In the largest stroke rehabilitation study ever conducted in the United States, stroke patients who had physical therapy at home improved their ability to walk just as well as those who were treated in a training program using a body-weight supported treadmill device, followed by walking practice. UCLA's neurologic rehabilitation program was one of six U.S. sites that conducted the study, which also found that patients continued to improve up to one year after stroke, defying conventional wisdom that recovery occurs early and tops out at six months. In fact, even patients ...

One of the most important genes in the human genome is called p53 and its function is to suppress tumours, according to Roger Leng, a researcher in the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry. Leng has discovered the mechanism by which p53 is inactivated in cancerous cells, allowing tumours to grow. "Successful completion of the proposed experiments could lead to novel anti-cancer therapies that could potentially improve the prognosis for cancer patients and reduce the public health burden from cancer," said Leng. It has long been known by scientists that another protein, MDM2, ...

Women suffering from anorexia or bulimia draw themselves with prominently different characteristics than women who do not have eating disorders and who are considered of normal weight. This has been revealed in a new joint study from the University of Haifa, Soroka University Medical Center and Achva Academic College, Israel, published in The Arts in Psychotherapy. "The results of this study show that women suffering or prone to developing eating disorders, such as anorexia and bulimia, can be diagnosed with a simple and non-intrusive self-figure drawing assessment," explained ...

The more humanity acidifies and warms the world's oceans with carbon emissions, the harder we will have to work to save our coral reefs. That's the blunt message from a major new study by an international scientific team, which finds that ocean acidification and global warming will combine with local impacts like overfishing and nutrient runoff to weaken the world's coral reefs right when they are struggling to survive. Modelling by a team led by Dr Ken Anthony of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and The University of Queensland's Global Change Institute ...

Monday, February 14, 2011 – Cleveland – Researchers from Cleveland Clinic's Lerner Research Institute have discovered that resveratrol – a compound found in red wine – when combined with rapamycin can have a tumor-suppressing effect on breast cancer cells that are resistant to rapamycin alone. The research – recently published in Cancer Letters – also indicates that the PTEN tumor-suppressing gene contributes to resveratrol's anti-tumor effects in this treatment combination. Charis Eng, MD, Ph.D., Chair of the Genomic Medicine Institute of Cleveland Clinic's Lerner ...

Nonmilitary personnel serving in military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan were more likely to be evacuated with non–war-related injuries and more likely to return to duty after such injuries compared with military personnel, according to a study published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) (pre-embargo link only) http://www.cmaj.ca/embargo/cmaj100244.pdf. About 50% of personnel serving in Iraq and around two-thirds in Afghanistan are nonmilitary. "Nonmilitary personnel play an increasingly critical role in modern wars," writes Dr. Steven P. Cohen, Johns ...

New clinical guidelines for use of noninvasive ventilation in critical care settings are published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) (pre-embargo link only) http://www.cmaj.ca/embargo/cmaj100071.pdf. The use of noninvasive positive-pressure ventilation and noninvasive continuous positive airway pressure by mask has increased significantly among acutely ill patients. A growing body of literature and variations in practice in recent years have necessitated the development of new clinical practical guidelines to help manage patients with acute respiratory distress ...

A recent outbreak of tuberculosis in Nunavut, with a population infection rate 62 times the Canadian average, points to a need to rebuild trust in public health to combat the disease, states an editorial published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) (pre-embargo link only) http://www.cmaj.ca/embargo/cmaj110160.pdf. Nunavut is Canada's third territory in the eastern Arctic, created in 1999. Its population is about 30,000 people, and almost 80% are Inuit, spread over an area of more than 2 million square kilometers. At least 100 new active cases of tuberculosis ...

ST. PAUL, Minn. – Measurements of hand movement control may help determine the severity of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children, according to joint studies published in the February 15, 2011, print issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. ADHD is a brain disorder characterized by impulsiveness, hyperactivity, such as not being able to sit still, and inattention or difficulty staying focused. The studies were led by Stewart H. Mostofsky, MD, with the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore and Donald L. Gilbert, ...

New research shows that all not mammals are created equal. In fact, this work shows that the animals most commonly used by scientists to study mammalian genetics -- mice -- develop unusually quickly and may not always be representative of embryonic development in other mammals. The study, published by Cell Press in the February 14 issue of the journal Developmental Cell, identifies significant differences in the timing of cell fate commitment during mouse and cattle embryonic development and raises important strategic implications for the generation of embryonic stem cells. The ...

After analyzing data on 2,155 private contractors, diplomats and other civilians supporting war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan who were medically evacuated out of combat zones, researchers have found they are more likely to be evacuated for noncombat-related injuries, but more likely to return to work in-country after treatment for these conditions. Still, the findings of the Johns Hopkins-led research team, published online in CMAJ, the journal of the Canadian Medical Association, note that 75 percent of the nonmilitary group medically evacuated from the war zones to ...

BOSTON – February 14, 2011 – Once people develop type 2 diabetes, high blood glucose levels alter their metabolism so much that it becomes difficult to sift through all the clues to find what might enable the disease. "To identify factors that play a primary role in disease susceptibility, we want to investigate people before they get to that point," says Mary-Elizabeth Patti, M.D. of Joslin Diabetes Center. By examining people across the spectrum of diabetes—from healthy to the full-blown disease—scientists in her lab have found a molecular pathway that offers novel targets ...

