Hyperkinetic disorders among children and adolescents are becoming increasingly common. In the current issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International, Ingrid Schubert of the PMV Research Group at the University of Cologne and her colleagues address the question how this has affected the frequency of prescriptions for methylphenidate, a stimulant drug that is used to treat such disorders (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2010; 107[36]: 615¬21). The authors analyzed data concerning tens of thousands of persons insured by the AOK health insurance company in the German state of Hesse over the ...

Gastric cancer is a major cause of cancer deaths in the world. The outcome of large gastric tumors and those with lymph node involvement remains poor after surgical resection. The optimal adjuvant therapy after surgical resection remains to be determined. The most common strategies in the adjuvant treatment of gastric cancers include fluoropyrimidine-based chemotherapy with or without radiation. The introduction of capecitabine has largely replaced continuous-infusion 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) owing to its ease of administration. However, its efficacy is not proven in randomized ...

Delayed hepatic arterial hemorrhage after pancreaticoduodenectomy (PD) is not a common but a fatal complication, occurring in 7% of all patients. Its ideal management remains unclear and controversial. A research article published on August 7, 2010 in the World Journal of Gastroenterology addresses this question. The authors reported the clinical outcome of 9 patients with life-threatening hemorrhage from a ruptured hepatic artery pseudoaneurysm after PD after treatment with a new interventional technique, namely placement of stent-grafts. This technique provides a good ...

Severe acute pancreatitis (SAP) requires an adequate nutritional support. Enteral nutrition (EN) should be preferred to total parenteral nutrition in patients with SAP, as it is associated with reduced mortality and complications. However, in clinical practice EN is employed far less frequently than it should. The main obstacle to EN diffusion is that it is considered complicated, as to ensure full pancreatic rest, nutrition tubes should be placed in the jejunum, requiring often troublesome procedures. In the past few years, it has been proposed that EN through nasogastric ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – The incidence of hockey-related injuries among children aged 9 to 14 leading to emergency department visits more than doubled between 1990 and 2006, according to a new nationwide study. There were 2,935 hockey injuries treated in emergency departments in that age group in 1990, increasing to 7,713 in 2006 – an increase of 163 percent. The injury incidence among teens aged 15 to 18 didn't increase as much as that of younger children, but still grew 85 percent during the same time period. The startling increase in injuries calls for more attention to ...

New research from University of Minnesota hearing scientists shows that fewer than 20 percent of teenagers in the United States have a hearing loss as a result of exposure to loud sounds, thus offering a different analysis of data reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in August. The U of M's research, forthcoming in the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, points out that the small hearing losses that audiologist are trying to identify with conventional hearing tests are subject to measurement error and that as many as 10 percent ...

Too much television, video games and Internet can increase body fat in teens. A five-year study from the University of Montreal and the Sainte-Justine Hospital Research Center, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, has found teenagers have four different patterns of screen use: increasers, decreasers, consistently high and consistently low users. Even teens from the consistently low group exceeded two hours per day of screen time on average, yet organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Canadian Paediatric Society recommend limiting ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Elderly people might not benefit from some of the tuberculosis vaccines currently in development, recent research suggests. Some vaccines under study are designed to activate a specific molecule that is an early participant in the immune response against TB in young people. But a recent Ohio State University study suggests that in older people, this molecule remains relatively inactive, even in the face of TB infection. The animal research suggests that the presence of this molecule, called a toll-like receptor, is not required in an old mouse to generate ...

HOUSTON – (Sept. 20, 2010) – Everybody who's ever used a TV, radio or cell phone knows what an antenna does: It captures the aerial signals that make those devices practical. A lab at Rice University has built an antenna that captures light in the same way, at a small scale that has big potential. Condensed matter physicist Doug Natelson and graduate student Dan Ward have found a way to make an optical antenna from two gold tips separated by a nanoscale gap that gathers light from a laser. The tips "grab the light and concentrate it down into a tiny space," Natelson said, ...

HOUSTON – (Sept. 20, 2010) – A nanoparticle-based catalyst developed at Rice University may give that tiger in your tank a little more roar. A new paper in the Journal of the American Chemical Society details a process by Rice Professor Michael Wong and his colleagues that should help oil refineries make the process of manufacturing gasoline more efficient and better for the environment. In addition, Wong said, it could produce higher-octane gasoline and save money for an industry in which a penny here and a penny there add millions to the bottom line. Wong's team ...

MANHASSET, NY – The fine particles of pollution that hang in the air can increase the risk for sudden cardiac arrest, according to a new study conducted by a team from Long Island Jewish (LIJ) Medical Center and The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research. Robert A. Silverman, MD, and his colleagues have been interested in the effects of ambient fine particulate matter on a number of medical conditions, including cardiovascular disease and asthma. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) keeps tabs on air pollution through dozens of strategically placed pollution ...

WASHINGTON – Holocaust survivors show remarkable resilience in their day-to-day lives, but they still manifest the pain of their traumatic past in the form of various psychiatric symptoms, according to an analysis of 44 years of global psychological research. Jewish Holocaust survivors living in Israel also have higher psychological well-being than those who live in other countries, which suggests living in that country could serve as a protective factor, according to researchers in Israel and the Netherlands. Their findings are reported in Psychological Bulletin, which ...

Used in a variety of products from credit cards to satellite televisions, secure chips are designed to keep encoded data safe. But hackers continue to develop methods to crack the chips' security codes and access the information within. Thinking like hackers, Prof. Avishai Wool and his Ph.D. student Yossi Oren of Tel Aviv University's School of Electrical Engineering have developed an innovative way of extracting information from chip technology. By combining modern cryptology methods with constraint programming -- an area of computer science designed to solve a series ...

