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Cost issues: Expensive patients; payoff from delaying aging; approving new treatments

Cost and quality issues in the news include research about the costliest U.S. patients, the potential that delaying aging instead of treating disease could have on extending life, and examining how the U.S. compares to other countries on approving new medical treatments.

9 Oct 2013

First Edition: October 8, 2013

Today's headlines include the latest on how the health law's online insurance marketplaces are operating and what caused the initial systemic problems.

8 Oct 2013

Trypophobia: The most common phobia may occur as result of specific visual feature

Does the sight of soap bubbles, aerated chocolate or a lotus flower seed pod bring you out in a cold sweat and make you feel panicky? If so, you could be a sufferer of one of the most common phobias you have never heard of - trypophobia, or the fear of holes.

3 Sep 2013

New needle-free treatment may dramatically reduce global snakebite fatalities

A team of researchers led by Dr. Matt Lewin of the California Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with the Department of Anesthesia at the University of California, San Francisco, has pioneered a novel approach to treating venomous snakebites-administering antiparalytics topically via a nasal spray.

31 Jul 2013

Viewpoints: When a doctor should keep quiet; 2 views of hospital pricing; Stem cell 'snake oil'

In medical school, we were taught not to withhold information from our patients or to be "paternal" in making decisions for them. We internalized the idea that fully informed patients are better equipped to make treatment decisions.

17 May 2013

New nanosponge safely removes dangerous toxins from bloodstream

Engineers at the University of California, San Diego have invented a "nanosponge" capable of safely removing a broad class of dangerous toxins from the bloodstream - including toxins produced by MRSA, E. coli, poisonous snakes and bees.

15 Apr 2013

Engineers develop prototype telerobotic platform for bladder cancer treatment

Although bladder cancer is the sixth most common form of cancer in the U.S. and the most expensive to treat, the basic method that doctors use to treat it hasn't changed much in more than 70 years.

3 Apr 2013

Dream images could provide insights into people's mental health problems

Dream images could provide insights into people's mental health problems and may help with their treatment, according to a psychology researcher from the University of Adelaide.

9 Nov 2012

Meat from wild animals is increasingly important in central Africa

Animals like antelope, frogs and rodents may be tricky to catch, but they provide protein in places where traditional livestock are scarce. According to the authors of a new paper in Animal Frontiers, meat from wild animals is increasingly important in central Africa.

25 Oct 2012

Emotion and perception not fully dissociable in the mind

That snake heading towards you may be further away than it appears. Fear can skew our perception of approaching objects, causing us to underestimate the distance of a threatening one, finds a study published in Current Biology.

22 Oct 2012

New defibrillator offers advantages for young patients with congenital heart problems

A new ground-breaking technology was recently used at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute (UOHI) where two cardiologists, Dr. David Birnie and Dr. Pablo Nery, implanted a new innovative leadless defibrillator, the subcutaneous implantable cardioverter defibrillator (S-ICD), to a 18 year-old patient. Under Health Canada's special access program, this was only the third time this new type of ICD had been implanted in Canada.

4 Oct 2012

Researchers investigate African plants effective in treating snakebite

A PhD student at the University of Copenhagen has drawn on nature's own pharmacy to help improve the treatment of snakebites in Africa.

17 Sep 2012

Nicotine addiction: An interview with Dr. Crystal

Cigarette smoking and nicotine addiction are widespread problems throughout the world. Many people continue to smoke despite high taxes and the available public information on the dangers of smoking.

3 Jul 2012

Viewpoints: Looking beyond the court's eventual decision

Speculation about the likely death of "Obamacare" has raged ever since the Supreme Court heard three intense days of legal arguments in March. The pundits have crowed about how the individual mandate is the Achilles' heel of President Obama's healthcare law (Theda Skocpol and Lawrence R. Jacobs, 6/20).

22 Jun 2012

Sleep enhances emotionally positive memories

Sleep plays a powerful role in preserving our memories. But while recent research shows that wakefulness may cloud memories of negative or traumatic events, a new study has found that wakefulness also degrades positive memories. Sleep, it seems, protects positive memories just as it does negative ones, and that has important implications for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder.

2 Apr 2012

Study shows how brain function differs in children with math anxiety

Scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine have shown for the first time how brain function differs in people who have math anxiety from those who don't.

22 Mar 2012

Cenderitide may preserve cardiac function after heart attack

The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has awarded a $2.5 million grant to Mayo Clinic's Cardiorenal Research Laboratory to conduct a highly innovative research project, "Cardiovascular Peptides and Myocardial Infarction."

6 Mar 2012

Chemists create new molecule that can tangle inside the DNA for up to 16 days

Chemists at The University of Texas at Austin have created a molecule that's so good at tangling itself inside the double helix of a DNA sequence that it can stay there for up to 16 days before the DNA liberates itself, much longer than any other molecule reported.

15 Feb 2012

First study to ever quantify effects of estrogen as a stimulant of pheromones

A new study has shown that boosting the estrogen levels of male garter snakes causes them to secrete the same pheromones that females use to attract suitors, and turned the males into just about the sexiest snake in the neighborhood - attracting dozens of other males eager to mate.

13 Feb 2012

Chimps, like humans, inform ignorant group members of danger

It's a basic rule of effective communication: Consider your audience. According to a new report published online on December 29 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, that rule of thumb is not lost on wild chimpanzees. Chimps are more likely to make an alarm call about the presence of a snake when others in the group are unaware of the apparent danger they face, the new evidence shows.

30 Dec 2011