The drug, called carbamazepine, is commonly used to treat patients with epilepsy and other diseases such as depression and trigeminal neuralgia. Although successful in treating the majority of patients, carbamazepine can cause side-effects that range from a mild skin irritation to severe blistering of the whole body. The team, in collaboration with the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, screened more than a million variants in DNA across the human genome to understand why some patients are more prone to the drug's side-effects than others. Research in Taiwan has already ...

A survey of over 9,000 people in seven different countries across Europe has shown that the majority would want to improve the quality of life in the time they had left, rather than extend it. The survey reveals attitudes across Europe for dealing with serious illnesses such as cancer, and issues raised when caring for a close friend of relative in the last few months of life. The research was carried out as part of an EU-funded project led by researchers from King's College London. The telephone survey of 9,339 people was carried out to explore attitudes to end of life ...

CHESTNUT HILL, MA (3/24/2011) – A new catalytic chemical method for the synthesis of a large and important class of carbon-carbon double bonds has been developed by scientists from Boston College and MIT, the team reports in the journal Nature. The findings substantially expand the versatility of a set of metal-based catalysts discovered only three years ago by the researchers. With molybdenum at their core, the catalysts have now proven capable of generating the higher-energy isomer of an alkene molecule from two simpler and much more readily accessible terminal versions, ...

Chevy Chase, MD— A recent study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM) found that higher levels of perfluorocarbons (PFCs) in the body are associated with increased odds of having experienced menopause in women between 42 and 64 years old. Women in this age group with high levels of PFCs also had significantly lower concentrations of estrogen when compared to women who had low levels of PFCs. PFCs are man-made chemicals used in a variety of household products including food containers, clothing, furniture, ...

Chevy Chase, MD—Levels of the hormone ghrelin are low in obese women and a recent study accepted for publication in Endocrinology, a publication of The Endocrine Society, reports that mice whose mothers had low ghrelin levels were less fertile due to a defect in implantation. Hormones involved in energy balance and metabolism, such as ghrelin, have been shown to regulate reproductive function in animals and humans. However ghrelin's role in reproductive tract development remains unclear. The current study examined the effect of ghrelin deficiency on the developmental ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Seemingly every year there are reports of a young, apparently healthy athlete dying on the court or playing field. The sudden death of Wes Leonard, a junior at Fennville High School, who died of cardiac arrest from an enlarged heart on March 3, may have parents and coaches wondering if enough is being done to identify athletes at risk for dying suddenly. "We would like to develop a better screening program to help prevent sudden cardiac death, but there is not enough rigorous data to support what that should look like," says Sanjaya Gupta, M.D., clinical ...

A breakthrough in the study of chemical reactions during etching and coating of materials was achieved by a research group headed by Kiel physicist, Professor Olaf Magnussen. The team from the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel (CAU), Germany, in collaboration with staff from the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble, France, have uncovered for the first time just what happens in manufacturing processes, used for the formation of metal contacts thinner than a human hair in modern consumer electronics, such as flat-screen television. The results ...

Ambrico, creators of the popular E-Z Thin Brick installation system, have announced a new partnership with Clover Creek Brick Company of Kentucky. As providers of high quality clay brick and thin brick products, Ambrico is excited about this latest partnership, which brings Clover Creek's exclusive products directly to their customers. Specializing in high quality, tumbled bricks, Clover Creek has been producing materials at their historical production site for over 125 years, making them leaders in the clay brick industry. Ambrico, who has been recommending Clover ...

Even relatively mild stress can lead to long term disability and an inability to work, reveals a large population based study published online in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. It is well known that mental health problems are associated with long term disability, but the impact of milder forms of psychological stress is likely to have been underestimated, say the authors. Between 2002 and 2007, the authors tracked the health of more than 17,000 working adults up to the age of 64, who had been randomly selected from the population in the Stockholm ...

International piracy costs the shipping industry billions of dollars a year and leads to high-profile murders that make global headlines. Longstanding concerns over piracy have led to numerous international laws and conventions designed to keep pirates in check – but research from North Carolina State University shows that the tangled network of laws may actually be helping pirates escape justice. "We wanted to know why the international community is not working together and taking advantage of existing laws to address piracy, even as piracy is on the rise in places like ...

Methadone has been used to treat heroin addicts for nearly 50 years. Yet we have surprisingly incomplete knowledge about possible harmful effects from prolonged use. New research from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health shows that methadone affects the brain and impairs the attention of experimental animals. In general, opioids such as heroin and morphine are known to weaken intellectual functions such as learning, memory and attention. "It is therefore tempting to assume that methadone has similar effects," says researcher Jannike M. Andersen at the NIPH's Division ...

Applications on modern wireless devices make demands on data rate and connectivity far beyond anything experienced in the past. One way to meet these stringent requirements is to give the device multiple antennas or multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technology. The problem of physically accommodating these additional antennas in the latest consumer products is investigated in new research from the University of Bristol. The study by academics in the field of antennas and propagation in the University's Centre for Communications Research (CCR) is published in the journal ...

Men with high-risk prostate cancer who take statin drugs commonly used to lower cholesterol while receiving radiation therapy are less likely to have their cancer return than patients who do not take these medications, according to a study published in the March issue of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology•Biology•Physics, an official journal of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO). In the study, 1,681 men with high-risk, localized prostate cancer were treated with radiation therapy between 1995 and 2007. Of them, 382 (23 percent) were taking ...

