Thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP) is a life-threatening disease of the blood system. The condition is caused by the presence of ultralarge multimers of the protein von Willebrand factor, which promote the formation of blood clots (thrombi) in small blood vessels throughout the body. Current treatments are protracted and associated with complications. However, a team of researchers, led by José López, at the Puget Sound Blood Center, Seattle, has generated data in mice that suggest that the drug N-acetylcysteine (NAC), which is FDA approved as a treatment for chronic ...

EDITOR'S PICK: Possible new approach to treating a life-threatening blood disorder Thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP) is a life-threatening disease of the blood system. The condition is caused by the presence of ultralarge multimers of the protein von Willebrand factor, which promote the formation of blood clots (thrombi) in small blood vessels throughout the body. Current treatments are protracted and associated with complications. However, a team of researchers, led by José López, at the Puget Sound Blood Center, Seattle, has generated data in mice that suggest ...

Patients who had an ischemic stroke and were admitted to hospitals designated as primary stroke centers had a modestly lower risk of death at 30 days, compared to patients who were admitted to non-designated hospitals, according to a study in the January 26 issue of JAMA. Stroke is the leading cause of serious long-term disability and the third leading cause of death in the United States. Responding to the need for improvements in acute stroke care, the Brain Attack Coalition (BAC) published recommendations for the establishment of primary stroke centers in 2000, and ...

An analysis of data on more than 45,000 patients who underwent coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery at an academic medical center over the past 30 years finds that the occurrence of stroke after CABG has declined, despite an increase in risk profiles of patients, according to a study in the January 26 issue of JAMA. Stroke is a devastating and potentially preventable complication of CABG surgery. Because it increasingly is being reserved for elderly patients with extensive coronary disease and co-existing conditions, prevalence of stroke after CABG is likely to ...

Cholera vaccination beneficial, post-outbreak Researchers newly report evidence that vaccination against cholera can be beneficial even after an outbreak has begun. Rita Reyburn, Dr. Lorenz von Seidlein, Dr. John Clemens and colleagues at the International Vaccine Institute (IVI) in Seoul, Korea analyze the impact that vaccination could have had on recent outbreaks around the globe in "The case for reactive mass oral cholera vaccinations", and Drs. Dang Duc Anh and Anna Lena Lopez and colleagues at IVI and in Vietnam report on the impact of such "reactive" use of vaccine ...

Hospitals with designated stroke centers are associated with up to 20 percent higher survival rate for patients with ischemic stroke and significantly greater use of acute stroke therapy. That is the conclusion of a study appearing today in the Journal of the American Medical Association which compares treatment and outcomes in stroke care between hospitals in New York State. "The basic premise of stroke centers and stroke care – that coordinated care delivered around a specific disease can likely improve outcomes – is widely accepted," said University of Rochester ...

Over the last 25 years, life expectancy in the U.S. has been rising at a slower rate than in many other high-income countries, such as Japan and Australia, despite our spending more on health care than any other nation. EXPLAINING DIVERGENT LEVELS OF LONGEVITY IN HIGH-INCOME COUNTRIES, a new report from the National Research Council, identifies factors that contribute to the U.S. shortfall in life expectancy. ###Reporters who wish to obtain copies should contact the Office of News and Public Information at 202-334-2138 or e-mail news@nas.edu. Advance copies will be available ...

A study published today in The Lancet Infectious Diseases finds that methods to protect pregnant women from malaria are still underutilised in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). A review of national control strategies by a team of international researchers, led by the Malaria in Pregnancy Consortium and funded by the Consortium and the Wellcome Trust, has concluded that despite major efforts, coverage is still inadequate in many areas and needs to be scaled up. Malaria infection in pregnancy can lead to devastating consequences for both mother and child. The World Health Organization's ...

AUSTIN, Texas—Young staghorn coral that fluoresce redder are less likely to settle and develop into coral polyps than their greener peers, University of Texas at Austin biologists have discovered. The finding may help scientists monitor how corals adapt to global warming because the less likely coral larvae are to settle, the more likely they will disperse from their reef of origin. "By simply looking at the color of a larval population, we may soon be able to say which larvae are going to be long-range dispersers and which will be short-range dispersers," says Mikhail ...

A workhorse of modern biology is sick, and scientists couldn't be happier. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, the Jacques Monod Institute in France and Cambridge University have found that the nematode C. elegans, a millimeter-long worm used extensively for decades to study many aspects of biology, can be targeted by naturally occurring viral infections. The discovery means C. elegans is likely to help scientists study the way viruses and their hosts interact. The findings will be published next week in the online, open access journal ...

Kyoto, Japan -- Certain types of pollution monitoring may soon become considerably easier. A group of researchers centered at Kyoto University has shown in a recent Nature Communications paper that a newly-formulated entangled framework of porous crystals (porous coordination polymers, or PCPs) can not only capture a variety of common air pollutants, but that the mixtures then glow in specific, easily-detected colors. Lead author for the paper was Dr. Yohei Takashima. Until now, chemical sensors have generally needed to be custom-designed to recognize specific compounds, ...

Certain strains of the food pathogen Listeria are uniquely adapted to infect heart tissues and may put people at a higher risk from serious cardiac disease, according to a new study published in the Journal of Medical Microbiology. Developing new diagnostic tests to identify these potentially fatal strains could protect those most at risk, such as those with heart valve replacements. Researchers from the University of Illinois, Chicago have shown that a sub-population of the bacterium Listeria monocytogenes display an enhanced ability to infect cardiac tissue. They found ...

