Different formulations of red yeast rice, a supplement marketed as a way to improve cholesterol levels, appear widely inconsistent in the amounts of active ingredients they contain, according to a report in the October 25 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. In addition, one in three of 12 products studied had detectable levels of a potentially toxic compound. "Chinese red yeast rice, also known as Hong Qu, is a medicinal agent and food colorant made by culturing a yeast, Monascus purpureus, on rice," the authors write as background ...

Heavy smoking in middle age appears to be associated with more than double the risk for Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia two decades later, according to a report posted online today that will be published in the February 28 print issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Current estimates suggest smoking is responsible for several million deaths per year from causes such as heart disease and cancer, according to background information in the article. Although smoking increases risks of most diseases and of death, some studies ...

Hospital visits following outpatient gastrointestinal endoscopies may be more common than previously estimated, according to a report in the October 25 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. About 15 to 20 million endoscopic procedures, in which a clinician uses a tube-like instrument called an endoscope to see inside a patient's body, are performed each year in the United States, according to background information in the article. However, data on the safety of these procedures and the complications occurring afterward are limited. ...

A national survey finds most physicians believe Medicare reimbursement is inequitable, but there appears to be little consensus regarding proposed reforms, according to a report in the October 25 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. "Across the political spectrum, there is general agreement that the cost of health care has risen to untenable levels and is threatening the future of Medicare and the economic well-being of the United States," the authors write as background information in the article. Clinicians account for one-fifth ...

LOS ANGELES (STRICTLY EMBARGOED UNTIL 3 PM CDT ON OCT. 25, 2010) – Neighborhood barbers, by conducting a monitoring, education and physician-referral program, can help their African-American customers better control high blood pressure problems that pose special health risks for them, a new study from the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute shows. The study -- the first to subject increasingly popular barbershop-based health programs to a scientific scrutiny with randomized, controlled testing -- demonstrates the haircutters' heart health efforts work well enough that they ...

Dietary supplementation with sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) on the morning of a tennis match allows athletes to maintain their edge. A randomized, controlled trial reported in BioMed Central's open access Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition found that those players who received the supplement showed no decline in skilled tennis performance after a simulated match. Chen-Kang Chang from the National Taiwan College of Physical Education, Taiwan, worked with a team of researchers to carry out the study. He said, "We found that sodium bicarbonate supplementation ...

Those who are proud to have a piece of amber that holds a little animal trapped in it maybe should not continue to read this. For what can be seen in the millions of years-old tree resin is almost always just a paper-thin façade. If sliced down the middle, you would find no more than a hollow space covered in some sort of "insect photo wallpaper." This does not apply to the amber Bonn paleontologist Professor Dr. Jes Rust and his colleagues have been looking at for two years. The lumps that resemble herbal cough drops are "full of it," containing numerous insect bodies, ...

Statins, the family of drugs used to lower cholesterol, might also reduce the risk of epileptic seizures in people with cardiovascular disease, according to a new statistical study by a drug safety expert at the University of British Columbia and Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute. The findings could provide the basis for randomized, controlled clinical trials to test the efficacy of the drugs as anti-epileptic medication. The study, based on a database of 2,400 Quebec residents aged 65 and older, showed that those taking statins were 35 per cent less likely ...

Bees, termites, spiders, and flies entombed in a newly-excavated amber deposit are challenging the assumption that India was an isolated island-continent in the Early Eocene, or 52-50 million years ago. Arthropods found in the Cambay deposit from western India are not unique—as would be expected on an island—but rather have close evolutionary relationships with fossils from other continents. The amber is also the oldest evidence of a tropical broadleaf rainforest in Asia. The discovery is published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "We know ...

LA JOLLA, CA-Scientists are closer to solving one of the many mysteries of multiple sclerosis and other demyelinating diseases, thanks to a recent study conducted at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. The research revealed a previously unknown connection between two ion channels, which, when misaligned, can cause the many bizarre symptoms that characterize the condition. The findings, reported in this week's online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), provide fresh insights into the mechanisms underlying MS and suggest a novel ...

DENVER — A new study from Kaiser Permanente Colorado is one of the first to show that an intensive population management program that matches heart disease patients to personal nurses and clinical pharmacy specialists not only reduces the risk of death but reduces health care costs as well. The findings are published in the November issue of the journal Pharmacotherapy. Researchers examined health care expenditures in two populations of patients with heart disease: a group of 628 people enrolled in the Kaiser Permanente Collaborative Cardiac Care Service, a population ...

Fog is a relatively frequent phenomenon in the Po Valley and constitutes a major issue for all road traffic. The new fog warning system covers and benefits the entire Venice Region, combining VTT`s know-how on intelligent transport and evaluation of information services. The system is expected to provide services for regular and professional motorists and transport companies as well as authorities. These types of warning solutions are expected to be in demand on a larger scale in the future as they have positive safety effects and are very profitable socio-economically. ...

They are one of the most highly prized delicacies in the culinary world, but now scientists have discovered that black truffles are locked in a gender war for reproduction. The research, published in New Phytologist as the truffle season begins, represents a breakthrough in the understanding of truffle cultivation and distribution. The teams, led by Dr Francesco Paolocci and Dr Andrea Rubini from the CNR Plant Genetics Institute in Perugia and by Dr Francis Martin from INRA in Nancy, carried out their research on the reproduction strategy of the highly prized black ...

