Day November 27, 2013

(HealthDay)—Small medical practices may not need to offer their employees health insurance, although there may be advantages to doing so, according to an article published Nov. 10 in Medical Economics. Donna Marbury discusses whether small practices can save money by…

(HealthDay)—The addition of gabapentin to patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) protocol does not reduce morphine consumption, pain, or opioid-related side effects in patients undergoing total knee arthroplasty, according to a study published in the Nov. 20 issue of The Journal of Bone…

(HealthDay)—The top five dermatology-related issues that physicians and patients should question have been released by the American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) as part of the Choosing Wisely campaign, and have been published in the December issue of the Journal of…

A protector for PTEN, a tumor-thwarting protein often missing in cancer cells, has emerged from research led by scientists at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center published online at Nature Cell Biology this week. “We discovered that the…

(HealthDay)—In older adults, normal weight obesity (NWO) is associated with cardiac abnormalities and increased risk for cardiovascular mortality, according to research published in the Nov. 15 issue of The American Journal of Cardiology. John A. Batsis, M.D., of Dartmouth College…

President Barack Obama’s administration has announced yet another delay in the rollout of the health care law. An online health insurance marketplace for small businesses is being put off until November 2014 to make sure the HealthCare.gov website gets fixed…

Once viewed as an “outlandish morally objectionable” concept with science-fiction overtones, face transplantation is now accepted as a “feasible and necessary treatment” for severely disfigured patients. The evolving ethical debate over face transplantation is analyzed in a special topic paper…

(HealthDay)—Age at first childbirth is associated with the risk of diabetes in postmenopausal women, according to a study published online Nov. 15 in Diabetes Care. Jin Hwa Kim, M.D., Ph.D., from Chosun University Hospital in Gwangju, South Korea, and colleagues…

(HealthDay)—For seriously ill and injured children, the use of telemedicine consultations in rural emergency departments is associated with fewer physician-related medication errors, according to a study published online Nov. 25 in Pediatrics. Madan Dharmar, M.B.B.S., Ph.D., from the University of…

After a diving accident left Jason Disanto paralyzed from the neck down in 2009, he had to learn how to navigate life from a powered wheelchair, which he controls with a sip-and-puff system. Users sip or puff air into a…

A new study from the University of Bath and Brunel University suggests that no matter what clothing a cyclist wears, around 1-2% of drivers will pass dangerously close when overtaking. This suggests there is little a rider can do, by…

Scientists and clinicians from five leading UK universities, including King’s College London, will begin a groundbreaking trial next year to test a possible cure for HIV infection. Efforts to cure HIV in the past have been thwarted by the virus’s…

(Medical Xpress)—Epidemiologists have designed a better method to quantify a woman’s risk of developing breast cancer, according to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and their collaborators. The model could help identify women at high risk…

(Medical Xpress)—Excise taxes on unhealthy foods – combined with public-service anti-obesity advertising – might cut calories and cholesterol from Americans’ lunch menus. “But weaning Americans off all that added sugar and salt won’t be an easy task for public-health policymakers,”…

Striking new evidence indicates that the gut microbiome, the ecological community of microorganisms that share our body, has a huge effect on brain function – much larger than we thought. It has long been established that our gut acts as…

(Medical Xpress)—For a baseball pitcher, a rotator cuff injury often means an extended stay on the disabled list for surgery and rehabilitation of the damaged tendons. But a new technology under development may stop this shoulder injury from becoming so…

(Medical Xpress)—Families with peanut-allergic children live in fear that their child will ingest peanuts, even minute amounts, accidentally. Now, a small pilot study published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology offers hope. In the year-long study, immunologist Dale…

Hysterectomy and oophorectomy (the removal of ovaries) are performed to treat various diseases in women, including cancer. These procedures are accompanied not only by a decline in estrogen but also testosterone levels in the blood. Many women who have undergone…

A Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) study indicates that children are more likely to develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) if their mother is already afflicted. In the study published in the Journal of Depression Anxiety, while fewer than…

