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Outspoken health care reformer, Obama advisor, visits URMC

David Blumenthal, M.D., M.P.P., a key health care advisor to President Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign, will speak at the University of Rochester Medical Center on Friday, April 3, for the 10th annual Saward-Berg lecture.

11 Mar 2009

New cutting-edge forum for forensic medicine

A new communicative forum for forensic medicine and science has been established at the University of Sydney to help provide more effective forensic services across NSW.

11 Mar 2009

Cell pathway on overdrive prevents cancer response to dietary restriction

Whitehead Institute researchers have pinpointed a cellular pathway that determines whether cancerous tumors respond to dietary restriction during their development.

11 Mar 2009

Health impacts of climate change require global action

The health impact of climate change is a critical issue that policy-makers should be aware of while setting priorities for action and investment to mitigate the impact of global climate change. This is the key message that WHO experts delivered at the Climate Change Global Risks, Challenges and Decisions conference in Copenhagen.

11 Mar 2009

Twin nanoparticle targets then zaps breast cancer cells

Breast cancer patients face many horrors, including those that arise when fighting the cancer itself.

11 Mar 2009

Tissue-cultured smallpox vaccine shows promise

Administration of a tissue-cultured smallpox vaccine showed signs of an effective vaccine response with no serious adverse events, according to a study in the March 11 issue of JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association.

11 Mar 2009

Tiny samples could yield big predictive markers for pancreatic cancer

A handful of proteins, detected in incredibly tiny amounts, may one day help doctors distinguish between a harmless lesion in the pancreas and a potentially deadly one, say researchers at Fox Chase Cancer Center.

11 Mar 2009

Men moving to Venus, women to Mars - research looks at changing roles of mothers and fathers

Elvire Vaucher is a professor at the Université de Montréal School of Optometry.

11 Mar 2009

Teenage stress carries forward to adulthood

Most of us remember our teenage years with a mix of fondness and relief. Fondness for the good memories, and relief that all that teenage stress, angst and drama - first love, gossip, SATs, fights with parents - is behind us.

11 Mar 2009

Systematic estimation of breast cancer risk appears justified in postmenopausal women

Screening for breast cancer risk in all postmenopausal women, using a combination of risk factors and breast density, can identify women at high risk of disease, according to systematic literature reviews and meta-analyses reported in the March 10 online issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

11 Mar 2009

Researchers create gene circuit that permits precise tuning of a gene's expression in a cell

Researchers have crafted a gene circuit that permits precise tuning of a gene's expression in a cell, an advance that should allow for more accurate analysis of the gene's role in normal and abnormal cellular function.

11 Mar 2009

Salt could be 'nature's antidepressant' according to new research

Most people consume far too much salt, and a University of Iowa researcher has discovered one potential reason we crave it: it might put us in a better mood.

11 Mar 2009

Rituximab useful for advanced indolent lymphoma

A new study has found for the first time that maintenance therapy with the novel antibody, rituximab (MR) following cyclophosphamide, vincristine and prednisone (CVP) therapy improves progression-free survival in patients with stage III-IV indolent lymphoma, according to Howard S. Hochster, M.D. of NYU Langone Medical Center, lead author of a recent study published online ahead of print in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

11 Mar 2009

10 million people in the U.S. suffer from lower-limb peripheral arterial disease

According to iData Research, an international medical device & dental market research firm, an estimated 10 million people in the U.S. suffer from lower-limb Peripheral Arterial Disease (PAD), with less than 20% of these diagnosed by a physician.

11 Mar 2009

Protein structures reveal "big bang" of innovation in evolution

A new study of proteins, the molecular machines that drive all life, also sheds light on the history of living organisms.

11 Mar 2009

Study methods influence estimates of lead time and overdiagnosis in prostate cancer

In prostate cancer, estimates of lead time (how long screening advances diagnosis of cancer) and overdiagnosis (the fraction of cancers detected by screening that would not have been diagnosed during the patient's lifetime without screening) vary widely, depending on the definition of lead time used, the population, and the estimation methodology, according to a report in the March 10 online issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

11 Mar 2009

Financial incentives stimulate changes in medical practice

A large group of California physicians given financial incentives to improve the quality of medical care have begun to embrace an array of changes important to advancing quality, according to a RAND Corporation study issued today.

11 Mar 2009

Small molecules block cancer gene

Finding molecules that block the activity of the oncogene Stat 3 (signal transducer and activator of transcription) required screening literally millions of compounds, using computers that compared the structure of the cancer-causing gene to those of the small molecules, said a Baylor College of Medicine researcher in a report that appears in the current online issue of the journal PLoS One (Public Library of Science ONE).

11 Mar 2009

Simple test helps predict heart attack risk

The use of common and readily available screening tests - like the ankle brachial index (ABI) - along with traditional risk scoring systems - such as the Framingham Risk Score - has the potential to prevent devastating heart attacks in thousands of individuals who are not originally thought to be at high risk (according to Framingham alone), say researchers at the Society of Interventional Radiology's 34th Annual Scientific Meeting.

11 Mar 2009

Should breast tissue be screened for cancer after mammoplasty?

Young women undergoing cosmetic breast reduction surgery are being screened for cancer without their informed consent, according to a paper published on bmj.com.

11 Mar 2009