Medical News

RSS

Inadequate sleep can increase risk of obesity

Can lack of sleep make you fat? A new paper which reviews the evidence from sleep restriction studies reveals that inadequate sleep is linked to obesity. The research, published in a special issue of the The American Journal of Human Biology, explores how lack of sleep can impact appetite regulation, impair glucose metabolism and increase blood pressure.

17 Apr 2012

ImmunoGen commences IMGN529 Phase I trial in NHL

ImmunoGen, Inc., a biotechnology company that develops anticancer therapeutics using its antibody expertise and Targeted Antibody Payload (TAP) technology, today announced the start of clinical testing with its IMGN529 product candidate.

17 Apr 2012

Responses to U.S. nomination of Jim Kim for World Bank presidency

The following is a summary of several recent pieces published in response to the U.S. nomination of Jim Yong Kim to be the next president of the World Bank.

17 Apr 2012

Coronary stents do not increase risk of heart attack, death in people with metal allergies

Cardiologists have long grappled with how to best manage patients with coronary artery disease who report skin hypersensitivity to nickel or other metal components found in stents -- small tubes placed in narrowed or weakened arteries to help improve blood flow to the heart. But new Mayo Clinic research, published in the April 16, 2012, issue of Circulation: Cardiovascular Interventions, may help allay these concerns.

17 Apr 2012

New statistics: One-third of adults aged 45-63 are unmarried

Startling new statistics from Bowling Green State University's National Center for Family and Marriage Research (NCFMR) paint a bleak future for the largest generation in history, the baby boomers, as they cross into old age.

17 Apr 2012

Entitlement programs at center of Capitol Hill's gathering budget storm

The likely and emerging partisan clash in Congress could force GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney to take difficult policy positions in the fall -- just as the campaign is coming to an end. Meanwhile, this week on Capitol Hill, lawmakers will wrestle with a number of health care issues.

17 Apr 2012

RUMC’s new hospital building earns LEED Gold certification

One of Chicago's most distinctive new buildings has now been certified as among the greenest. Rush University Medical Center's innovative new hospital building, the Tower, which opened in January, has earned LEED Gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council and verified by the Green Building Certification Institute. It is the largest new construction healthcare project in the world to be LEED Gold certified.

17 Apr 2012

Politics in play as April marks the end of the Texas Women's Health Program

Texas' fight with the federal government over funding for its Texas Women's Health Program, which will end this month and leave 130,000 low-income women paying for their own birth control or going without it, must include a discussion of politics -- even for the judges considering the case, The Associated Press reports.

17 Apr 2012

More than 19,300 people participated at AAD’s 70th Annual Meeting

The American Academy of Dermatology's 70th Annual Meeting, recently held in San Diego from March 16-20, had a record attendance of more than 19,300 people from more than 102 countries.

17 Apr 2012

Medicaid news: Neb.'s prenatal care flap; Texas' 'ticking time bomb'

Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman vetoed a proposal to restore Medicaid-funded prenatal care for illegal immigrants on Friday, but the initiative could still survive if the state legislature rejects his move next week. Nebraska state senators voted 31-15 on Wednesday to restore the program, which was eliminated two years ago after providing prenatal care for decades.

17 Apr 2012

Individuals with low-quality genes may produce offspring with even more inferior chromosomes

Evolutionary biologists at the University of Toronto have found that individuals with low-quality genes may produce offspring with even more inferior chromosomes, possibly leading to the extinction of certain species over generations.

17 Apr 2012

'Starvation Protocol' guidelines would help India's hunger problem

In the final article of a six-part series titled "Starving in India" in the Wall Street Journal's "India Real Time" blog, series author Ashwin Parulkar of the Centre for Equity Studies writes that the research conducted for the articles shows "that India needs a new legal framework for dealing with chronic hunger and starvation."

17 Apr 2012

MU wins Jeanne M. Priester Award for mind-body interaction program

The belief that the mind plays an integral role in physical health dates back to the earliest days of medicine. The Greek physician Hippocrates, often referred to as the founder of medicine, wrote "natural forces within us are the true healers of disease." A University of Missouri team has tapped into the science and practice of this mind-body interaction to develop an innovative and award-winning program.

17 Apr 2012

WHO, U.N.-Water report examines access to safe drinking water, improved sanitation

"Nearly 780 million people are deprived of safe drinking water -- and 2.5 billion lack access to improved sanitation -- all because governments aren't spending scarce resources wisely, according to a joint report of the World Health Organization and U.N.-Water," VOA News reports.

17 Apr 2012

New study describes therapeutic approach to halt cancer progression

A new study describes a therapeutic approach to halting cancer progression by exploiting a previously unrecognized "addiction" of leukemia cells to specific signaling molecules. The research, published by Cell Press online on April 16th in the journal Cancer Cell, identifies non-classical oncogenes critical for tumor development and survival, and describes a potentially less toxic strategy that selectively targets these molecules.

17 Apr 2012

WHO report discusses financing, coordinating R&D for health needs in developing countries

This post on IntraHealth International's "Global Health Blog" discusses a new report from the WHO, titled "Research and Development to Meet Health Needs in Developing Countries: Strengthening Global Financing and Coordination," which "concludes that 'all countries should commit to spend at least 0.01 percent of GDP on government-funded R&D [research and development] devoted to meeting the health needs of developing countries.'"

17 Apr 2012

ACS, CDC partner to improve surgical patient safety

A joint, strategic partnership to improve surgical patient safety at the national level was announced today by leaders of the American College of Surgeons (ACS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

17 Apr 2012

Genetically modified mosquitoes offer hope of malaria eradication amid growing drug resistance

"In recent weeks, the emergence on the Thai-Myanmar border of malaria strains resistant to artemisinin, a plant-derived drug, have led to pessimistic headlines and reminders of the setback caused by resistance to the drug chloroquine, which began in the 1950s," columnist and author Matt Ridley writes in the Wall Street Journal's "Mind & Matter," noting, "April 25 is World Malaria Day, designed to draw attention to the planet's biggest infectious killer."

17 Apr 2012

PDAD patients have much denser accumulations of striatal plaques in the brain

Dementia is a frequent complication of Parkinson's disease (PD), but it is clinically impossible to distinguish PD dementia (PDD), which develops from the progression of the Lewy body pathology that underlies PD, from PD with coexistent Alzheimer's disease.

17 Apr 2012

Health news from the campaign trail

News outlets offer a fact check on how some health issues are being characterized in the presidential contest, as well as a report about an attack on the health law in what The Associated Press terms "bizarre videos."

17 Apr 2012