Educational seminar seeks to inform, calm anxious patients

A recent study found that tumors of the pituitary gland are more common than many health care professionals realize, with national prevalence rates averaging 16.7 percent. To neurosurgeon Dr. Gail Rosseau, this isn’t surprising.

Rosseau, who treats patients with a variety of neurological conditions at Rush University Medical Center and the Chicago Institute of Neurosurgery and Neuroresearch (CINN), says th

Besides having faced grave risks inherent in military hostilities, many combat veterans experience a heightened chance of suffering heart and lung damage later in life because of unhealthy personal habits, a new University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill study concludes.

The study was presented today (April 29) at the American Heart Association scientific meeting in Washington, D.C. It found combat veterans more likely to be heavy smokers and drinkers than both veterans not dir

Loneliness and social network appear to make independent contributions to immunity

A new study at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh confirms how college challenges both mind and body, by demonstrating that lonely first-year students mounted a weaker immune response to the flu shot than did other students. The study appears in the May issue of Health Psychology, which is published by the American Psychological Association (APA).

The research team, headed by doctor

– Three-Year Study Covers 37 Million Hospitalizations, Uses AHRQ Indicators –

– Nation’s Safest Hospitals, Identified in Study, Tend to Have “Culture of Safety” –

– Cost to Medicare of Patient Safety Incidents: $3 Billion Annually –

– Hospital-Acquired Infections Grow, Prove Costly –

Patient safety incidents at America’s hospitals increased slightly, but the nation’s safest hospitals grew even safer, resulting in a wider gap in patient safety inciden

What do the family film “The Jungle Book” and the action thriller “True Lies” have in common? Both contain similar amounts of violence despite respective PG and R ratings.

A new study led by researchers at the UCLA School of Public Health shows that parents and filmgoers who use the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) ratings system to gauge movie content receive little meaningful guidance related to violent content.

The study was funded by the Centers for Dise

When the Boston Red Sox won their first World Series title since 1918 last year, the team had some new blood, including key players Curt Schilling, Orlando Cabrera and Doug Mientkiewicz, to mix with the old and help the team achieve the pinnacle of baseball success.

In a paper to be published April 29 in the journal Science, Northwestern University researchers turned to a different type of team — creative teams in the arts and sciences — to determine a team’s recipe for suc

Farmers growing genetically modified rice in field trials in China report higher crop yields, reduced pesticide use and fewer pesticide-related health problems, according to a study by researchers in China and at Rutgers University and the University of California, Davis. Results of the study will appear in the April 29 issue of the journal Science.

“This paper studies two of the four GM varieties that are now in farm-level preproduction trials, the last step before commerciali

Many pathogens are able to infect multiple species within a community and are commonly transmitted across species. Cross-species transmission is often associated with pathogen emergence and therefore has been considered as a negative factor for humans, wildlife, and species of agricultural importance.

Many pathogens like malaria, Lyme disease or West Nile encephalitis that infect multiple hosts are commonly transmitted by vectors, and their transmission rate is often thought to depend on

Researchers at Yale, in collaboration with NIH researchers, have identified a specific protein molecule that is used by the immune system for detection of parasitic infections, leading the way for development of future vaccines to combat these infections.

Published in the April 28 issue of Science Express, the study provides insight into understanding how infectious parasites interface with the immune system–a problem of great scientific and clinical importance.

Most

No reliable studies exist to support removal of trouble-free impacted wisdom teeth, according to a systematic review of evidence. Despite this surprising lack of data, extraction of third molars has long been considered appropriate care in most developed countries.

“Watchful monitoring” of asymptomatic wisdom teeth may be a more appropriate strategy, suggest review authors led by Dr. Dirk Mettes of Radboud University Medical Centre Nijmegen in the Netherlands. Furthermore, they ad

A simple DNA test that is available commercially to help people establish their ancestry could in fact disclose male infertility claims a new study from the University of Leicester.

The world renowned Department of Genetics – the UK’s top rated research Genetics department where DNA genetic fingerprinting was discovered – has published a paper, Inadvertent diagnosis of male infertility through genealogical DNA testing, in the Journal of Medical Genetics.

Report author

Two Scandinavian studies have provided further evidence that environmental factors could be affecting men’s reproductive health.

The studies, published online today (Thursday 28 April) in Europe’s leading reproductive medicine journal Human Reproduction, suggest that environmental pollutants could be changing the ratio of sperm carrying the X or Y (sex determining) chromosomes and that they could be contributing towards male reproductive disorders.

A study by Swedish

Early results of the largest and most diverse screening study of a genetic condition that causes too much iron to build up in the body show that Asians and Pacific Islanders have the highest mean levels of iron in their blood of all ethnic groups involved, including African Americans, Caucasians, Hispanics, and Native Americans.

Hemochromatosis, one of the most common inherited disorders among Caucasians, can lead to iron overload, or a buildup of iron in the body’s organs

After the dissolution of cohabiting unions, men’s economic standing is only moderately affected whereas women experience a significant decrease in their economic standing–a substantial portion end up in poverty. This income loss is particularly pronounced for African American and Hispanic women with nearly half living below the poverty threshold at the end of a cohabitating relationship. An article published in the latest issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family is one of the first to document t

The labels put on youths who commit violent crimes not only prevent society from understanding their behavior, but also act as a barrier to solving the problem, says a Purdue University sociologist.

“Children are supposed to be innocent and vulnerable, and it’s our job as adults to protect them,” says J. William Spencer, associate professor of sociology. “But what happens when teen-agers become ’cold-hearted’ and terrorize, or even kill, their classmates and teach

Tiredness, feeding their baby and lack of time to care for other children are three of the key stresses experienced by new mothers, according to a study in the latest Journal of Advanced Nursing.

861 women who had given birth during the last six weeks were asked to rate 85 potential stress factors on a scale of one to five, with higher scores indicating greater stress levels.

The women were all married, had delivered a single, healthy, full-term baby without complications