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Foreign doctors in Britain in danger of being made scapegoats

The British Medical Association (BMA) says that foreign doctors already working in the UK must not be made scapegoats because of government plans to reduce medical immigration.

28 Oct 2007

Scientists discover new causes for neurodegeneration

Diseases that cause neurons to break-down, such as Alzheimer's, Multiple Sclerosis and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (Mad Cow Disease), continue to be elusive to scientists and resistant to treatments.

25 Oct 2007

Many medical disorders may be languishing in mountains of discarded gene data

Previously hidden obesity-related genes have been uncovered from old experiments by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital.

24 Oct 2007

What constitutes healthy eating? focus of Harvard Heart Letter

In its first-ever single-topic special issue, the Harvard Heart Letter focuses on nutrition.

24 Oct 2007

Combo therapy flavopiridol and cisplatin shows promise for recurrent ovarian cancer resistant to platinum therapy

Mayo Clinic has reported promising interim results from a Phase II trial of a new combination therapy for patients with recurrent ovarian cancer that is resistant to platinum therapy.

24 Oct 2007

Pioneering study into older people’s expectations of dying

Academics at the University of Hertfordshire are carrying out one of the first studies of its kind into the experiences of older people in care homes as they draw close to death.

24 Oct 2007

Harvard health looks at schizophrenia and heart disease

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States, and it's about twice as deadly for people with schizophrenia.

24 Oct 2007

Can a lack of sleep drive you crazy?

Scientists in the U.S. have linked a lack of sleep to mental illness; they say brain scans can show how the brain gets tired and over-emotional when someone is deprived of sleep.

24 Oct 2007

Inflammatory breast cancer

Everyone knows to be concerned about a lump as a sign of breast cancer. But there's another type of breast cancer – much more rare and much more lethal – that has as its primary sign redness, sometimes without any lump.

23 Oct 2007

Breakfast cereal helps prevent heart failure

New research suggests that men who eat more whole grain breakfast cereals reduce their risk of heart failure.

23 Oct 2007

Study explains why physical activity is beneficial in preventing heart attack and stroke

It is well known that physical activity can improve cardiovascular health. But it's the impact exercise has on specific known risk factors that accounts for about 60 percent of that improvement, researchers reported in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

22 Oct 2007

Sleep-deprivation causes brain to overreact to negative experiences

Without sleep, the emotional centers of the brain dramatically overreact to negative experiences, reveals a new brain imaging study in the October 23rd issue of Current Biology, a publication of Cell Press.

22 Oct 2007

The truth about your immune system

Vitamins, minerals, and herbal supplements can help complement a healthy diet and lifestyle, but consumers shouldn't count on them to boost their immune response, says the new edition of a Harvard Medical School report, The Truth About Your Immune System: What you need to know.

22 Oct 2007

Errors by hospital residents often down to poor teamwork, communication

Physicians-in-training are highly vulnerable to making medical errors that stem from teamwork breakdowns, especially a lack of supervision by experienced staff, according to a new study funded by HHS' Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

22 Oct 2007

Whole grain breakfast cereals may reduce risk of heart failure in men

Men who consume a higher amount of whole grain breakfast cereals may have a reduced risk of heart failure, according to a report in the October 22 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

22 Oct 2007

Exposure to sunlight may decrease risk of advanced breast cancer

A research team from the Northern California Cancer Center, the University of Southern California, and Wake Forest University School of Medicine has found that increased exposure to sunlight - which increases levels of vitamin D in the body - may decrease the risk of advanced breast cancer.

19 Oct 2007

New pathway identified by which cancer cells grow and survive

Cancerous tumors are wildly unfavorable environments. Struggling for oxygen and nutrients while being bombarded by the body's defense systems, tumor cells in fact require sophisticated adaptations to survive and grow.

19 Oct 2007

Immune cells found to promote formation of new blood vessels - potential for endometriosis treatments

A discovery in mice of immune cells that promote the formation of new blood vessels could lead to new treatments for endometriosis, a painful condition associated with infertility that affects up to 15 percent of women of reproductive age.

19 Oct 2007

Newly qualified doctors feel well prepared by medical school

Compared to 2000, significantly more newly qualified doctors believe that their medical school training prepares them well for their first clinical posts, according to research published in the online open access journal, BMC Medical Education.

18 Oct 2007

New model helps explain rules governing the transmission of microbes

Many of the most successful microbes are those that inhabit but do not kill their host. Cheaters lose. Tuberculosis settles into the lungs. Helicobacter pylori, the microbe causing ulcers, burrows into the stomach where it thrives on acids. And Salmonella typhi takes up residence in the gallbladder. All of these organisms can persist in our bodies for decades. What explains their success?

18 Oct 2007