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Physiotherapy is effective in treating stress incontinence

Physiotherapy is effective in treating stress incontinence in about 80 per cent of cases, according to the first national study undertaken in clinical practice by researchers at the University of South Australia.

20 May 2005

Judges perceive child witnesses as being more honest than adults when testifying in court

The multi-disciplinary research, the first of its kind to examine judges' perceptions of child witnesses, was led by Queen's Child and Family Law scholar Nick Bala. It addresses how judges assess the honesty and reliability of children's court testimony, and how accurate their observations are.

20 May 2005

Infants with Krabbe disease saved by cord blood stem cells

Children with a fatal genetic disorder called Krabbe Disease can be saved and their brain development preserved if they receive stem cells from umbilical cord blood before symptoms of the disease develop, according to a study published in the current issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

20 May 2005

Watching too much tele puts UK children at risk of obesity

Three year old children who spend more than eight hours watching television per week are at an increased risk of obesity, finds a study published online by the BMJ this week.

19 May 2005

Lack of funds hampering important child health study

US Congress should boost funding for an important study to identify the risk factors for childhood chronic disease, states an editorial in this week’s issue of The Lancet.

19 May 2005

No evidence that designated driver programs stop drunken driving

Publicity campaigns can produce small, fleeting increases in the number of designated drivers, but there is not enough evidence to show whether these programs decrease drunk driving, according to a new review of studies.

19 May 2005

Boys, too, suffer long-term consequences of childhood sexual abuse

Children of both genders are frequently victims of sexual abuse, and the long-term consequences are nearly identical in men and women, according to a broad-based new report in the June 2005 issue of American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

19 May 2005

Deadly baby disease can be arrested with early treatment

U.S. scientists have found that transplanting umbilical cord blood to seemingly healthy infants before they develop signs of Krabbe's disease can dramatically prolong the lives of children with the deadly genetic condition.

19 May 2005

Cervical cancer virus vaccine appears very promising

Gardasil, a vaccine created by drugmaker Merck & Co which aims to protect against a sexually transmitted virus linked to cervical cancer, triggered a stronger immune response in young adolescents than in young women in a late-stage trial.

19 May 2005

Scientists clone human patients for stem cells

The team of South Korean scientists who cloned the first human embryo to use for research have now have used the same technology to create batches of embryonic stem cells from nine patients.

19 May 2005

Two out of three Americans with type-2 diabetes do not have their disease under control

According to a new survey two out of three Americans with type-2 diabetes do not have their disease under control and are putting themselves at risk of early deaths from stroke, heart attack or kidney failure as well as blindness and limb loss.

18 May 2005

Integrated approach to child survival achieving important results

An integrated approach to child survival designed to deliver a package of lifesaving health services for children in hard to reach communities has shown remarkable results, UNICEF Executive Director Ann M. Veneman announced at the World Health Assembly.

18 May 2005

North American women receiving inadequate vitamin D

Vitamin D inadequacy may be overlooked by clinicans thus leading to inadequate vitamin D supplementation in patients with osteoporosis, according to new research issued today at the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists (AACE) Fourteenth Annual Meeting and Clinical Congress.

18 May 2005

EraGen Biosciences and Bayer announce agreements for new cystic fibrosis (CF) assay

EraGen Biosciences, a rapidly growing molecular diagnostics company and Bayer HealthCare LLC, Diagnostics Division, announced today that EraGen has licensed its patented MultiCode-PLx® System to Bayer HealthCare in an exclusive worldwide agreement for Cystic Fibrosis.

18 May 2005

Global project to combat parasites that cause cancer and infection in millions

Many cancers are associated with infections (for example cervical cancer is linked to the human papilloma virus) but there is no stronger link between a human malignancy and a parasitic infection than that between cancer of the bile ducts and a liver fluke called Opisthorchis viverrini.

18 May 2005

Language cues can provide the "glue" that helps fasten certain visual patterns into small children's memories

Doctoral candidate Banchiamlack Dessalegn and her mentor, Barbara Landau, the Dick and Lydia Todd Professor in the Department of Cognitive Science at Johns Hopkins, tackled that question via a query of their own: Would children who are given verbal cues while viewing mirror image visual patterns remember them more accurately, and longer, than would children who were not given those cues?

18 May 2005

Prince Charles calls for a more holistic approach towards medicine

The Prince of Wales, who has long been a strong supporter of homeopathic medicine, has called for a more holistic approach towards medicine and the nation's health.

18 May 2005

Prenatal environmental factors and parental mental health may be associated with a risk of autism

“This is the largest case-control study ever conducted, and the first to suggest that family history of schizophrenia raises risk for autism, independently of obstetric factors,” said William W. Eaton, PhD, study co-author and professor and chair of the Bloomberg School’s Department of Mental Health.

18 May 2005

The way obese women feed and interact with their children early in infancy might lay the foundations for obesity later in childhood

A small pilot study published this month in the open access Nutrition Journal found that obese women fed their children more energy- rich food, and spent less time feeding and interacting with them than normal weight women.

18 May 2005

Chronic stress can be harmful - to your health and also to your brain

Chronic stress can be harmful - to your health and also to your brain, according to researchers at the Douglas Hospital Research Center. Their findings, published in a recent issue of Psychoneuroendocrinology, show increased stress hormones lead to memory impairment in the elderly and learning difficulties in young adults.

17 May 2005