Nearly one out of two visits to a doctor’s office for help with a sleep disorder result in the prescription of potentially addictive medications, a new study reports.

Office visits by older patients and those with publicly funded health insurance plans were nearly twice as likely to result in the prescription of these kinds of medications.

The drugs, called benzodiazepines, are often a cheaper alternative to some newer types of medicines that don’t have the same potenti

A child’s social environment may have only a modest effect on whether very young children become depressed, according to new Australian research.

“Our study found that even dysfunctional family relationships and poor communication styles have a limited impact on the observed mental health of a child,” Professor Jake Najman said. “This was contrary to our expectations.”

Professor Najman, from UQ’s Schools of Social Science and Population Health, is lead autho

Violence may be viewed as infectious disease

In a study designed to isolate the root causes of violent behavior, Harvard Medical School researchers found that young teens who witnessed gun violence were more than twice as likely as non-witnesses to commit violent crime themselves in the following years. The study will appear in the May 27 issue of Science.

“Based on this study’s results, showing the importance of personal contact with violence, the best model for violence

Quick subconscious thinking decides ‘how much louder?’ and which muscles to use

How someone tells you to “keep quiet” affects whether or how you might comply. But what happens when you’re asked to “talk louder,” or you’re talking and the background noise level suddenly goes up?

Purdue University researchers found that how you get louder is a function of how you’re told to speak louder and environmental cues. Far more surprising, they discovered that tryin

OHSU scientist participates in study supporting wider use of commercial microarrays

Technology for analyzing gene expression must be standardized among laboratories and across platforms around the world to support this age of human genome exploration, an Oregon Health & Science University researcher says.

Otherwise, scientists using DNA microarrays, also known as gene chips, risk having their research results called into question, said Peter Spencer, Ph.D., professor of ne

Researchers analyze probability of hurricane-force winds in 35 East Coast, Gulf of Mexico cities

Hurricane-force winds are most likely to strike this year in Cape Hatteras, N.C., and Miami Beach and Naples, Fla., according to an analysis of coastal cities by a University of Central Florida professor and a Georgia researcher released today. Cape Hatteras has a 10.31 percent chance of experiencing hurricane-force winds this year, followed by Miami Beach at 10.16 percent and Naple

Addressing a persistent debate in the field of dyslexia research, scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Southern California (USC) have disproved the popular theory that deficits in certain visual processes cause the spelling and reading woes commonly suffered by dyslexics.

Rather, a more general problem in basic sensory perception may be at the root of the learning disorder, the scientists report today (May 29, 2005) in the journal Nature Neuros

Measuring a hormone in the blood can help doctors greatly reduce the number of days pneumonia patients have to take antibiotics to cure their infection, according to a study to be presented at the American Thoracic Society International Conference on May 24.

In the study, pneumonia patients whose level of the hormone procalcitonin was measured during the course of their illness took antibiotics an average of 6 days, compared with 12 days for patients whose procalcitonin levels

Patients who had received livers from hepatitis B virus core antibody (HBcAb) positive (indicates prior exposure to hepatitis B) and/or hepatitis C virus (HCV) positive donors had similar graft and patient survival compared to patients who received HBcAb negative or HCV negative livers, according to a study by the University of Pittsburgh’s Thomas E. Starzl Transplantation Institute. The results of their findings are being presented today at sixth annual American Transplant Congress, the joint

Patients disfigured in traumatic incidents are much more likely to suffer post traumatic stress disorder, unemployment, marital problems, binge drinking and depression, according to a study by Yale School of Medicine researchers.

Although the study included only 20 subjects, the findings are significant and address an issue that has not been widely studied, said the senior author, John Persing, M.D., professor and section chief of plastic surgery in the Department of Surgery.

Patients approaching the end of life can significantly reduce their depression symptoms and improve their sense of spiritual well-being according to a study published in the current issue of the Journal of Palliative Medicine.

“Patients with serious medical conditions frequently suffer psychological, relational, and spiritual distress that is being inadequately addressed by modern health care,” writes first author Douglas Miller, M.D., Indiana University School of Medicine pr

(Can social factors explain sex differences in insomnia? Findings from a National Survey in Taiwan J Epidemiol Community Health 2005; 59: 488-94)

Women have higher rates of insomnia than men, but the better educated a woman is, the more likely she is to sleep through the night, finds a large study in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. Conversely, the better educated a man is, the less likely he is to get a good night’s sleep, the research shows.

The

A new therapy that uses magnetic pulses to stimulate the brain may improve recovery after a stroke, according to a study published in the May 24 issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

The treatment, called repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, improved motor function in a small group of people. For the stimulation, an insulated wire coil is placed on the scalp, and a brief electrical current is passed through the coil, creating

As a treatment for advanced cancer, shark cartilage fails to benefit patients and its adverse effects lead to poor compliance. A clinical trial published in the July 1, 2005 issue of CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, finds there was no difference in overall survival or quality of life between patients who received shark cartilage and those who received a placebo.

Some experiments have shown that some forms of shark cartilage possess a modest ability

Research at The Hospital for Sick Children (Sick Kids) shows that playground injuries among children were significantly reduced after the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) removed hazardous equipment from school playgrounds in 2000 and replaced it with safer equipment. This research is reported in the May 24, 2005 issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

The study looked at data from 86 elementary schools before and after the playground equipment was replaced in 200

In a recent study published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, scientists report that a molecule previously thought to play a purely structural and inert role in cells is actually involved in multidrug resistance in cancer. Using antagonists for this molecule, the researchers were able to sensitize drug resistant breast cancer cells to chemotherapeutic drug treatment.

The research appears as the “Paper of the Week” in the May 27 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistr