A University of Colorado at Boulder study has shown the health of mice carrying a genetic mutation for a disease that is the leading cause of sudden cardiac death in people under 30 worsened considerably when the animals were fed a soy-based diet.

Male mice carrying the mutation for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, or HCM, were severely affected by the soy diet, exhibiting progressively enlarged heart muscles and eventual heart failure, said CU-Boulder Professor Leslie Leinwand. When the m

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine took a step closer to understanding the basis of a severe epilepsy and mental retardation syndrome with work published in the January 5, 2006 issue of the journal Neuron.
Joseph Gleeson, M.D., Director of the Neurogenetics Laboratory at the UCSD School of Medicine and associate professor in the Department of Neurosciences, and his research team have developed a mouse model for a severe brain disorder in newborn chi

In a new study of more than 68,000 infants published in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine, the investigational vaccine Rotateq demonstrated that it can safely prevent 98 percent of severe cases of viral diarrhea and vomiting that account for 2 million hospital visits and 500,000 pediatric deaths each year worldwide.

In one of the largest pre-licensure vaccine clinical trials ever conducted worldwide, research championed by an Eastern Virginia Medical School investigator demonst

Older Americans with alcohol problems do not get worse treatment than their sober peers when they are hospitalized for a heart attack, according to new research on Medicare patients across the country.

Alcoholic patients were less likely than sober patients to receive beta-blocker drugs when they were discharged from the hospital, but there were no other significant treatment differences between the two groups. The study is published in the latest issue of the journal Alcoholi

A nine-year study looks at the impact of “alcohol deterrents” (ADs) disulfiram and calcium carbimide. Researchers found an abstinence rate of more than 50 percent among the patients studied. ADs appear to play a major psychological role in relapse prevention.
Studies investigating the long-term outcomes of alcoholism treatment are rare and inconsistent. A nine-year study in the January issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research investigates the

Results of the first study on the long-term effects of a dietary pattern low in fat and high in carbohydrates suggest that a low-fat eating pattern does not lead to weight gain.

The new Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) study examined the relationships between weight changes in postmenopausal women and specific changes in types of food eaten. Women in the intervention group were counseled to decrease fat intake to 20 percent of calories and to replace calories from fat with calories fr

Not all cardiac arrests are the same, says study leader

Children survive in-hospital cardiac arrests more frequently than adults, cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) may improve outcomes for both groups, and better knowledge of the underlying cause of a cardiac arrest may increase the chances of helping a patient survive it. These are some of the findings of the largest-ever study of cardiac arrests occurring in hospitals.

Researchers from the National Registry of CPR

Most sexually active teenage girls know relatively little about sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) until it is too late, according to a paper by Carnegie Mellon University researchers that will be published in the January edition of the Journal of Adolescent Health.

“For the most part kids learn about sexually transmitted diseases when they are getting diagnosed with them,” said Julie Downs, lead author of the study and a member of the Department of Social and Decision Science

Skeletal evidence shows abrupt worldwide increase in birth rate during Neolithic period

In an important new study assessing the demographic impact of the shift from foraging to farming, anthropologists use evidence from 60 prehistoric American cemeteries to prove that the invention of agriculture led to a significant worldwide increase in birth rate.
Discussing the shifts in the demographic patterns before and after the introduction of agriculture in Europe at the end of the

Ethnic minority groups must be included in European health research

Despite the knowledge that ethnicity matters in cardiovascular disease, most studies of cardiovascular disease risk have not been designed to yield results that apply to different ethnic groups, report Meghna Ranganathan and Raj Bhopal (of Edinburgh University) in a new study in the international open-access medical journal PLoS Medicine.

To ensure that the results of research studies can be applied

Although cystic fibrosis patients in clinical trials had more severe illness, worse lung function, a lower weight level and more respiratory infection than non-participants, their involvement in research studies resulted in less lung function decline over a 7-year period.

The research results appeared in the first issue for January 2006 of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, published by the American Thoracic Society.

Christopher H. Goss, M.D.

A study in the Jan. 3 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine shows that walking three times a week, even in an unsupervised exercise program, can significantly improve walking ability and slow progression of peripheral artery disease (PAD). PAD often causes leg pain because of impaired blood flow in the arteries.

The study of 417 men and women, conducted by researchers at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, indicates that those who walked for exercise three or

Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco have determined that there is a strong relationship between being obese and developing end-stage renal disease, or kidney failure.

The long-range study found that the obese have up to a seven times greater risk of kidney failure than normal weight people, suggesting that obesity should be considered a risk factor for the condition, and that kidney failure is yet another consequence of obesity.

“There are more a

A new UCLA imaging study shows that age-related breakdown of myelin, the fatty insulation coating the brain’s internal wiring, correlates strongly with the presence of a key genetic risk factor for Alzheimer disease.

The findings are detailed in the January edition of the peer-reviewed journal Archives of General Psychiatry and add to a growing body of evidence that myelin breakdown is a key contributor to the onset of Alzheimer disease later in life.

In addition

Young people who view more alcohol advertisements tend to drink more alcohol, according to a new study in the January issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA Archives journals.

Young people are beginning to drink at an earlier age than ever before and their actions can have consequences ranging from poor grades to alcoholism and car accidents, according to background information in the article. Several studies have found an association between expos

Reduced volume, or atrophy, in parts of the brain known as the amygdala and hippocampus may predict which cognitively healthy elderly people will develop dementia over a six-year period, according to a study in the January issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

New strategies may be able to prevent or delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the most common cause of dementia among older adults, according to background information in