A study conducted at Copenhagen University Hospital showed that treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) with disease modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs), glucocorticoids, biologic agents, or a combination of agents significantly reduced radiographic evidence of joint destruction, with a relative effect of 48%󈞴% as compared with placebo. A direct comparison between the combination of a biologic agent plus methotrexate and the combination of 2 DMARDs plus initial glucocorticoids revealed no difference. Study findings are published in the October issue of Arthritis ...

Social rejection isn't just emotionally upsetting; it also upsets your heart. A new study finds that being rejected by another person makes your heart rate drop for a moment. The study is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Research has shown that the brain processes physical and social pain in some of the same regions. Bregtje Gunther Moor, Eveline A. Crone, and Maurits W. van der Molen of the University of Amsterdam and Leiden University in the Netherlands wanted to find out how social pain affects you physically. ...

Results from a 12-month multi-center clinical trial did not show therapeutic benefit of abatacept over placebo in patients with non-life threatening systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Abatacept failed to prevent new disease flares in SLE patients tapered from corticosteroids in an analysis where mild, moderate and severe disease flares were evaluated together. Full details of the phase IIb clinical trial are published in the October issue of Arthritis & Rheumatism, a journal of the American College of Rheumatology (ACR). The ACR estimates that 161,000 to 322,000 adults ...

The Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC), an international public-private partnership that aims to determine three dimensional structures of medically important proteins, announced today the release into the public domain of its 1000th high resolution protein structure. The 1000th structure – known as JmjD2C – belongs to a class of proteins involved in epigenetic signalling, a key research area for the SGC. Epigenetics is the study of inherited changes in gene expression caused by proteins such as JmjD2C which 'switch' genes on or off. It is believed that a better understanding ...

HOUSTON, Sept. 28, 2010 – A large section of northwestern Harris County – particularly the Jersey Village area – is sinking rapidly, according to a University of Houston (UH) geologist who has analyzed GPS data measuring ground elevation in the Houston area. Some points in Jersey Village are subsiding by up to 5.5 centimeters (about 2 inches) a year, said Shuhab Khan, an associate professor of geology at UH. Khan, along with UH geology professor Kevin Burke and former Ph.D. student and UH alumnus Richard Engelkemeir, studied a decade's worth of detailed GPS data measuring ...

In comments sent to Secretary Kathleen Sebelius at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, AMIA (American Medical Informatics Association) called out 10 specific challenges to proposed modifications to HIPAA Privacy and Enforcement Rules. AMIA's comments, sent on behalf of its membership of 4,000 informatics professionals, detail key issues of concern related to the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) on HIPAA modifications, along with suggestions for models of change. The following areas were cited: Business Associates and Subcontractors Position: AMIA ...

Although the magnificent frigatebird may be the least likely animal on the Galapagos Islands to be unique to the area, it turns out the Galapagos population of this tropical seabird may be its own genetically distinct species warranting a new conservation status, according to a paper by researchers at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and the University of Missouri-St. Louis published last week in the scientific journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The Galapagos Islands, which once served as a scientific ...

When the scientific and spiritual worlds collide, they do so in the most surprising ways. Classical meteorological and plant science has, in the last century, insisted that dew negatively affects plant life, leading to rot and fungus. But in the Judeo-Christian tradition, dew is most welcomed as an important source of vegetative and plant life, celebrated in poetry and prayer. Now Prof. Pinhas Alpert of Tel Aviv University's Department of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences has developed an explanation for the perplexing paradox with his colleagues. According to scientific ...

A study carried out by Spanish researchers has shown that the presence of chemical contaminants can interact with noise and modify, for good or for bad, the way in which work-related "deafness" – which is increasingly common among young people – manifests itself. Noise-related hearing loss is the most common occupational disease in Europe. "Workers exposed to noise in the presence of metalworking fluids exhibit a delay in hearing alteration in comparison with those exposed only to noise at the same intensity. However, those exposed to noise in the presence of welding ...

Astroturfers, Twitter-bombers and smear campaigners need beware this election season as a group of leading Indiana University information and computer scientists today unleashed Truthy.indiana.edu, a sophisticated new Twitter-based research tool that combines data mining, social network analysis and crowdsourcing to uncover deceptive tactics and misinformation leading up to the Nov. 2 elections. Combing through thousands of tweets per hour in search of political keywords, the team based out of IU's School of Informatics and Computing will isolate patterns of interest ...

FORT WORTH, TEXAS, USA, September 28, 2010—The outbreak of whooping cough in Texas, California, and other states this year underscores the critical importance of widespread vaccination coverage, both locally as well as around the world, said a leading global health official attending conferences on world affairs and immunization in Fort Worth this week. Alex Palacios, a special representative of the GAVI Alliance, a public-private partnership aimed at increasing immunisation rates in poor countries, said that despite public health advances in the US and other wealthy countries ...

More than half of all people are hosts to Candida albicans in their bodies. This species might be located on their skin or mucous membranes or in the intestines – frequently without causing any symptoms. However, it can be dangerous to patients whose immunological system has been weakened such as after organ transplants or chemotherapy with cancer. Then, this fungus penetrates into deeper layers of tissue and uses the blood system to spread throughout the body. In Germany alone, several thousand people die from systemic candida infections every year. But why does Candida ...

