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Beginning readers who focus on letter-sound relationships, or phonics, instead of trying to learn whole words, increase activity in the area of their brains best wired for reading, according to new Stanford research investigating how the brain responds to different types of reading instruction.
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A patient tormented by suicidal thoughts gives his psychiatrist a few strands of his hair. She derives stem cells from them to grow budding brain tissue harboring the secrets of his unique illness in a petri dish. She uses the information to genetically engineer a personalized treatment to correct his brain circuit functioning. Just Sci-fi? Yes, but...
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In a report of a proof-of-principle study of patients with colon and other cancers for whom standard therapies failed, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center say that mistakes in so-called mismatch repair genes, first identified by Johns Hopkins and other scientists two decades ago, may accurately predict who will respond to certain immunotherapy drugs known as PD-1 inhibitors. Such drugs aim to disarm systems developed by cancer cells to evade detection and destruction by immune system cells.
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The study, published May 29 in the open access Nature Publishing Group journal Scientific Reports, reveals a direct link between the main culprit of Alzheimer's disease and memory loss.
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Smoking is not only bad for your health; it also puts 400,000 children in poverty. Smoking places a financial burden on low income families, suggesting that parents are likely to forgo basic household and food necessities in order to fund their addiction, according to UK research published in the open access journal BMC Public Health.
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Spitting up and occasional constipation are unfortunate – yet normal – facts of life for most infants.
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Although 90 percent of women with early-stage breast cancer said they were aware they took a genomic test that identified their level of risk for a recurrence of the disease, one in five didn't know the results of that analysis, according to a new fact sheet by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.
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A University of Queensland health expert has labelled the practice of inspecting children's lunchboxes at school as both "perverse" and unlikely to improve children's health.
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Simple measures of kidney function and damage may be just as good at predicting who is at risk for heart failure and death from heart attack and stroke as traditional tests of cholesterol levels and blood pressure, new Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health-led research suggests.
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Saline solution is a staple of every hospital. No matter the ailment, doctors have known for more than a century that saline is key to keeping patients hydrated and maintaining their blood pressure levels. But the solution could do more, according to Steven Poelzing, an associate professor at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute.
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Researchers from LLNL and three other institutions have assisted a Bay Area biomedical company in advancing its Ebola virus detection test for use.
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Tuberculosis (TB) represents a growing worldwide healthcare burden. Second only to HIV in terms of its global impact, TB infected 8.5 million people and caused 1.4 million deaths in 2011. If these statistics are to improve, early detection is critical.
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Normal ageing affects our ability to carry out complex cognitive tasks. But exactly how our brain functions change during this process is largely unknown. Now, researchers in Malaysia have demonstrated that ageing changes the activity patterns in specific brain regions involved in memory and cognition.
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Researchers have found a molecule that plays a key link between dietary restriction and longevity in mammals. This discovery may lead to the development of new therapies to inhibit age-related diseases.
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Scoliosis is a medical condition that is defined as a three-dimensional spine deformity with curvature of more than ten degrees in the coronal plane (a vertical plane that divides the body into its front and back halves). For young teenagers, the condition – known as adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS) – can progress to a large curvature that is six times greater than that in people above 16 years of age, as their bodies are still in the process of developing and hence are more vulnerable to curvature.
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An Edmonton health care team has cemented its status as global leaders in a groundbreaking diabetes treatment.
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Researchers from the University of Liverpool have found that approximately half of patients who have an eye removed because of a form of eye cancer experience `phantom eye syndrome.'
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A serious medical problem that oncologists face is multi-drug resistant cancers. In order to address this issue, Guillermo Aquino-Jarquín from the Children's Hospital Federico Gómez of Mexico, seeks expression profiles and characterization of small molecules that regulate proteins involved in multi-drug resistance, thus reversing their negative effects.
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(HealthDay)—Incremental increases in body mass index (BMI) are associated with excess risk of incident, postoperative, and post-ablation atrial fibrillation (AF), according to a review published online May 27 in JACC: Clinical Electrophysiology.
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(HealthDay)—Radiation therapy for prostate cancer may be less effective for overweight and obese men than for men of normal weight, a new study suggests.
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Restricting access to firearms for people who misuse alcohol could prevent firearm violence, but policies that more clearly define alcohol misuse should be developed to facilitate enforcement, according to a review of existing research and public policies by the UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Program.
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While it probably won't make the idea of attending school more appealing social scientists say different infrastructure and behaviour change programs are key to encouraging young people to take a more active route to school.
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A recent discovery by drug researchers whereby coupling specific cell membrane receptors has altered kidney cell function has triggered a re-think of how to treat chronic kidney disease (CKD) more effectively.
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Though many think e-cigarettes are helping to reduce the number of smokers in the US, research is showing the opposite is true when it comes to teens. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently released data showing that in just one year the number of middle and high school students using e-cigarettes has tripled.
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A growing number of diabetics are being diagnosed with a debilitating foot deformity called Charcot foot.
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Americans who spend time in prison are nearly twice as likely to suffer post-traumatic stress disorder than those who don't, according to a new study by UWM psychology professor Shawn Cahill and his graduate students.
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The antibiotic meropenem was approved by the U. S. Food and Drug Administration for treating abdominal infections in children less than 3 months of age. The approval came after a study by a National Institutes of Health research network evaluated the drug in treating children in this age group.
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A new report demonstrates that clinical and genetic factors affecting dose requirements for warfarin vary by race. The study, published online today in Blood, the Journal of the American Society of Hematology (ASH), proposes race-specific equations to help clinicians better calculate warfarin dosage.
