Social Sciences

Taking herbal food supplements is certainly not free of risk. Since 2005, the poison emergency centers in the German cities of Freiburg and Göttingen have registered a total of 17 patients with health problems after taking Chinese slimming capsules. The pharmacologist Dieter Müller and his coauthors describe the documented cases of poisoning in the current edition of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2009; 106(13): 218-22). The authors report on a slimming pill on sale over the Internet. According to the advertising, this contains herbal substances and is declared as a…

COLUMBIA, Mo. – According to a recent study in the Archives of Internal Medicine, 75 percent of Americans do not get enough Vitamin D. Researchers have found that the deficiency may negatively impact immune function and cardiovascular health and increase cancer risk. Now, a University of Missouri nutritional sciences researcher has found that vitamin D deficiency is associated with inflammation, a negative response of the immune system, in healthy women. Increased concentrations of serum TNF-α, an inflammatory marker, were found in women who had insufficient vitamin D levels. This study is…

Researchers at North Carolina State University are looking to soy as a way to make traditional canine cancer therapy more effective, less stressful for the dog and less costly for the owners. Dr. Steven Suter, assistant professor of oncology, and NC State colleagues studied genistein - a molecule found in soy that has been shown to be toxic to a wide variety of cancer cells in humans - to determine whether it would also inhibit the growth of canine lymphoma cells. The researchers found that a commercially available form of genistein called GCP was effective in killing canine lymphoid cells…

As America considers major healthcare reforms, it may have lessons to learn from Seguro Popular, Mexico's ambitious plan to improve healthcare for its estimated 50 million uninsured citizens, suggests Ryan Moore, co-author of a study published April 8 in The Lancet, a leading international medical journal. The study, conducted through a partnership of Mexican health officials and researchers from leading American universities, offers a model U.S. policymakers might use to scientifically explore solutions to America's own looming healthcare crisis, a proven experimental approach capable of…

The 9th Annual Spring Meeting of the European Society of Cardiology Council on Cardiovascular Nursing and Allied Professions (CCNAP), organised in cooperation with the Irish Nurses Cardiovascular Association (INCA), is being held at the Royal Dublin Society, Dublin, Ireland, on 24-25 April. The meeting - considered by many to be the premier international event for nurses and allied health professionals - will show case the latest advances in practice, education and research. The 400 plus delegates expected to attend from 26 different countries, will have the opportunity to hear wide ranging…

April 8, 2009 – (BRONX, NY) – Scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have developed a simple, accurate, and highly sensitive test to detect and quantify ricin, an extremely potent toxin with potential use as a bioterrorism agent. The report appears as a featured article in the April 12th issue of Analytical Chemistry. Ricin, a protein extracted from castor beans, can be in the form of a powder, mist, pellet or solution. When injected or inhaled, as little as one-half milligram of ricin is lethal to humans. No antidote is available. The most infamous ricin…

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Higher doses of radiation combined with chemotherapy improve survival in patients with stage III lung cancer, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center. Standard treatment for this stage of lung cancer – when the tumor is likely too large to be removed through surgery – involves a combination of radiation therapy with chemotherapy. But, this new study finds, giving chemotherapy at the same time as the radiation enhances the effect of both. Further, increasing the dose of radiation over the course of treatment also…

A cancer scientist from Johns Hopkins has convinced an international group of colleagues to delay their race to find new cancer biomarkers and instead begin a 7,000-hour slog through a compendium of 50,000 scientific articles already published to assemble, decode and analyze the molecules that might herald the furtive presence of pancreatic cancer. With limited resources available for the exhaustive and expensive testing that needs to be done before any candidate can be considered a bona fide biomarker of clinical value, it's important to take stock of the big picture and strategize, says…

Researchers at the Joslin Diabetes Center have demonstrated that adult humans still have a type of "good" fat previously believed to be present only in babies and children. Unlike white fat, which stores energy and comprises most body fat, this good fat, called brown fat, is active in burning calories and using energy. The finding reported in The New England Journal of Medicine could pave the way for new treatments both for obesity and type 2 diabetes. Scientists had thought that brown fat only existed in humans during childhood and was mostly gone by adulthood. The paper shows that brown fat…

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. –Seguro Popular, a Mexican health care program instituted in 2003, has already reduced crippling health care costs among poorer households, according to an evaluation conducted by researchers at Harvard University in collaboration with researchers in Mexico. The study was designed and led by Gary King, David Florence Professor of Government and director of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard. The results are published in the current issue of The Lancet. "The success of Seguro Popular in reducing catastrophic health expenditures is remarkable," says King…