Reflecting sunlight from the Earth by geoengineering would undoubtedly cool the climate, but would different countries agree on how much to reflect? Research by climate scientists at the University of Bristol shows that the impact of geoengineering would be felt in very different ways across the world. Previous studies of geoengineering approaches, aimed at averting dangerous climate change, have shown that although the average global temperature could be restored to 'normal' levels, some regions would remain too warm, whereas others would 'overshoot' and cool to much. ...

PITTSBURGH, Sept. 20 – A structural molecule and the cellular pump that regulates its levels influence the severity of pneumonia and could provide new ways of treating the lung infection, which is a leading cause of hospitalization and death, according to scientists at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Iowa. Their findings are available online in Nature Medicine. Despite decades of research, there has been little new information on what biological mechanisms make bacterial pneumonia get worse, said senior author Rama K. Mallampalli, M.D., a professor ...

(Washington) In a policy paper released today the American College of Physicians reaffirmed its support for increased health care transparency. Healthcare Transparency—Focus on Price and Clinical Performance Information, the first paper in a series of policy papers about transparency, is an introduction and overview of the issues and challenges faced with increased health care transparency. "We believe that increasing transparency in the health care system can be beneficial to both patients and physicians," said J. Fred Raslton, Jr., MD, FACP, president of ACP. "However, ...

Irvine, Calif., Sept. 20, 2010 — American and Italian researchers have found that a novel drug allows anandamide – a marijuana-like chemical in the body – to effectively control pain at the site of an injury. Led by Daniele Piomelli, the Louise Turner Arnold Chair in Neurosciences and director of the Center for Drug Discovery at UC Irvine, the study suggests that such compounds could form the basis of pain medications that don't produce sedation, addiction or other central nervous system side effects common with existing painkillers, such as opiates. "These findings ...

New research led by St. Jude Children's Research Hospital investigators adds to evidence that the Six3 gene functions like a doorman in the developing brain and visual system, safeguarding the future retina by keeping the region where the eye is forming free of a signaling protein capable of disrupting the process. The findings underscore the pivotal role Six3 plays in the developing nervous system as a key regulator of the Wnt family of signaling proteins and expands on earlier work from the laboratory of Guillermo Oliver, Ph.D., member of the St. Jude Department of ...

DURHAM, N.C.—Two-thirds of Americans with voice problems don't seek medical care either because they don't know treatment is available or because they think the problem will just go away, according to a new study conducted at the Duke Voice Care Center. That's concerning, says Seth Cohen, MD, an otolaryngologist at Duke. "Voice disorders aren't benign nuisances that just go away. They are symptoms of a range of medical conditions from allergies to cancer. When caught early, the right treatment can make a big difference. Left untreated, they can become chronic problems ...

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital scientists have identified a new pathway that helps control the immune balance through reciprocal regulation of specialized T lymphocytes, which play very different inflammatory roles. Investigators also determined that two drugs working in different ways to dampen the inflammatory response in patients with multiple sclerosis or following organ transplantation target this new mechanism. Further research into the pathway might lead to new medications to block other autoimmune disorders or to new anti-rejection drugs, researchers said. ...

University of Southern California computer scientists have found a way to combine smartphone resources with a novel application that allows the phones' users to help monitor air quality. The application, provisionally titled "Visibility," is available for download at http://robotics.usc.edu/~mobilesensing/Projects/AirVisibilityMonitoring The researchers, from the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, hope that as many users as possible download and try it in order to improve the software. Currently, the download works for smartphones running the Android system and soon ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Individuals with disrupting mutations in the BRCA1 gene are known to be at substantially increased risk of breast cancer throughout their lives. Now, discoveries from an international research team led by Mayo Clinic researchers show that some of those persons may possess additional genetic variants that modify their risk. These new findings enhancing individualized medicine appear in the current Nature Genetics. "These findings should be useful in helping determine individual risk for breast cancer in BRCA1 carriers," says Fergus Couch, Ph.D., Mayo ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- A consortium of cancer researchers has identified four chromosome locations with genetic changes that are likely to alter a woman's risk of developing ovarian cancer. The findings appear in Nature Genetics in an article authored by a Mayo Clinic researcher. Researchers say that while more needs to be learned about the function of the specific chromosomal regions involved in susceptibility, the discoveries move them a major step closer to individualized risk assessments for ovarian cancer. In the future, women at greatest risk due to these and other ...

Radio transmitters that can withstand temperatures of up to 900 oC could soon be dropped into the depths of the earth to provide early warning of a volcanic eruption. The state-of-the-art technology being pioneered by experts at Newcastle University uses Silicon Carbide electronics that can withstand temperatures equal to the inside of a jet engine. Measuring subtle changes in the levels of key volcanic gases such as carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide, the wireless sensor would feed back real-time data to the surface, providing vital information about volcanic activity ...

DURHAM, N.C. – An international consortium of scientists has discovered new genetic variants in five regions of the genome that affect the risk of ovarian cancer in the general population, according to two separate studies published today (Sunday), online in Nature Genetics. The consortium, including scientists from the U.S., Europe, Canada and Australia, based the new work on their earlier research comparing 10,283 women with ovarian cancer to 13,185 women without the disease. That effort had found a stretch of DNA on chromosome 9 containing single DNA letter variations ...