Social Sciences

A 12-year-old Dutch boy – bedridden for three years because of an inherited cardiac arrhythmia syndrome – can now join his friends on the soccer field thanks to a discovery made by Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers. The investigators, led by Björn Knollmann, M.D., Ph.D., report this week in Nature Medicine that the clinically available drug flecainide prevents potentially lethal arrhythmias in patients with a specific type of exercise or stress-induced arrhythmia disorder called CPVT. "It's potentially a breakthrough in the treatment of this rare syndrome," said Knollmann,…

COLLEGE PARK, Md., March 27 (AScribe Newswire) -- A team of University of Maryland scientists has paved the way for the development of new drug therapies to combat active and asymptomatic (latent) tuberculosis infections by characterizing the unique structure and mechanism of an enzyme in M. tuberculosis, the bacterium that causes the disease. Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry Barbara Gerratana, in the university's College of Chemical and Life Sciences, led the research team, which included her graduate student Melissa Resto and Assistant Professor Nicole LaRonde-LeBlanc…

NEW YORK (March 27, 2009) -- Researchers at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center have identified a new marker for breast cancer metastasis called TMEM, for Tumor Microenvironment of Metastasis. As reported in the March 24 online edition of the journal Clinical Cancer Research, density of TMEM was associated with the development of distant organ metastasis via the bloodstream -- the most common cause of death from breast cancer. The National Cancer Institute (NCI)–funded translational study could lead to the first test to predict the likelihood of breast cancer metastasis…

A study published in Journal of Insurance Medicine by members of the Celiac Disease Center at Columbia University Medical Center has demonstrated an economic benefit to the diagnosis of celiac disease in a national managed-care population in the United States. Peter HR Green, M.D., Professor of Clinical Medicine and Director, Celiac Disease Center at Columbia University Medical Center, had this to say about the study (Journal of Insurance Medicine, 2008;40:218-228) and the economic benefits of increased diagnosis of celiac disease: "We now have evidence that the increased awareness and…

DURHAM, NC – Drug-eluting stents were safe and superior to bare metal stents in preventing death and heart attacks among 262,700 "real-world" patients enrolled in a nationwide registry of cardiovascular disease, according to researchers from Duke University Medical Center. The findings were presented today at the i2Summit at the American College of Cardiology's 58th Annual Scientific Session. They also appear online in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. The study is the largest of its kind to date and may end years of controversy over the safety of the devices. "We hope…

High-dosage perioperative brachytherapy (applied within the surgical process) obtains excellent results in the treatment of head and neck tumours, at the same time as reducing the period of radiation. These are the conclusions of research undertaken jointly by three Departments at the University of Navarra Hospital and which was published in the latest issue of Brachytherapy, official journal of the American Society of Brachytherapy. The work describes the application of this new radiotherapy technique to 40 patients between 2000 and 2006. Given the size of the sample, the article is a…

A team of scientists at Emory University School of Medicine has identified a direct link between oxidative stress and inflammatory signals in the blood. The finding could lead to improved strategies for preventing several diseases by including antioxidants in the diet and for reducing the impact of inflammation in critically ill patients by adding cysteine to intravenous or tube feeding. The results are published online this week in the journal PLoS One. Many normal metabolic functions produce reactive forms of oxygen that can damage cells. Oxidative stress, a disruption of the body's ability…

ORLANDO, Fla. - Sleep disordered breathing, also known as sleep apnea, is highly prevalent among retired National Football League (NFL) players, and particularly in linemen, according to Mayo Clinic research. This study, involving 167 players, adds to the growing body of research examining the relationship between sleep apnea and heart disease, the investigators say. The study will be presented Tuesday, March 31, 2009 at 9:30 a.m. EDT at the American College of Cardiology Annual Scientific Session in Orlando (1048-86). The research was conducted in collaboration with the Living Heart…

March 26, 2009 -- Climate change will seriously impact public health, but the United States has yet to allocate adequate research funding to understand and prepare for these impacts, according to a report published in Environmental Health Perspectives, the journal of the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. The report suggests that the current knowledge gap regarding climate change and public health is putting multitudes at risk and calls for a major expansion of research to tackle this problem. The report emphasizes that global warming is expected to worsen many health…

NEW YORK, NY (March 25, 2009) – Transdermal delivery of estrogen therapy available by prescription "seems not to alter" the risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE), or blood clotting, in postmenopausal patients when compared to oral delivery, a new study suggests. The study was conducted by researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center and was published in the latest issue of Menopause: The Journal of the North American Menopause Society. Prescription transdermal estrogen therapy is bioidentical to estrogen produced by a woman's ovaries before menopause and delivered through the skin. Transdermal…