Sept. 28, 2010 -- A new report from the National Research Council says that more organized and systematic procedures for gathering and evaluating data on Missouri River sediment are required to improve decisions and better manage the river's ecosystem, including protecting endangered species and developing water quality standards. In addition, the report finds that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' projects to restore habitats along the Missouri River are not significantly changing the size of the oxygen-depleted "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico, nor will options for ...

Just imagine your car suddenly comes to a halt on a quiet country road, and it's only four years old. This is not a pleasant thought. A breakdown is expensive. Not to mention the safety risk to the occupants – because the breakdown was caused by the extremely light plastic wheels so highly praised by the car salesman. One of them has broken. »Such a scenario must, of course, never happen in reality,« states Prof. Dr.-Ing. Andreas Büter from the Fraunhofer Institute for Structural Durability and System Reliability LBF in Darmstadt. The experts there specialize in operational ...

A Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) study on nesting birds in Argentina finds that increasing temperatures and rainfall—both side effects of climate change in some parts of the world—could be bad for birds of South America, but great for some of their parasites which thrive in warmer and wetter conditions. The study, which looked at nesting forest birds in Santa Fe, Argentina, found that increases in temperature and precipitation produce a bumper crop of parasitic fly larvae of the species Philornis torquans, parasites that burrow into the skin of baby birds to feed. ...

A new study by USC researchers reveals that stressed men looking at angry faces had diminished activity in the brain regions responsible for understanding others' feelings. Turns out the silent and stoic response to stress might be a guy thing after all. "These are the first findings to indicate that sex differences in the effects of stress on social behavior extend to one of the most basic social transactions — processing someone else's facial expression," said Mara Mather, director of the Emotion and Cognition Lab at USC. In an article appearing the October 6 issue ...

Sept. 28, 2010 — The National Research Council today released its assessment of U.S. doctoral programs, which includes data on over 5,000 programs in 62 fields at 212 universities nationwide. The assessment is designed to help universities evaluate and improve the quality of their programs and to provide prospective students with information on the nation's doctoral programs. (See Full Report) "This report and its large collection of quantitative data will become in our view an important and transparent instrument for strengthening doctoral education in the United States," ...

Being allergic to dogs or cats may worsen your ragweed allergies, according to a study from Queen's University. Researchers found that people with pet allergies often develop ragweed allergy symptoms more quickly than others. But the study also suggests that once allergy season is in full swing, those symptom differences subside. The team, led by Anne Ellis, an assistant professor in the departments of medicine and microbiology & immunology, exposed 123 participants to ragweed, and noted that pet allergy sufferers reported symptoms differently than their non-animal ...

PITTSBURGH—In the first population-based survey to indicate a racial disparity in the psychological abuse of senior citizens, University of Pittsburgh researchers found that African American seniors could be twice as likely to be mistreated than elders of other races. The survey also revealed that African American elders could be up to five times more susceptible to being swindled. Reporting the survey results in The Gerontologist, the researchers urged that health care and social service workers be especially vigilant for the possible mistreatment of African American seniors. Lead ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Researchers have created a computer model that predicts how a disaster's impact on critical infrastructure would affect a city's social and economic fabric, a potential tool to help reduce the severity of impacts, manage the aftermath of catastrophe and fortify infrastructure against future disasters. "The model works for any type of disaster that influences the infrastructure," said Makarand Hastak, head of construction engineering and management and a professor of civil engineering at Purdue University. "If we can identify in advance the most ...

In a recent keynote address before the Kavli Science Forum: 2010 in Oslo, Dr. John P. Holdren -- science advisor to U.S. President Barack Obama -- provided insight into why climate change is a priority to the Obama administration, and pressed the need for an international effort to mitigate, and adapt to, what he termed the effects of "global climate disruption." "We cannot solve the great problems of our time alone - any of us - as individual nations," he stated. "We need to solve them together, and science and technology pursued together are going to be immensely important ...

In a very large cohort of African-American women in the US, the association between the consumption of alcohol, tea, and coffee and the development of type 2 diabetes mellitus (late onset diabetes) was studied for 12 years. Tea and decaffeinated coffee showed no relation with diabetes, but the regular moderate intake of both caffeinated coffee and alcohol appeared to reduce the risk of contracting late onset diabetes significantly. This paper is particularly important because some previous studies have not shown a strong association between alcohol and the risk of ...

(Boston) - Researchers from Boston Medical Center (BMC) and Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) have found that individuals who do not speak English at home are less likely to receive colorectal cancer screenings (CRC) as compared to those who do speak English at home. The findings, which currently appear on-line in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, suggest that patient-provider language barriers play a role in health-care disparities, and that providers should promote the importance of CRC screening to non-English speaking patients. The United States ...

AUDIO: A new University of Michigan study shows how fight styles affect marriage. Click here for more information. ANN ARBOR, Mich.---It's common knowledge that newlyweds who yell or call each other names have a higher chance of getting divorced. But a new University of Michigan study shows that other conflict patterns also predict divorce. A particularly toxic pattern is when one spouse deals with conflict constructively, by calmly discussing the situation, listening to their ...

Melbourne, Australia—September 28, 2010— In recent years, several guidelines in the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder have been put into practice globally. Practice guidelines across the health sphere are very important in guiding the care people receive. Although there is a high level of consensus on these guidelines among practitioners, there are also differences that can lead to confusion among providers, patients, and purchasers of mental health services for people affected by trauma. A new article in the Journal of Traumatic Stress written by the international ...