It is not clear whether disease management programs (DMPs), which are expensive and involve a great deal of documentation, improve medical outcomes for participants. Roland Linder's working group present their results in the current issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2011; 108[10]: 155󈞪). In 2009, DMPs in Germany cost around 1.1 billion euros; the larger part of this related to the DMP for type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). The authors investigated whether the T2DM DMP resulted in medical benefit for patients. To do this, they analyzed ...

With 300 days of sunshine a year, it is no surprise that bicycling is a popular pastime in the State of Colorado. Whether for transportation or recreation, thousands of Coloradans take to the streets and trails all year long. Considering the sheer volume of cyclists in the state, some bike accidents will inevitably happen. Yet, many of those hurt while cycling fail to consider a possible cause of their injuries: bicycle defects. Bike product recalls are a common occurrence. A bicycle design or manufacturing defect can cause severe injury to the rider. Unfortunately, ...

Having sex for the first time can improve or degrade your self-image depending on whether you are male or female, according to Penn State researchers. On average, college-age males become more satisfied with their appearance after first intercourse, whereas college-age females become slightly less satisfied. "We're not talking about 12-year-old girls having sex, so it's striking that even among these young women -- who are 17 or older when they first had sex -- their images of themselves went down," said Eva S. Lefkowitz, associate professor of human development and family ...

This press release is available in Spanish. Using commercially available parts, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists and colleagues have developed a new automated system for detecting insects based on the peculiar sounds the insects make while moving. According to entomologist Richard Mankin of USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS), one likely application will be to automate routine monitoring of industrial-scale traps, especially those placed in hard-to-reach areas like crawl spaces or near food processing equipment. Automated insect monitoring ...

Next week, Sarah Wollaston MP will put forward a private member's bill urging the government to adopt a new approach to protect UK children from alcohol advertising. In an editorial published on bmj.com today, Professor Gerard Hastings and Dr Nick Sheron set out why we urgently need to tackle the excessive drinking of our young people and their massive exposure to alcohol advertising. The bill will call on the government to adapt French legislation that allows alcohol advertising in media aimed at adults but not children, and ensures that promotional messages are factual ...

Americans who have not disclosed large sums of money in foreign offshore accounts have a second chance at tax amnesty. The Internal Revenue Service is giving taxpayers with foreign bank accounts until August 31 to voluntarily report the accounts and income and avoid tax evasion charges. In exchange, these taxpayers would pay penalties that are lower than what the IRS would usually charge. Although these penalties are higher than those offered during a previous tax amnesty in 2009, the avoidance of prosecution remains a major incentive for a taxpayer to take the deal. The ...

LOS ANGELES (EMBARGOED UNTIL 4 PM EST, WEDNESDAY, MARCH 23, 2011) – A new study of coronary artery calcium scanning – a simple, noninvasive test that gives patients baseline information about plaque in their coronary arteries—has shown that the scan helps them make heart-healthy lifestyle changes and lower their heart disease risk factors. The study, the EISNER trial (Early Identification of Subclinical Atherosclerosis by Noninvasive Imaging Research), was headed by researchers at Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute and Cedars-Sinai's S. Mark Taper Foundation Imaging Department ...

Genes make up only a tiny percentage of the human genome. The rest, which has remained measurable but mysterious, may hold vital clues about the genetic origins of disease. Using a new mapping strategy, a collaborative team led by researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), and MIT has begun to assign meaning to the regions beyond our genes and has revealed how minute changes in these regions might be connected to common diseases. The researchers' findings appear in the March 23 advance online issue of Nature. The results ...

A typical city: row upon row of houses built almost on top of each other, with asphalted roads between them and with very few green areas to be found. Urban areas built on this pattern warm up more strongly than their rural surroundings, creating islands of warmth. The waste heat emitted by vehicles and machinery (such as air conditioning equipment) causes yet more heating, and even during the night the city hardly cools down to any noticeable extent. Megacities such as Mexico City and urban conurbations such as Athens are more and more frequently covered by a visible dome ...

Raleigh criminal defense lawyer Patrick Roberts at the Roberts Law Group PLLC used the facts he learned about his client's criminal arrest to negotiate a potential 70 to 80 month prison sentence down to 10 to 12 months. Criminal attorney Patrick Roberts used information that he gleaned in truly getting to know his client in discussions with the Wake County District Attorney's Office. The facts of the case were as follows: Mr. Roberts' client was facing two counts of drug trafficking after police recovered two large quantities of cocaine from a house where his client ...

After many years of gradual increase followed by a three-year levelling off period, sales of addictive anxiolytic and hypnotic drugs decreased by just under two per cent in 2010. This comes from the new report "Drug Consumption in Norway 2006-2010". The statistics include all sales of prescription and OTC drugs in Norway from wholesalers to pharmacies, hospitals / nursing homes and grocery stores. The report also shows that total sales of OTC medicines measured in DDDs declined by six per cent in 2010. This is mainly due to lower sales of OTC packets of paracetamol ...

Lung transplant patients have double the risk of organ rejection and death within five years of the procedure if they live near a main road, indicates research published online in Thorax. The Belgian researchers tracked the health of 281 patients who had undergone a lung transplant or retransplant at the same hospital between 1997 and 2008 until 2009. They took into account how far these patients lived from a main road and therefore a source of airborne road traffic pollution to see if this had any impact on their survival rates, as pollutants are known to trigger inflammation. Around ...