Medical News

RSS

History of TB policy shows need for care, investment equity in developed, developing countries

In a 200th anniversary article for the New England Journal of Medicine, Salmaan Keshavjee of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Paul Farmer of Partners in Health "seek to elucidate the reasons for the anemic response to drug-resistant tuberculosis [TB] by examining the recent history of tuberculosis policy," they write.

7 Sep 2012

Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation to hold Transform 2012 symposium

The Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation is holding Transform 2012, its fifth symposium on redesigning how health care is experienced and delivered.

7 Sep 2012

University of Rhode Island engineers develop new blood-testing technology

A team of engineers and students at the University of Rhode Island has developed an advanced blood-testing technology that incorporates a smartphone application, a hand-held biosensor and a credit card-sized cartridge to provide rapid, accurate biological analysis and wireless communication of test results.

7 Sep 2012

OncoMed announces data from demcizumab preclinical study on pancreatic cancer

OncoMed Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a clinical-stage company developing novel therapeutics that target cancer, today announced the online publication in Clinical Cancer Research of preclinical data demonstrating the potent anti-cancer activity of anti-DLL4 (demcizumab) in patient-derived pancreatic tumor models.

7 Sep 2012

Q Therapeutics licenses Neuralstem's Spinal Cord Delivery Platform and Floating Cannula

Neuralstem, Inc. announced that it has granted the first licenses for use of its Spinal Cord Delivery Platform and Floating Cannula, for delivering therapeutic agents to the spinal cord, to Salt Lake City-based Q Therapeutics.

7 Sep 2012

DNA synthesis methods: an interview with Clemens Richert

Automated DNA synthesis has been around for almost three decades. The key difference between the established methodology for making oligodeoxynucleotides (short stretches of single-stranded DNA) and our method is the template strand.

7 Sep 2012

RSV virus selectively kills cancer cells

RSV, a virus that causes respiratory infections in infants and young children, selectively kills cancer cells while leaving healthy cells alone, researchers from the School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio said.

7 Sep 2012

'Toolkit' for African cancer advocates to be launched on September 15

Cancer kills more than seven million people a year throughout the world. This is more than HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined, and African countries, which carry a large part of the burden, are the least able of all developing countries to cope with the challenges it presents, says a consortium of international cancer organizations.

7 Sep 2012

Toddlers with cancer more likely to develop trauma disorders than babies

The diagnosis and treatment of cancer does not only trigger posttraumatic stress disorder in adults and older children; infants and toddlers with cancer also suffer from trauma disorders, as researchers from the University of Zurich and the University Children's Hospital Zurich show for the first time. This discovery should be taken into account while treating children to prevent them from developing long-term psychological disorders.

7 Sep 2012

The Institute of Cancer Research, CRT and Astex to discover and develop novel drug candidates

Astex Pharmaceuticals, Inc, a pharmaceutical company dedicated to the discovery and development of novel small molecule therapeutics, Cancer Research Technology Limited (CRT) and The Institute of Cancer Research, London, have initiated a collaboration to discover and develop drug candidates targeting an undisclosed epigenetic target in a blood cancer with high unmet medical need.

7 Sep 2012

Boston researchers develop neonatal mouse model of sepsis

Sepsis, or bacterial infection of the bloodstream, is a grave, hard-to-diagnose threat in premature newborns in the NICU. Even when it's detected and treated with antibiotics, its inflammatory effects can harm fragile babies' development. Now, researchers at Boston Children's Hospital have modeled the effects of sepsis on the unique newborn immune system, using mice.

7 Sep 2012

Lack of Atoh1 master gene can lead to sudden infant death syndrome

When mice are born lacking the master gene Atoh1, none breathe well and all die in the newborn period. Why and how this occurs could provide new answers about sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), but the solution has remained elusive until now.

7 Sep 2012

Ugandan parliamentarians threaten to hold up national budget unless more funding committed to health care

In Uganda, where "there are fewer than two health workers for every 1,000 people -- a level the World Health Organization defines as a severe shortage" -- the nation's parliamentary "social services committee, which has initial oversight of the country's health budget, pushed a resolution through parliament last week threatening to hold up approval of the entire budget unless funding to recruit and retain new health workers is increased," VOA News reports.

7 Sep 2012

Study reaffirms importance and efficacy of mammography

The study, published today in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention is the largest of its kind in Australia and one of the largest in the world. It followed about 4,000 women in a study of the BreastScreen program in Western Australia.

7 Sep 2012

Hebrew University researcher develops anti-inflammatory and anti-allergic family of drugs

A synthetic, anti-inflammatory and anti-allergic family of drugs to combat a variety of illnesses while avoiding detrimental side effects has been developed by a Hebrew University of Jerusalem researcher.

7 Sep 2012

Indiana University releases Kinsey Reporter

Indiana University has released Kinsey Reporter, a global mobile survey platform for collecting and reporting anonymous data about sexual and other intimate behaviors. The pilot project allows citizen observers around the world to use free applications now available for Apple and Android mobile platforms to not only report on sexual behavior and experiences, but also to share, explore and visualize the accumulated data.

7 Sep 2012

Videogames can be used for educational and treatment purposes for young people with ASD

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 1 in 88 children in the U.S. has autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a broad group of neurodevelopmental disorders.

7 Sep 2012

GENCODE Consortium uncovers staggering array of genes in human genome

The GENCODE Consortium expects the human genome has twice as many genes than previously thought, many of which might have a role in cellular control and could be important in human disease. This remarkable discovery comes from the GENCODE Consortium, which has done a painstaking and skilled review of available data on gene activity.

7 Sep 2012

Midwest pollen count hits new high

The Midwest's pollen count today hit a new high for the season. "Mold, weeds and ragweed are all high and also grass is high, which may surprise many people. The grass is corn grass and the high levels are caused by the seasonal harvesting of the corn as corn is a member of the botanical grass family," said Dr. Joseph Leija, who performs the Gottlieb Allergy Count, the official allergy count for the Midwest.

7 Sep 2012

Grandparents likely to provide different types of care

Grandparents, an increasingly important source of child care in the United States, vary greatly in the kind of care they provide, depending on their age, resources, and the needs of their children, research at the University of Chicago shows.

7 Sep 2012