It is well known that hip and vertebral fractures increase the risk of premature death. Until now, little has been known about the clinical impact of non-hip, non-vertebral fractures – so new Australian research showing that they may also increase…

Research has suggested that a particular gene in the brain’s reward system contributes to overeating and obesity in adults. This same variant has now been linked to childhood obesity and tasty food choices, particularly for girls, according to a new…

Having human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the virus that causes AIDS, can create many challenges for individuals physically, socially and emotionally. A University of Missouri researcher found that participating in photovoice, a process by which individuals document their lives by taking…

Rwanda launched Tuesday a national drive to “non-surgically” circumcise 700,000 men in a bid to cut rates of HIV infection, claiming to be the first country in the world to do so. The government said circumcision was one of its…

In the developing world, Cryptosporidium parvum has long been the scourge of freshwater. A decade ago, it announced its presence in the United States, infecting over 400,000 people – the largest waterborne-disease outbreak in the county’s history. Its rapid ability…

In the United States, African Americans have approximately twice the risk of end-stage renal disease compared to white Americans, despite a similar prevalence in earlier stages of chronic kidney disease. A large study co-authored by George Washington University (GW) researcher…

(HealthDay)—Thanksgiving is a time of travel, but one expert warns that sleep deprivation and darkness can cause drivers to become sleepy even though they believe they’re alert. “When you are sleep-deprived for more than 24 hours, you need stronger sensory…

A popular combination asthma therapy dogged by safety concerns has not harmed British Columbians and should remain in use, according to researchers at the University of British Columbia and Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute. The therapy combines an inhaled corticosteroid…

A research team consisting of more than 60 collaborators in 26 countries has estimated the global death toll from the 2009 outbreak of the H1N1 virus to be 10 times higher than the World Health Organization’s count, which was based…

A novel study published in the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) journal, Arthritis Rheumatism, shows that smaller micropolitan areas of the U.S.—those with less than 50,000 people—have very few or no practicing adult rheumatologist. In some of these areas, individuals…

Women who are members of families with BRCA2 mutations but who test negative for the family-specific BRCA2 mutations are still at greater risk for developing breast cancer compared with women in the general population, according to a study published in…

Scientists at the Institute for Genome Sciences at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and physicians at Sinai Hospital, Baltimore, MD, have found that restoring the normal, helpful bacteria of the gut and intestines may treat patients suffering from…

A team of researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) has identified a leukemia-specific stretch of DNA called an enhancer element that enables cancerous blood cells to proliferate in Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML), a devastating cancer that is incurable in…

A new study published 26th November in the open access journal PLOS Biology, identifies a new target in the search for therapeutic interventions for Huntington’s disease – a devastating late-onset neurodegenerative disorder. The disease is genetic, affecting up to one…

A drug that acts like a growth-promoting protein in the brain reduces degeneration and motor deficits associated with Huntington’s disease in two mouse models of the disorder, according to a study appearing November 27 in the Journal of Neuroscience. The…

Scrutiny of physician relationships with industry has culminated in passage of the US Physician Payments Sunshine Act (part of the Affordable Care Act), intended to bring greater transparency to such relationships. However, according to authors in this week’s PLOS Medicine,…

(Medical Xpress)—Among the many great talks at the recent annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience were three special lectures given sequentially during the evenings. The first described how we might translate the known circuit diagram of the worm, and…

Ten years after a transplant, a cornea from a 71-year-old donor is likely to remain as healthy as a cornea from a donor half that age, and corneas from donors over 71 perform slightly less well but still remain healthy…

Princeton University says a meningitis vaccine not yet licensed for use in the U.S. will be made available on campus starting Dec. 9 to nearly 6,000 students. The Ivy League school has experienced an outbreak of type B meningococcal disease,…

Researchers at the University of Dundee and University College London found that taking the maximum daily dose of some medicines would exceed the recommended daily limits for sodium, without any additional dietary intake. They say the public “should be warned…

Research from Belgium has shown that if governments legislate to restrict the numbers of embryos transferred during fertility treatment, but combine it with a policy of reimbursing six cycles of assisted reproduction technology (ART), there is no detrimental impact on…