As many as 28,000 patients die each year in the U.S. because of catheter-related bloodstream infections, but doctors and nurses who implement simple and inexpensive interventions can cut the number of deaths to nearly zero, according to a study by Johns Hopkins researchers.
“This type of improvement has never been demonstrated, but there is no reason that ICU’s across the country can’t implement these interventions to achieve similar results,” said Sean Berenholtz, M.D.
New help for tailoring treatments
Mayo Clinic researchers have discovered a key molecule that lets doctors identify one of the most aggressive types of kidney cancer. Patients with renal cell carcinoma who have higher levels of a molecule known as B7-H1 in their tumors are nearly five times more likely to die from the disease than patients with low levels or an absence of the molecule.
This key finding can help to improve treatment of the disease, or to serve as a tar
Researchers at Purdue University have created a “unified model” for predicting the reliability of new designs for silicon transistors – a potential tool that industry could use to save tens of millions of dollars annually in testing costs.
The model is the first method that can be used to simultaneously evaluate the reliability of two types of transistors essential for so-called CMOS computer chips, the most common type of integrated circuits in use today. The two types of transi
A number of emerging forest health issues are affecting the overall vitality of North American forests, say plant pathologists with The American Phytopathological Society (APS).
At a recent APS Northeastern Division meeting, plant pathologists highlighted several types of diseases that are of growing concern, including:
Butternut Canker
First reported in Wisconsin in 1967, butternut canker is a fast moving, virulent disease that is killing butternut t
Funded by NIH grant, College of Pharmacy researchers show welfare recipients benefit from ’work therapy’
It’s said that “idle hands are the devil’s workshop.” A pair of University of Houston professors studying employment and drug use now provide support for that proverb. Led by Isaac D. Montoya, clinical professor at the UH College of Pharmacy, this National Institutes of Health (NIH) study found that employment reduces the chronic drug use of female welfare recipients. “Our re
Two hundred and fifty million years ago, ninety percent of marine species disappeared and life on land suffered greatly during the world’s largest mass extinction. The cause of this great dying has baffled scientists for decades, and recent speculations invoke asteroid impacts as a kill mechanism. Yet a new study published in the December issue of Geology provides strong indications that the extinction cause did not come from the heavens but from Earth itself.
An intern
Orange juice and cancer don’t mix. In fact, the popular citrus drink could become a cocktail to prevent or stop the deadly disease in humans.
Research by Texas Agriculture Experiment Station scientists has shown that citrus compounds called limonoids targeted and stopped neuroblastoma cells in the lab. They now hope to learn the reasons for the stop-action behavior and eventually try the citrus concoction in humans.
Neuroblastomas account for about 10 percent of a
The December issue of GEOLOGY covers a wide variety of potentially newsworthy subjects. Topics include: impact of shifts in the North Atlantic current on European climate; new method for estimating elevations of Earth’s ancient land surfaces; evidence of terrestrial causes of the Permian-Triassic mass extinction; evidence of a major Precambrian asteroid impact in northwestern Australia; the relationship of intensified hydrologic cycles and global heat transfer during greenhouse phases of E
New CICS products enable customers to more easily integrate business processes and transform their existing applications IBM today announced the release of CICS Transaction Server for z/OS V3.1 which provides an enhanced Web Services solution. Also announced is CICS Transaction Gateway V6, which provides a J2EE standards-based connectivity solution. Following on the heels of the 35th anniversary of CICS earlier this year, this announcement enables businesses to fully exploit the agilit
Massive undertaking will involve hundreds of biologists, hunters and trackers combing wilderness of Russian Far East
A team of conservationists led by the Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) announced the first range-wide count in nine years of Siberian (Amur) tigers, one of the world’s most threatened big cats. The survey will involve hundreds of biologists hunters and trackers combing a variety of landscapes to find out how many Siberian tigers still exist in
Deep-woods bird species that manage to hang on in remaining patches of a deforested area of Brazil gain no real advantage in avoiding extinction, Duke University ecologists have found. The researchers studied the coastal region harboring the greatest number of threatened birds in the Americas.
“We found that species that also tolerate secondary habitats are not deforestation’s survivors,” said Grant Harris, the first author of a paper on the subject published in the Decem
Adding supplement to antidepressant medication can help patients with continuing symptoms
Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers have found that adding the nutritional supplement SAMe to a standard antidepressant may be helpful to patients who have not responded to single-drug treatment for clinical depression. The pilot study, appearing in the December Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology, found that treatment with both SAMe and an antidepressant improved symptoms i
A new clinical study has shown that imatinib mesylate (Gleevec) has activity in AIDS-related Kaposi’s sarcoma (KS). Imatinib inhibits important pathways that spur cancer growth, resulting in the regression of KS tumors within 4 weeks in some patients. The study will be published November 30 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO).
“Imatinib is a targeted therapy originally shown to be effective in treating chronic myelogenous leukemia and gastrointestinal stromal tumors. Th
Medical procedures such as iodine therapy, a popular thyroid treatment, can result in patients triggering radiation detectors for up to three months after treatment, according to a study presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).
Diagnostic nuclear medicine procedures, including FDG PET scans, bone scans and cardiac scans, can have a similar effect, although for shorter periods. “The nuclear medicine community has been aware that p
Much as surfers have their own peculiar lingo, they also incur an array of injuries from the sport that can be just as peculiar to physicians, according to research presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).
When surfers are injured, many times there are no telltale abrasions since the impact is often with water and not a solid object. Surfers are also usually leashed to their boards, making it easier for them to strike the boards even a
Contrary to the movie Jurassic Park, in which scientists recreate dinosaurs from ancient DNA, genetic material more than about 50 thousand years old cannot be reliably recovered. Nevertheless, a team of scientists has now demonstrated that computers could be used to reconstruct with 98 percent accuracy the DNA of a creature that lived at the time of the dinosaurs more than 75 million years ago–a small, furry nocturnal animal that was the common ancestor of all placental mammals, including human
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