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Study links colic, maternal depression to family problems

Some families with new babies face excessive infant crying, or colic. And some new mothers go through maternal post-partum depression (PPD) following childbirth. Neither situation is considered healthy, but a recent study published in the Infant Mental Health Journal has found that the combined impact of colic and PPD can have a highly toxic outcome. Researchers have linked colicky babies and maternal depression to decrease in overall family functioning.

29 Mar 2005

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) can successfully identify the characteristics of coronary plaques

A catheter-based imaging technology called optical coherence tomography (OCT) can successfully identify the characteristics of coronary plaques in patients with various cardiac symptoms. The report from researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) will appear in the journal Circulation.

29 Mar 2005

DNA sequencing made portable and faster by "colour-blind" technology

Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) and Rice University have developed a"colour-blind" method of fluorescence detection which could open new doors that would take DNA sequencing to the patient's bedside, the doctor's office and even the scene of a crime or a battlefield.

29 Mar 2005

Grapes inhibit cancer growth

Components in grapes, including some newly identified ones, work together to dramatically inhibit an enzyme crucial to the proliferation of cancer cells, say scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

29 Mar 2005

Herceptin - more powerful treatment for patients with HER-2-positive breast cancer

A new use of the drug Herceptin appears to offer a much more powerful treatment advantage than expected for patients with HER-2-positive breast cancer, say researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.

29 Mar 2005

Pcsk9 gene - new target for cholesterol-lowering drugs

Mice lacking a key protein involved in cholesterol regulation have low-density lipoprotein, or "bad" cholesterol, levels more than 50 percent lower than normal mice, and researchers suggest that inhibiting the same protein in humans could lead to new cholesterol-lowering drugs.

29 Mar 2005

Depression and anxiety affects one in two breast cancer patients

Almost half of all women with early breast cancer experience depression or anxiety in their first year after diagnosis, reveals a study published in the current issue of the British Medical Journal.

29 Mar 2005

American social, cultural, and political-economic contexts govern the structure, efficiency, and operational nature of U.S. health care

Medical sociologists examine how American social, cultural, and political-economic contexts govern the structure, efficiency, and operational nature of U.S. health care delivery in a special issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior (JHSB), a scholarly publication of the American Sociological Association (ASA).

29 Mar 2005

Left-right brain mystery - trail is hot and cold

Australian National University (ANU) researchers have developed a new device that could potentially unravel the mysteries of the left and right brain by measuring ear temperature.

29 Mar 2005

Girls more active with sports they enjoy

The more enjoyable a physical education program can be made for adolescent girls, the more likely they are to be physically active, according to new research in the March issue of Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise®, the official journal of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM).

29 Mar 2005

Scientists out cancer cells in permanent coma

Scientists funded by Marie Curie Cancer Care and the Association for International Cancer Research have made an unexpected discovery that could point the way to a completely new approach to treating cancer.

29 Mar 2005

Academic medical centres need to monitor advertising

Similar advertising practices by pharmaceutical companies have been criticized for creating demand for services and failing to present balanced information, but academic medical centres have not been criticised, says Dr. Robin Larson, instructor in medicine at DAMS and lead author of the study.

28 Mar 2005

Hair follicle stem cells may provide an accessible source of stem cells for therapeutic applications

Hair grows quickly and is continually replenished which makes it an attractive source to harvest the amount of stem cells needed for treatments, but this, along with controversy surrounding the ethics of harvesting cells from embryos, has been a major stumbling block of stem cell research.

28 Mar 2005

Seniors like to "nip and tuck"

Research by the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (BAAPS) has found that pensioners now have the money and the motivation to go under the knife in a bid to look a few years younger. Men and women in their seventies and eighties are fuelling the boom in cosmetic surgery

28 Mar 2005

Vaccine prevents deadly pneumonia in African children

Global health leaders today presented new research showing that vaccinating infants against Streptococcus pneumoniae -- a bacterium that causes deadly pneumonia, meningitis and sepsis -- could substantially reduce death and serious illness among children in the developing world. If used widely, a pneumococcal conjugate vaccine could prevent hundreds of thousands of child deaths each year.

28 Mar 2005

US Genome Project planned to beat cancer

In a project expected to cost $US1.35 billion over nine years, the United States Government's proposed "Human Cancer Genome Project", will open a new front in the battle against cancer, say US health officials.

28 Mar 2005

New prostate cancer test

Tessera, Inc., a Seattle-based biomedical company, has released its first product, ProstaMark EPCA (Early Prostate Cancer Antigen), as an Analyte Specific Reagent (ASR) for commercial use in pathology laboratories to assist pathologists in their efforts to determine if cancer is present in the prostate.

28 Mar 2005

Researchers discover nicotine demethylase gene

U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Company (USSTC) announced today that scientists at its GenApps Inc. laboratories in Winchester, Kentucky, led by Drs. Mark Nielsen and Dongmei Xu, succeeded in discovering a key tobacco gene encoding nicotine demethylase.

28 Mar 2005

Players can become part of a video game

Duck, jab, back flip, shoot! If you've ever played an intensely engaging video game, you know that it can seem like your "self" has been transposed onto the game character—you might even find yourself acting out the character's movements while you are playing.

28 Mar 2005

Blind people more accurate at judging size than sighted people

Close your eyes and imagine a loaf of bread. With your eyes still closed, estimate with your hands the size of that loaf of bread. Do you think your mental representation is an accurate one? Specifically, how accurately have you gauged its size?

28 Mar 2005