The newly approved drug dabigatran is an alternative to warfarin to help prevent dangerous blood clots in patients with atrial fibrillation, according to updated guidelines from the American College of Cardiology, American Heart Association and the Heart Rhythm Society. The "Focused Update" — published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, Journal of the American College of Cardiology and HeartRhythm Journal — specifically updates the section on emerging antithrombotic agents in atrial fibrillation treatment guidelines released by the three organizations ...

Among women with breast cancer, approximately 25% have a subtype that is characterized by high levels of expression of the protein HER2. HER2-positive breast cancer tends to be more aggressive than other breast cancer subtypes. Increased molecular understanding of why HER2-positive breast cancer is so aggressive could aid in the development of new therapeutics. By studying mouse models, a team of researchers, led by Lewis Chodosh, at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, has now identified a key role for the protein Hunk in the formation of tumors ...

Most, if not all, solid tumors contain regions that are not well oxygenated. Tumor cells in these regions, which are known as hypoxic regions, are usually resistant to the death-inducing effects of chemotherapeutics. But now, Caroline Dive and colleagues, at Manchester University, United Kingdom, have identified a compound (ABT-737) that induces human cancer cells exposed to hypoxic conditions in vitro to undergo a form of cell death known as apoptosis. In addition, cells in hypoxic regions of human tumors xenografted in mice were susceptible to ABT-737–induced apoptotic ...

EDITOR'S PICK: A hunk of a target for treating breast cancer Among women with breast cancer, approximately 25% have a subtype that is characterized by high levels of expression of the protein HER2. HER2-positive breast cancer tends to be more aggressive than other breast cancer subtypes. Increased molecular understanding of why HER2-positive breast cancer is so aggressive could aid in the development of new therapeutics. By studying mouse models, a team of researchers, led by Lewis Chodosh, at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, has now identified ...

This release is available in French. VIDEO: A microsample is taken from the van Gogh painting "Bank of river Seine " on display at the van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam (Netherlands), and then analyzed at the X-rays microscope... Click here for more information. Scientists have identified a complex chemical reaction responsible for the degradation of two paintings by Vincent ...

A study by Mount Sinai School of Medicine finds that Medicare costs at the end of life are influenced more by patient characteristics, such as ability to function, the severity of the illness, and family support than by regional factors, such as the number of hospital beds available. The study will be published February 15 in The Annals of Internal Medicine. "These new findings show that the reasons for wide variation in Medicare costs across the United States are much more complicated than previously thought," said lead author Amy Kelley, MD, Assistant Professor in ...

Neurobiologists at UC San Diego have discovered new ways by which nerves are guided to grow in highly directed ways to wire the brain during embryonic development. Their finding, detailed in a paper in the February 15 issue of the journal Developmental Cell, provides a critical piece of understanding to the longstanding puzzle of how the human brain wires itself into the complex networks that underlie our behavior. The discovery concerns the movements of a highly sensitive and motile structure at the tips of growing nerves called a growth cone. For more than a century, ...

BOSTON – Over the last several decades, the prophylactic use of acid-suppressive medications to help prevent gastrointestinal bleeding (GI) in hospitalized patients has increased significantly, with some studies estimating that as many as 40 to 70 percent of all medical inpatients are given these drugs at some point during their hospitalization. But, for patients who are not critically ill, the actual incidence of GI bleeding has not been well investigated. Now, a study led by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and reported in today's on-line ...

According to Dr Annette Baudisch of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany, current methods of comparing patterns of ageing are limited because they confound two different elements of ageing – pace and shape. "Some organisms live a short time, others live a long time. This is the pace of ageing. Short-lived species have a fast pace of ageing, and long-lived species have a slow pace of ageing. Pace describes how quickly the clock of life ticks away. For humans it ticks slowly, for small songbirds like the robin it ticks very fast," explains ...

Lavender oil could be used to combat the increasing incidence of antifungal-resistant infections, according to a study published in the Journal of Medical Microbiology. The essential oil shows a potent antifungal effect against strains of fungi responsible for common skin and nail infections. Scientists from the University of Coimbra in Portugal distilled lavender oil from the Lavandula viridis L'Hér shrub that grows in southern Portugal. The oil was tested against a range of pathogenic fungi and was found to be lethal to a range of skin-pathogenic strains, known as dermatophytes, ...

Most medical devices recently recalled by the Food and Drug Administration because of very serious risks were initially approved through an expedited process or were exempt from regulatory review, according to a report posted online today that will be published in the June 14 print issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. "Unlike prescription drugs, medical devices are reviewed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) using two alternative regulatory standards: (1) premarket approval, which requires clinical testing and inspections; ...

Obesity is a killer in its own right, irrespective of other biological or social risk factors traditionally associated with coronary heart disease, suggests research published online in Heart. Increasing weight is associated with a higher prevalence of known risk factors for coronary artery disease, such as diabetes, high blood pressure and cholesterol. And it has been assumed that these have been responsible for the increased risk of heart disease seen in obesity, say the authors. The research team tracked the health of more than 6,000 middle aged men with high cholesterol, ...

Portable pedal machines could help counter the harmful effects of prolonged periods spent at a desk or workstation among an increasingly sedentary workforce, suggests a small study published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. The researchers base their findings on 18 full time employees who were given a pedal exercise machine for four weeks, specifically designed to be used while seated at a desk in the workplace. The mini exercise bike comprised a set of pedals that can be set up in front of most standard office chairs for use while seated, and which ...