Clinical Research

Approximately 1 in 88 children are diagnosed as being somewhere on the autism spectrum. One hypothesis about autism is that a hyperactive immune system results in elevated levels of inflammation and may contribute to the disorder. Approximately one third of those on the autism spectrum, slightly above placebo levels, show a clinical improvement in symptoms in response to a fever. Eric Hollander MD, a professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, discussed the effects of two novel treatment approaches that modify aspects of inflammation at the American College of…

A hydrogel scaffold for craniofacial bone tissue regeneration starts as a liquid and then solidifies into a gel in the body and liquefies again for removal.  The material is a soluble liquid at room temperature that can be injected to the point of need. At body temperature, the material turns instantly into a gel to help direct the formation of new bone to replace that damaged by injury or disease. It conforms to irregular three-dimensional spaces and provides a platform for functional and aesthetic tissue regeneration and is intended as an alternative to prefabricated implantable…

Researchers from the University of Southern Denmark have discovered that the skin is capable of communicating with the liver. The discovery has surprised the scientists, and they say that it may help our understanding of how skin diseases can affect the rest of the body. Professor Susanne Mandrup and her research group in collaboration with Nils Færgeman's research group at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Southern Denmark was actually studying something completely different when they made the groundbreaking discovery: That the skin, which is the body'…

Using chest pain characteristics (CPCs) specific to women in the early diagnosis of acute myocardial infarction (AMI, heart attack) in the emergency department does not seem to be supported by the findings of a new study. While about 90 percent of patients with AMI present with chest pain or discomfort, some patients present without typical chest pain. Sex-specific differences in symptom presentation among women have received increasing attention. But it remains unclear whether identifying sex-specific CPCs is possible to help physicians differentiate women with AMI from women with other…

Retroviruses are important pathogens capable of crossing species barriers to infect new hosts, but knowledge of their evolutionary history is limited. By mapping endogenous retroviruses (ERVs), retroviruses whose genes have become part of the host organism's genome, researchers at Uppsala University, Sweden, can now provide unique insights into the evolutionary relationships of retroviruses and their host species. All retroviruses, including HIV in humans, must become part of the host cell's genome in order to produce new viruses. When a germ line cell is infected there is a chance for the…

Chicago – Jose Augusto Barreto-Filho, M.D., Ph.D., of the Federal University of Sergipe and the Clinica e Hospital Sao Lucas, Sergipe, Brazil, and colleagues assessed procedure rates and outcomes of surgical aortic valve replacement (AVR) among 82,755,924 Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries between 1999 and 2011. "Aortic valve disease in the United States is a major cardiovascular problem that is likely to grow as the population ages. Aortic valve replacement is the standard treatment even for very elderly patients despite its risks in this age group. With transcatheter aortic valve…

In 2008, an estimated 500,000,000 people were obese globally, which could result in a 2-4 year shorter life span, which increases to 8-10 years in those morbidly obese. Obesity is also a risk factor for adverse pregnancy and perinatal outcomes (relating to the time immediately before and after birth).  Weight reduction is imperative to improve maternal health and bariatric surgery (the branch of medicine that deals with the causes, prevention, and treatment of obesity) is currently the most effective method. Its use has increased rapidly since the 1990s. A paper in BMJ says that …

Type 2 diabetes brings with it a long list of complementary issues: vascular and heart disease, eye problems, nerve damage, kidney disease, hearing problems and Alzheimer's disease. A new study in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research adds skeletal problems to that list, namely osteoporosis. Previous studies in the field showed that patients with diabetes experienced fractures at levels of bone density above that of the regular population, hinting that something was different about the "quality" of their bone. The new research validated that assumption in a clinical study of 60…

Gastric bypass surgery has become one of the most commonly performed procedures in the treatment of obesity. In most patients, it quickly produces substantial body weight loss and improved glucose tolerance. However, the metabolic improvements vary considerably from patient to patient. A hormone test may be able to predict the extent of metabolic improvement caused by the gastric bypass. These are the results of a study on a rodent model conducted by Prof. Dr. Matthias Tschöp and his colleagues from the Institute of Diabetes and Obesity (IDO), Helmholtz Diabetes Center at Helmholtz Zentrum…

Despite what you may have read in the New York Times and other mainstream media outlets jumping on the 'sugar is bad' fad, sugar intake is off the hook in one area; nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. High-calorie diets promote the progression of this serious form of liver disease, but that isn't a sugar issue, it is a behavioral one. Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease is the most prevalent liver problem in the U.S. and most Western countries. It is the buildup of extra fat in liver cells that is not caused by alcohol.  Researchers conducted a double-blind study of healthy, but centrally…