Sleep disturbances increase the risk of work disability and may slow the return to work process. This is especially true in cases where work disability is due to mental disorders or musculoskeletal diseases. These results come from a recent study conducted by the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health in collaboration with the universities of Turku and London. The research is being conducted as part of two major research projects on social capital in the workplace (Kunta10) and on well-being in the hospital workplace. The follow-up study is part of the Academy of Finland ...

A child's chances of developing allergies or wheezing is related to how he or she grew at vital stages in the womb, according to scientists from the University of Southampton. The new research, funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the British Lung Foundation, and undertaken at Southampton General Hospital, reveals that fetuses which develop quickly in early pregnancy but falter later in pregnancy are likely to go on to develop allergies and asthma as children. Scientists believe this is due to changes in the development of their immune system and lungs. A ...

The field that these researchers are working in is known by its nickname, "anti-spoofing", and basically consists in trying to detect all of the possible attempts at fraud that a biometric system might suffer, especially with regard to an action in which the user presents the biometric proof to the system. "What we are trying to do is detect those attempts so that the system can then act accordingly", explains the head of UC3M's Grupo Universitario de Tecnologías de Identificación (GUTI)(University Identification Technology Group), Raúl Sánchez Reíllo, who is leading this ...

Flamingos apply natural make-up to their feathers to stand out and attract mates, according to a new study by Juan Amat, from the Estación Biológica de Doňana in Seville, Spain, and colleagues. Their research is the first to demonstrate that birds transfer the color pigments (carotenoids) from the secretions of their uropygial gland for cosmetic reasons. The uropygial or preen gland is found in the majority of birds and is situated near the base of the tail. The study is published online in Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, a Springer journal. There is evidence ...

AUGUSTA, Ga. - A daily dose of whole body vibration may help reduce the usual bone density loss that occurs with age, Medical College of Georgia researchers report. Twelve weeks of daily, 30-minute sessions in 18-month old male mice – which equate to 55- to 65-year-old humans – appear to forestall the expected annual loss that can result in fractures, disability and death. Dr. Karl H. Wenger, biomedical engineer in the MCG Schools of Graduate Studies and Medicine, reported the findings with his colleagues in the journal Bone. Researchers found vibration improved density ...

A popular cancer drug could be produced cheaply and sustainably using stem cells derived from trees, a study suggests. Researchers have isolated and grown stem cells from a yew tree whose bark is a natural source of the anticancer compound paclitaxel. The development could enable the compound to be produced on a commercial scale at low cost, with no harmful by-products. Scientists and engineers behind the development say the drug treatment – currently used on lung, ovarian, breast, head and neck cancer – could become cheaper and more widely available. The study was ...

Patients with cancer found at the end of the large intestine called the rectum who receive one week of radiation therapy before surgery have a 50 percent reduction in chance that their cancer will return after 10 years, according to a large, randomized study presented at the plenary session, November 1, 2010, at the 52nd Annual Meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO). "We believe that this short course of radiation will open a new window of opportunities in the treatment of rectal cancer," Corrie Marijnen M.D., lead author of the study and a radiation ...

Men with prostate cancer who take anticoagulants like aspirin in addition to radiation therapy or surgery may be able to cut their risk of dying of the disease by more than half, according to a large study presented on November 3, 2010, at the 52nd Annual Meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) in San Diego. The study involved more than 5,000 men with localized cancer whose disease had not spread beyond the prostate gland. "Evidence has shown that anticoagulants may interfere with cancer growth and spread," Kevin Choe, M.D., Ph.D., lead author of ...

Men treated for prostate cancer who were diagnosed after the start of routine screening had a significantly reduced risk of the disease spreading to other parts of the body (metastases) within 10 years of treatment, compared to men who were treated prior to the use of routine screening, according to the first study-of-its-kind presented November 1, 2010, at the 52nd Annual Meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO). In 1993, routine prostate cancer screening became widely implemented through the use of a prostate specific antigen (PSA) test that was ...

Prostate cancer patients who are treated with a combination of hormone therapy and radiation have a substantially improved chance of survival compared to patients who do not receive radiation, according to interim results of the largest randomized study of its kind presented at the plenary session, November 1, 2010, at the 52nd Annual Meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO). From 1995 to 2005, 1,205 men with high-risk prostate cancer in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada were randomly selected to receive hormone therapy alone or a ...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 25, 2010 — Green gasoline is plants in your tank, motor vehicle fuel made from corn, cornstalks, sugarcane, and other crops. It also is gasoline made with recipes that reduce the need for harsh, potentially toxic ingredients like hydrofluoric acid or sulfuric acid that are used at about 210 oil refineries worldwide. Now scientists have found an answer to a half-century quest for a way to make gasoline in exactly that kind of greener, more environmentally-friendly way. That advance highlights the second episode of a new video series, Prized Science: ...

Men with prostate cancer treated with a specialized type of radiation called intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) have fewer gastrointestinal complications compared to patients treated with conventional three-dimensional conformal radiotherapy (3D-CRT), according to a study presented November 1, 2010, at the 52nd Annual Meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO). "With survivors living many years after treatment, it is very important to minimize gastrointestinal and urinary side effects to allow patients to live a full life after treatment," ...