Exposure to noise from road traffic can increase the risk of stroke, particularly in those aged 65 years and over, according to a study published online today (Wednesday 26 January) in the European Heart Journal [1]. The study, which is the first to investigate the links between road traffic noise and the risk of stroke, found that for every 10 decibels more noise the risk of having a stroke increased by 14% among the 51,485 study participants. When the Danish researchers looked at the data more closely, they found that for people aged less than 65 years there was no ...

January 25, 2011 (Toronto) – A workplace's key employees may be at the greatest risk of experiencing high levels of work stress, according to a new study by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). In a survey of 2,737 workers, 18 per cent reported that their job was "highly stressful." The odds of having high stress were greater if workers were managers or professionals, if they thought their poor job performance could negatively affect others, or if they worked long or variable hours. The study was published in this month's International Journal of Occupational ...

Targets set for GPs to improve the care of patients with high blood pressure have had no impact, according to a new study published on bmj.com today. Researchers found that nationally set targets in the UK, that have financial rewards for GPs if they are met, have made no discernible difference to improving care and outcomes for patients with hypertension (high blood pressure). Around half of people aged over 50 have hypertension, which is one of the most treatable, but undertreated cardiovascular risk factors. The Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) for general ...

The government's "nudge" approach to public health may struggle to make much impression on improving population health, warn experts on bmj.com today. An accompanying editorial argues that the notion of nudging adds nothing to existing approaches and risks wasting resources. Theresa Marteau, Director of the Behaviour and Health Research Unit at Cambridge University (the Department of Health Policy Research Unit on Behaviour and Health), and colleagues ask whether the concept stands up to scientific scrutiny as a basis for improving population health. Nudging involves ...

Superbugs are not just a problem in hospitals but could be also coming from our animal farms. Research published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Microbiology indicates insects could be responsible for spreading antibiotic resistant bacteria from pigs to humans. Ludek Zurek and collaborators from Kansas and North Carolina State Universities isolated bacteria from farm pig feces and compared them to the bacteria present in the intestines of the house flies and German cockroaches caught on those farms. They subjected the bacteria to a range of different antibiotic ...

It can be hard to get noticed when you're a little chick in a big colony, but new research published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Ecology reveals that baby birds in need of a feed have individual ways of letting their parents know. German and Swiss ornithologists studied the calls of chicks in a population of Jackson's golden-backed weaver birds on the shores of Lake Baringo in Kenya. Already knowing that parent birds can distinguish their own chicks from others by unique pattern changes in the frequency of their call, the researchers wondered how the ...

A collection of 12 reviews, comprising three reflective pieces and nine research and development agendas, is published as part of a sponsored Supplement on 25 January 2011 in PLoS Medicine. This Collection highlights the outcomes of a series of consultations among more than 250 experts that were undertaken by the Malaria Eradication Research Agenda (malERA) initiative. The introductory article by Pedro L. Alonso, CRESIB-Hospital Clínic, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain and colleagues, "A Research Agenda to Underpin Malaria Eradication" sets the malERA program ...

In this week's PLoS Medicine, Ian Sinha and colleagues from the Institute of Child Health, University of Liverpool, UK, make recommendations for the development of core outcome sets for clinical trials, based upon a review of the literature. They advise that when using the Delphi process to develop core outcome sets for clinical trials, patients and clinicians should be involved, researchers and facilitators should avoid imposing their views on participants, and the attrition of participants must be minimized. INFORMATION: Funding: IPS was funded by the NIHR Medicines ...

Most women in rural Zambia deliver their babies at home without skilled care because of the long distances involved in reaching emergency obstetric care, so it is crucial to address the geographic and quality barriers to health care use. These are the key findings from a study by Sabine Gabrysch from Ruprecht-Karls-Universität, Heidelberg, Germany and colleagues at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine published in this week's PLoS Medicine. In sub-Saharan Africa, a woman's lifetime risk of dying during or following pregnancy is as high as 1 in 31 (compared ...

BOSTON, Mass. (Jan. 26, 2011)—As news outlets throughout Europe and the U.S. report on the plummeting health of Western adults and children, there is no shortage of culprits. One villain often bandied about is the "fee for service" system of incentives for physicians. Clearly, if doctors are financially rewarded for simply performing more procedures, costs will soar at the expense of patient health. Enter Pay-for-Performance, an emerging movement in which physicians are rewarded not for what they do, but for quality of care and patient outcomes. Under such a system, ...

BEER-SHEVA, ISRAEL, January 25, 2011 – Sustained exposure to loud workplace noise may affect quality of sleep in workers with occupational-related hearing loss, according to a new study by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev researchers. Published in the journal Sleep, the study compared the sleep quality of individuals at the same workplace, some with workplace noise-related hearing loss and some without. Workers with hearing loss had a higher average age and longer duration of exposure than those without hearing impairments. Also, 51 percent of those with hearing ...

If the U.S. military increases its use of alternative fuels, there will be no direct benefit to the nation's armed forces, according to a new RAND Corporation study. Any benefits from investment in alternative fuels by the U.S. Department of Defense will accrue to the nation as a whole rather than to mission-specific needs of the military, researchers found. The study is based on an examination of alternative jet and naval fuels that can be produced from coal or various renewable resources, including seed oils, waste oils and algae. In response to a congressional ...

Last summer's disastrous Pakistan floods that killed more than 2,000 people and left more than 20 million injured or homeless were caused by a rogue weather system that wandered hundreds of miles farther west than is normal for such systems, new research shows. Storm systems that bring widespread, long-lasting rain over eastern India and Bangladesh form over the Bay of Bengal, at the east edge of India, said Robert Houze, a University of Washington atmospheric sciences professor. But Pakistan, on the Arabian Sea west of India, is substantially more arid and its storms ...