Social Sciences

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. – Showing sensitivity to weaknesses in the U.S. economy, plastic surgery was not spared from the recession's grasp. According to the newest national procedural statistics report from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), in 2008, doctors performed over 12 million cosmetic plastic surgery procedures – encompassing both surgical and minimally-invasive procedures. Surgical numbers dropped nine percent and minimally-invasive numbers rose five percent. Nearly 5 million reconstructive plastic surgery procedures were performed, slightly more than the previous year…

TORONTO (March 25, 2009)- Patients with heart rhythm disorders can look forward to better and faster diagnosis and treatment thanks to the latest generation of electrophysiology equipment used this week for the first time in North America at the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre. "This state-of-the-art equipment allows us to better visualize electrical activity in the heart and localize the source of rhythm disturbance," says Dr. Eugene Downar, cardiologist in the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre. "The improved display helps us diagnose more accurately and treat patients faster." Atrial fibrillation and…

DETROIT – People who have high blood pressure or heart disease should avoid consuming energy drinks, according to a Henry Ford Hospital study to be published online Wednesday in the Annals of Pharmacotherapy. Researchers found that healthy adults who drank two cans a day of a popular energy drink experienced an increase in their blood pressure and heart rate. No significant changes in EKG measurements were reported. The increases in blood pressure and heart rate were insignificant for healthy adults, but could prove harmful to people with a heart-related condition, says James Kalus, Pharm.D…

Despite the large body of literature on transient receptor potential (TRP) channels—ion channels that are directly involved in vision, taste, hearing, touch, olfaction, and other senses—very little is known about their biophysics and protein structure, or the mechanisms that control their gating processes. In its latest Perspectives in General Physiology series (http://jgp.rupress.org/current.shtml), the Journal of General Physiology (JGP) utilizes the contributions of leading experts to provide a critical overview of current research about TRP channel structure, and to point out areas in…

At a time of heightened concern about conflicts of interest posed by relationships between academic medical researchers and commercial firms, a new study finds that a significant number of academic institutions do not have clear policies covering the industrial relationships of members of Institutional Review Boards (IRBs), committees charged with ensuring that clinical studies uphold patient rights and follow ethical guidelines. In the April issue of Academic Medicine, researchers from the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Institute for Health Policy report that many IRBs do not require…

Experts from Queen's University Belfast have developed new agents to fight MRSA and other hospital-acquired infections that are resistant to antibiotics. The fluids are a class of ionic liquids that not only kill colonies of these dangerous microbes, they also prevent their growth. The development of these new antimicrobial agents was carried out by a team of eight researchers from the Queen's University Ionic Liquid Laboratories (QUILL) Research Centre. The team was led by Brendan Gilmore, Lecturer in Pharmaceutics at the School of Pharmacy, and Martyn Earle, Assistant Director of QUILL. The…

Amsterdam, 25 March 2009 - The journal Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ybbrc) (BBRC), published by Elsevier, will publish an important review this week online, by M. Daniel Lane and colleagues at Johns Hopkins, building on the suggested link between the consumption of fructose and increased food intake, which may contribute to a high incidence of obesity and Type 2 diabetes. Over the past four decades life-styles have gravitated toward the excessive consumption of 'high energy' foods and sedentary behavior that has resulted in a high…

Oxford, 25 March 2009 - In the May-June 2009 issue of the prestigious Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics, an international journal published by Elsevier, Prof. Dr. Imre Zs.-Nagy, of the University of Debrecen Medical and Health Science Center (Hungary), and founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/archger), presents numerous studies documenting a diverse array of anti-aging medical therapeutics that currently exist and are being applied in the clinical setting today, as well as interventions that are in the laboratory stage…

Graduates of the Program in Clinical Effectiveness (PCE), which has trained almost 1,900 physicians to be clinical investigators since 1986, have achieved significant success in receiving grant support from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other funders, along with other accomplishments considered key to establishing a research career. A report on the PCE – a joint program of Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) and Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) with strong input from the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) – from a team of investigators at the three institutions appears…

Tracking Acute Kidney Injury Dr. Eisei Noiri and colleagues at the University of Tokyo, Japan identified a novel biomarker to monitor acute kidney injury. They present their data in the April 2009 issue of The American Journal of Pathology. Acute kidney injury may be reversible if treated promptly and appropriately. Novel biomarkers therefore need to be developed to identify injury at early time points as well as to estimate the severity of the damage. Negishi et al examined whether levels of urinary L-type fatty acid-binding protein (L-FABP), a protein found in the kidney that is…