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The 54-question Trauma Symptoms Checklist for Children (TSCC) has been used for decades to test how trauma affects youth in hopes of developing the best treatment and support possible. But interpreting the results can be labor intensive and difficult because the work is done manually and involves a complex matrix from which to draw conclusions.
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While the overall rate of colorectal cancer (CRC) is declining, CRC specifically among young patients is increasing. Previous studies have shown that CRC in patients younger than 50 years old tends to be more aggressive than CRC in older patients. A University of Colorado Cancer Center study published in conjunction with the American Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting 2015 offers early evidence of genetic differences between CRC in young and old patients, possibly pointing toward different treatments and strategies in combating the young form of the disease.
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People with dementia and other forms of cognitive impairment (CI) have altered responses to pain, with many conditions associated with increased pain sensitivity, concludes a research review in Pain, the official publication of the International Association for the Study of Pain.
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As in adults, migraine surgery is effective for selected adolescent patients with severe migraine headaches that don't respond to standard treatments, reports a study in the June issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS).
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A University of Colorado Cancer Center study presented at the American Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting 2015 shows decreased sexual activity in women following treatment for gynecologic cancers, down from 6.1-6.8 times per month before treatment to 2.6-4.9 times per month after treatment.
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If you are over age 75, and taking an anticoagulant, the old standard may be the gold standard, Mayo Clinic researchers and collaborators have determined.
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Immunotherapy with the anti-PD-1 antibody pembrolizumab (Keytruda) was effective in one out of four patients with recurrent or metastatic head and neck cancer, according to results presented at the 2015 meeting of the American Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO).
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The introduction of smoke-free legislation in England was associated with over 11,000 fewer admissions to hospital a year from respiratory infections in children, according to a new study.
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The U.S. Army's top general said Thursday that human error probably was not a factor in the Army's mistaken shipment of live anthrax samples from a chemical weapons testing site that was opened more than 70 years ago in a desolate stretch of desert in Utah.
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South Korea confirmed five MERS cases Friday, bringing the total number of patients infected with the potentially deadly virus to 12, including a man who defied a quarantine protocol and travelled to China, health officials said.
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China's capital seeks to snuff out smoking in indoor public places on Monday with a new ban, unprecedented fines and a hotline to report offenders, but enforcement is doubtful in one of the world's most tobacco-addicted countries.
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The U.S. Army's mistaken shipment of live anthrax samples to government and commercial laboratories occurred at a military post in a desolate stretch of the Utah desert that has been testing chemical weapons since it opened in 1942.
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Pat Crawford is the senior director of research at the Nutrition Policy Institute (NPI) at the University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources. Prior to coming to NPI, she co-founded and directed the Center for Weight and Health at the University of California at Berkeley for 15 years. She is a Cooperative Extension nutrition specialist, as well as an adjunct professor in the School of Public Health at UC Berkeley. Crawford led the 10-year longitudinal NHLBI Growth & Health Study, an epidemiologic study on the development of obesity in African-American girls and FitWIC, the five-state obesity prevention initiative in WIC. She is currently leading studies evaluating a wide variety of state and national nutrition programs and policies. An internationally respected researcher, Crawford served on the California Legislative Task Force on Diabetes and Obesity and chaired the Institute of Medicine's Workshop on Food Insecurity and Obesity.
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It was called the "most dreadful scourge of the human species." It killed at least one-third of the people it infected. It decimated entire populations, striking old and young, rich and poor alike.
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A survey by Taylor's-Toulouse University Centre (TTUC) is collecting data on the food habits of individuals and how their choices are related to modernisation and other social factors. Results show that almost 40% of all Malaysian meals are consumed outside the home – one of the highest dining out rates worldwide.
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Legal highs such as "hippy crack" would be made illegal under a draft law published by Britain's government Friday.
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In the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF), scientists have conducted clinical studies on an active substance against the dreaded hospital pathogen Staphylococcus aureus: a highly effective protein from bacteriophages that rapidly kills the bacteria, which frequently occurs in the nose. The protein leaves natural microflora intact. Such prophylactic treatment of nasal colonization could counteract the spread of methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in hospitals, and thereby prevent infections in patients.
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Phase III results of Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG) 0537 indicate that acupuncture-like, transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (ALTENS) may be equally effective as pilocarpine, the current prescription medication in a pill, to treat radiation-induced xerostomia (dry mouth), according to a study published in the June 1, 2015 issue of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology * Biology * Physics (Red Journal), the official scientific journal of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO). RTOG 0537 is a phase II/III, multi-center, randomized trial comparing ALTENS with pilocarpine, which is the current standard of treatment for radiation-induced xerostomia.
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Researchers are exploring new approaches to designing prosthetic hands capable of providing "sensory feedback." Advances toward developing prostheses with a sense of touch are presented in a special topic article in the June issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS).
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Cerebral palsy (CP) is the most common cause of childhood disability in the world, affecting between 1 and 2 infants per thousand. But the neurological condition tends to be understudied, especially in developing countries.
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Promising clinical trial results presented at the American Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting 2015 show activity of the investigational anti-cancer agent ONT-380 against HER2+ breast cancer, in one case specifically against brain metastases and in another case in overall survival of heavily pretreated HER2+ breast cancer patients.
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Researchers conducting a comprehensive proteomics analysis of human aqueous humor samples identified 763 proteins - including 386 proteins detected for the first time - in this clear fluid that helps maintain pressure in the eye and nourishes the cornea and the lens. These proteins could have a role in disease processes affecting the eye and serve as valuable biomarkers for the development of diagnostics and drug candidates to improve visual health, as discussed in the article "Proteomics of Human Aqueous Humor," published in OMICS: A Journal of Integrative Biology.
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