in weight loss" explains co-author Dr Ingemar Swenne from Uppsala University Children's Hospital. "This is important because ...

Researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Weizmann Institute of Science have developed a technique to cause apoptosis, or programmed cell death, that could lead to new approaches to treating cancer. Apoptosis is an essential defense mechanism against the spread of abnormal cells such as cancer. It is a complex process that occurs through networks of proteins that interact with each other. Cancer cells usually avoid this process due to mutations in the genes that encode the relevant proteins. The result is that the cancer cells survive and take over while ...