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Researchers identify natural mechanism linked with Huntington's disease

Johns Hopkins researchers have identified a natural mechanism that might one day be used to block the expression of the mutated gene known to cause Huntington's disease.

22 Jun 2011

Twelve institutions receive NPCRC and American Cancer Society grants for palliative care research

The American Cancer Society and the National Palliative Care Research Center (NPCRC) are awarding $2 million in research grants to researchers at 12 institutions for studies aimed at reducing suffering for seriously ill patients and their family caregivers.

22 Jun 2011

Rapid diagnostic tests for malaria can be improved, says researcher

Rapid diagnostic tests for malaria are simple, reliable and robust. But errors occur, through misuse or because they aren't designed for primitive circumstances. Researcher Philippe Gillet put them to the test and made a series of suggestions for improvement. It resulted in a PhD at the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp and Maastricht University.

22 Jun 2011

Obama administration launches effort to tout Medicare preventive benefits

The number of Medicare recipients who take advantage of these services has only increased slightly. The availability of these benefits was expanded by the health law.

22 Jun 2011

New book on French and British approaches to humanitarian action

From earthquakes and tsunamis to war and genocide which wreak devastation on millions of people around the world, human suffering is never far from the headlines. But how do policymakers, charities and medics decide how best to reach those in need and what influences their tactics and the style of humanitarian aid?

22 Jun 2011

Supreme Court accepts case that could shape field of personalized medicine

The U.S. Supreme Court, accepting a case that will shape the burgeoning business of personalized medicine, agreed to consider what types of diagnostic medical tests can be patented. The justices agreed today to hear an appeal from the Mayo Clinic, which is challenging a lower court decision backing two patents for determining the dosage of medicines to treat stomach diseases.

22 Jun 2011

Bureau of Labor Statistics: U.S. will need to add 580,000 nurses by 2018

The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts the U.S. will need to add 580,000 nurses to the workforce by 2018. Moreover, these nurses will need higher skill levels than current nurses possess.

22 Jun 2011

Genetic mutation linked to peripartum cardiomyopathy during pregnancy

Researchers at the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute in Salt Lake City have identified the first genetic mutation ever associated with a mysterious and potentially devastating form of heart disease that affects women in the final weeks of pregnancy or the first few months after delivery.

22 Jun 2011

Marriage boosts survival odds for both men and women with colon cancer

A new study shows that being married boosts survival odds for both men and women with colon cancer at every stage of the disease.

22 Jun 2011

Reduced levels of VAPB protein may play central role in causing ALS

An international team of scientists led by researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have used induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) derived from patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) to reveal for the first time how reduced levels of a specific protein may play a central role in causing at least one inherited form of the disease.

22 Jun 2011

UAB Cancer Care Network brings specialized care close to patient's homes

Often people diagnosed with cancer who don't live near a major academic medical center have limited choices for specialized cancer care close to home. The University of Alabama at Birmingham Comprehensive Cancer Center and UAB Medicine developed the UAB Cancer Care Network to bring leading-edge care to these communities, giving patients an opportunity to stay close to home while giving doctors and nurses access to leading cancer research.

22 Jun 2011

Novel method of disguising nanoparticles as red blood cells to fight cancer

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego have developed a novel method of disguising nanoparticles as red blood cells, which will enable them to evade the body's immune system and deliver cancer-fighting drugs straight to a tumor. Their research was published this week in the online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

22 Jun 2011

Prostate cancer risk and prevention

According to U.S. researchers smoking increases the risk that men who develop prostate cancer will die from their disease. The longer the men smoked, the greater the risk, said Stacey Kenfield of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, whose study appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Prostate cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer death in men behind lung cancer

22 Jun 2011

Positive results from LCP-Tacro Phase III trial in stable kidney transplant recipients

LifeCycle Pharma A/S today reported that the company's lead product candidate, LCP-Tacro, successfully demonstrated non-inferiority compared to tacrolimus in its Phase III trial, Study 3001.

21 Jun 2011

African-Americans more likely to die from thyroid cancer than whites

African-Americans have fewer incidences of thyroid cancer but have a more advanced form of the disease once they receive a diagnosis — and are more likely to die from it, according to a new study.

21 Jun 2011

Kid’s allergies estimated to be more prevalent than thought

It is found that food allergies in children might be more common than some previous research has suggested. A new study estimates that about 8% of children, about 6 million in the U.S., have a food allergy. Not only is this estimate higher than some previous research has reported, the study found that reported allergic reactions are often severe and that many kids have more than one allergy.

21 Jun 2011

Government and private sector must work together on HIV vaccine

The success of antiretroviral therapy for HIV/AIDS "has fooled us into believing HIV is under control. It is not. … The fact remains that no sexually acquired infection has ever been controlled in democratic societies except by vaccines," Lawrence Corey, president and director of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and principal investigator of the international HIV Vaccine Trials Network, writes in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece.

21 Jun 2011

Study: 1 in 13 children suffer from food allergies

A national study of food allergies in the US, the largest of its kind, finds that more children have food allergies than previously reported.

21 Jun 2011

CDT biomarker poor, inaccurate method for detecting unhealthy drinking in HIV-infected adults

Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) have found that among HIV-infected adults with alcohol problems, measuring their carbohydrate-deficient transferrin (CDT) biomarker was a poor and inaccurate method for detecting unhealthy drinking.

21 Jun 2011

Study: Portable pools may be more dangerous for children than many parents realize

As the weather gets warmer, many parents will turn to pools to keep their family cool. Due to their low cost and ease of use, portable pools - which include wading pools, inflatable pools and soft-sided, self-rising pools - have become an increasingly popular alternative to expensive in-ground pools or water park visits.

21 Jun 2011