A Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center team is launching a high-tech study to determine if early screening using a special camera and images transmitted over the Internet can prevent blindness in Medicaid patients with diabetes.
“Medicaid patients are rarely screened and are at risk of becoming blind,” said Ramon Velez, M.D., M. Sc., the principal investigator. Diabetes is the leading cause of preventable blindness in the United States and Velez said the study will
A low-fat diet rich in vegetables, fruits, whole grains and beans has twice the cholesterol-lowering power of a conventional low-fat diet, according to a new study from the Stanford University School of Medicine.
In other words, a meal of spinach salad, egg and oatmeal-carrot cookies is healthier for your heart than stir-fried lean beef and asparagus and low-fat chocolate chip cookies – even when both meals contain the same amount of saturated fat and cholesterol.
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A University of Minnesota study is the first to show that if you eat too much fat, it can go straight to your liver and damage it.
In obese people with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), fat from the diet ends up “stuck” in the liver, where it doesn’t belong. It was known that the livers of NAFLD patients accumulated fat, but its origin was unknown. The new work implicates fat from the diet as one cause of NAFLD and shows that fat buildup in the liver results when the
New York Medical College researchers publish new findings on the spread of lyme disease bacteria
The results of a five-year study, published this week in the Annals of Internal Medicine by researchers at New York Medical College, reveal intriguing new data on the spread of the Lyme disease bacteria through the blood stream. The ability to find the Lyme spirochete–the tick-borne agent responsible–in the blood is itself an achievement because existing methods of culturing blood
Study will help policymakers consider cost-benefit of cleaning up polluted coastal waters
Analyzing data from two popular Orange County beaches, Newport and Huntington, researchers estimate that swimming in these coastal waters costs the public $3.3 million per year in health-related expenses. The calculation is based on lost wages and medical care to treat more than 74,000 incidents of stomach illness, respiratory disease and eye, ear and skin infections caused by exposure
Cornell University researchers have revealed a process that has stumped scientists for many years: exactly how an acid derived from vitamin A enters a cell’s nucleus, where it has strong anti-carcinogenic effects.
Discovery of this basic transport mechanism opens a new door for future research on related compounds. The finding has important implications for the fight against cancer and other diseases.
The research, which appears in a recent issue of the journal
A new study finds that E. coli bacteremia — a potentially life-threatening bloodstream infection caused by a common bacteria also associated with less dangerous urinary tract infections — poses a significant public health threat in the United States, especially among seniors.
The study, published by Group Health researchers in the May issue of the Journal of Infectious Diseases, finds E. coli bacteremia may affect as many as 53,000 non-institutionalized people, aged 65 and ol
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
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.
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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
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