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Scientists to speak on cultural issues pertinent to rehabilitation research

Two scientists will represent Kessler Foundation at the 2012 Race, Ethnicity and Disabilities State of the Science Conference on March 1-2 at the Crystal Gateway Marriott in Arlington, Virginia.

29 Feb 2012

BrainAble project to offer benefits for people with motor disabilities

In the 2009 film Surrogates, humans live vicariously through robots while safely remaining in their own homes. That sci-fi future is still a long way off, but recent advances in technology, supported by EU funding, are bringing this technology a step closer to reality in order to give disabled people more autonomy and independence than ever before.

28 Feb 2012

Baxter commences CD34+ stem cell phase III trial in CMI

Baxter International Inc. announced today that it has initiated a phase III pivotal clinical trial to evaluate the efficacy and safety of adult autologous (an individual's own) CD34+ stem cells to increase exercise capacity in patients with chronic myocardial ischemia (CMI).

From Baxter International Inc. 28 Feb 2012

Viewpoints: Disabled 'disdain' a poisonous meme? Two sides on physician payments issue, letting Mich.'s community colleges train nurses

Disability advocates across the political spectrum strongly supported the 2010 health care reform. They had obvious reasons to do so. The new law provides protections for people with preexisting conditions, regulations to make sure insurers properly cover care for chronic illnesses and expanded coverage for young adults and low-income families. But more is at stake here than factual inaccuracies.

28 Feb 2012

Largest study to date to observe dynamic social scenes in children with ASD

In a study published in the March 2012 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Katherine Rice and colleagues, from the Marcus Autism Center, Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, and Emory University School of Medicine, used eye-tracking technology to measure the relationship between cognitive and social disability in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and the ability of children with ASD to pay attention to social interactions.

28 Feb 2012

ATI commences European trial of neurostimulation system for migraine

Autonomic Technologies, Inc. (ATI), the developer of a novel miniaturized implantable stimulator for severe headaches, today announced initiation of a study in Europe to evaluate the safety and efficacy of the company's investigational neurostimulation system for the treatment of high frequency, high disability migraine.

27 Feb 2012

News briefs from featured presentations at Cardiology 2012

Pediatric cardiology researchers and clinicians from almost 50 centers from across the U.S. and around the world are gathering at the Cardiology 2012 Conference sponsored by The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia on Feb. 22-26 in Orlando, Fla.

27 Feb 2012

New insurance coverage option may have negative effects on veteran's health care

While the Affordable Care Act will expand health insurance coverage for low-income persons through Medicaid and state health-insurance exchanges, including much-needed care for 1.8 million uninsured veterans in the U.S., the new insurance coverage option also may have a number of unintended negative effects on health care for veterans, said Kenneth W. Kizer, director of the Institute for Population Health Improvement at UC Davis Health System.

24 Feb 2012

State legislatures contemplate controlling costs, health IT, prescribing authority

The proposed premium hikes for hundreds of thousands of California consumers with individual coverage would outpace the cost of overall medical care, which has risen just 3.6 percent in the last year.

24 Feb 2012

Blog examines gap between mental health disease burden, attention given to problem

This post in KPLU's "Humanosphere" blog examines the "gap between the disease burden of mental illness and the amount of funding and attention devoted to solving the problem," referencing a post published Friday in the Global Health Interest Forum's "Blog of Scientists for Global Health," written by Paul Southworth, a visiting scholar on malaria and vaccine science at the NIH.

24 Feb 2012

UA researchers identify the likely culprit of epilepsy

Only 10 years ago, deciphering the genetic information from one individual in a matter of weeks to find a certain disease-causing genetic mutation would have been written off as science fiction. It was the time of the Human Genome Project, and it had taken armies of sequencing robots working around the clock for almost a decade to unravel the complete sequence of the human genetic code - referred to as the genome - by churning out the DNA alphabet letter by letter.

24 Feb 2012

Children of immigrant parents more likely to develop autism with intellectual disability

A major register study from the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet shows that children born to certain groups of immigrants in Sweden had an increased risk of developing autism with intellectual disability. The study includes all children in Stockholm County from 2001 to 2007, and brings the question of the heredity of autism to the fore.

23 Feb 2012

FSU receives NIH grant to better understand and diagnose dyslexia

If you can read this sentence with ease, consider yourself fortunate: Millions of Americans with dyslexia cannot. In the hope of improving the lives of those struggling readers, a team of experts at Florida State University is working to better understand and diagnose dyslexia and other learning disabilities with a new, $8.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.

23 Feb 2012

NHS approves new rheumatoid arthritis drug RoActemra

RoActemra, which is the first innovation in the field for ten years, is being recommended for patients who have failed on standard treatments. It is the first time RoActemra has been approved for NHS patients in England and Wales with moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis who are at an early stage in the disease. The drug has been available for early use in Scotland for two years.

23 Feb 2012

Viewpoints: Real 'doc fix,' Saint Santorum and why Supreme Court TV is 'a bad idea'

In last week's flurry of budget deals, Congress patched together yet another temporary fix for a flawed formula used to calculate the fees paid to doctors by Medicare. It will hold payments flat for the next 10 months instead of cutting them by 27 percent as the formula required, and the $18 billion to pay for it will be taken from other health care programs. But the fix only lasts until the end of the year. On Jan. 1, doctors will face another big cut unless Congress again steps in.

23 Feb 2012

India still faces challenges in efforts to eradicate polio

The PBS NewsHour examines polio eradication efforts in India, which has gone an entire year without reporting a polio case. "For India, the challenge is to remain vigilant and polio free for two more years to officially fall off the list of endemic countries," according to the news service.

22 Feb 2012

First prospective study of ethnic differences in symptoms of autism in toddlers

The first prospective study of ethnic differences in the symptoms of autism in toddlers shows that children from a minority background have more delayed language, communication and gross motor skills than Caucasian children with the disorder. Researchers at the Kennedy Krieger Institute concluded that subtle developmental delays may be going unaddressed in minority toddlers until more severe symptoms develop.

22 Feb 2012

Obama campaign pushes back against Santorum attack on prenatal testing

Campaigning in Ohio on Saturday, Rick Santorum displayed his culture-warrior side in full force ... He lambasted the president's health care law requiring insurance policies to include free prenatal testing, "because free prenatal testing ends up in more abortions and therefore less care that has to be done because we cull the ranks of the disabled in our society".

21 Feb 2012

Mothers who suffer migraine headaches more likely to have babies with colic

A study of mothers and their young babies by neurologists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) has shown that mothers who suffer migraine headaches are more than twice as likely to have babies with colic than mothers without a history of migraines.

21 Feb 2012

Slow walk and poor grip may predict dementia and stroke

According to U.S. researchers the speed of a person’s walk may predict the likelihood of developing dementia later in life. They also told a conference that grip strength in middle-age was linked to the chance of a stroke. The scientists said more studies were needed to understand the connection.

18 Feb 2012