Young adults can be motivated to eat more servings of fruits and vegetables if they are exposed to tailored, practical messages about nutrition, a University of Wisconsin-Madison nutritional scientist announced today (Feb. 20) at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Washington, D.C.
“Even though young adults are incredibly busy, they still want to know what they can do to improve their health,” says Susan Nitzke, a professor at
AN embarrassing medical problem that costs UK health services £50m each year is to be investigated in the biggest-ever study of the condition in the world.
Until now, constipation has largely been overlooked for major health studies but the new £650,000 project, which is funded by the British Government, led by a research team from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, and aims to involve nearly 2,000 patients, changes that.
In Britain, nearly half a million GP consu
More potent and highly selective therapy effective in treating Gleevec-resistant disease
A laboratory study led by researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has shown that a potent and highly selective therapy for chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) may ultimately be more effective than Gleevec®, the current standard of care. The researchers report in the February issue of Cancer Cell that the new compound, AMN107, is about 20 times more potent than Gleevec and is effective in t
Following the Asian tsunami, scientists struggled to explain reports that primitive aboriginal tribesmen had somehow sensed the impending danger in time to join wild animals in a life-saving flight to higher ground.
While some scientists discount the existence of a sixth sense for danger, new research from Washington University in St. Louis has identified a brain region that clearly acts as an early warning system — one that monitors environmental cues, weighs possible conseque
Study reveals clues to the mechanism of short-term memory
Understanding the biology of memory is a major goal of contemporary neuroscientists. Short-term or “working” memory is an important process that enables us to interact in meaningful ways with others and to comprehend the world around us on a moment-to-moment basis. A study published this week in Science (February 18) presents a strikingly simple yet robust mathematical model of how short-term memory circuits in the brain a
Three commonly used drugs — Prozac, Xenical and Meridia — may help type 2 diabetes patients lose small amounts of weight, although long-term benefits are not clear, a new review of 22 studies suggests.
Prozac and Sarafem, known generically as fluoxetine, are most commonly prescribed as antidepressants. Xenical, the brand name for orlistat, blocks fat digestion in the intestines. Meridia, known generically as subtramine, is an appetite suppressant that works in the brain.
A new study will test an FDA-approved antidepressant for its potential to alleviate bladder pain for which there is no known cause and no effective therapy. Thousands, if not millions, of patients may benefit. The study is funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Ten medical centers in the United States and Canada are recruiting adults newly diagnosed with either painful bladder syndrome (PBS) or interstitial cystitis (IC) to learn if the oral drug amitriptyline (Elav
In a new study, researchers present a “cautionary tale” about what may go wrong when using the fledgling science of proteomics to devise a diagnostic test for cancer.
In the February 16 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, researchers from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center detail why an experimental test intended to identify early ovarian cancer from a small sample of blood is unlikely to lead to a reliable clinical test right away.
Fundamental prospective trial investigated drug in patients with recurrent colon polyps
The largest prospective trial ever examining the anti-inflammatory drug Vioxx as a chemoprevention agent found that the risk of developing a cardiovascular “event” – heart attacks and/or strokes – was almost double in patients who received the drug, compared to patients who took the placebo, according to a study out Feb. 15 on-line in The New England Journal of Medicine. The risk was first disco
A new study of 60 newborns in New York City reveals that exposure of expectant mothers to combustion-related urban air pollution may alter the structure of babies’ chromosomes while in the womb. While previous experiments have linked such genetic alterations to an increased risk of leukemia and other cancers, much larger studies would be required to determine the precise increase in risk as these children reach adulthood.
The air pollutants considered in this study include e
The body mass index (BMI) of individuals who drink alcohol may be related to how much, and how often, they drink, according to a new study by researchers at the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). In an analysis of data collected from more than 37,000 people who had never smoked, researchers found that BMI was associated with the number of drinks individuals consumed on the days they drank. Calculated as an individual’s weight in k
Research led by investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) helps explain how a group of angiogenesis inhibitor molecules serve as an important defense mechanism against the development and spread of cancer, offering key insights into why cancerous tumors grow at different rates among different individuals.
The findings, which could help lead to the development of new drug treatments to help keep existing tumors at bay, are reported in the early edition of the Proceedings o
A series of studies by researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center sheds light on the mechanisms used by viruses to thwart a host’s immune defenses and may aid in the development of more effective drugs to fight hepatitis C and West Nile viruses, as well as the flu and the common cold.
In a study to appear in a March issue of the Journal of Virology and currently available online, UT Southwestern researchers describe how an essential gene, called RIG-I, turns on a casca
UCLA investigators reviewed pharmaceutical ads in American medical journals and found that nearly one-third contained no references for medical claims; while the majority of references to published material were available, only a minority of company data-on-file documents were provided upon request; and the majority of original research cited in the ads was funded by or had authors affiliated with the product’s manufacturer.
In one of the largest studies of its kind, UCLA
Participants who quit had a 46% lower death rate
In a new study of 5,887 middle-aged smokers with mild lung disease, those who were randomly assigned to a quit-smoking program had a lower death rate than those assigned to usual care, even though only 21.7 percent of them actually quit smoking.
The annual death rates were 8.8 per 1000 participants in the quit-smoking program and 10.4 per 1000 in the usual care group. The annual death rates for those who actually quit was e
Geoffrey Loftus’ latest research reads more like a murder mystery than a scientific paper.
The University of Washington psychologist’s new study opens with a savage beating and murder on the streets of Fairbanks, Alaska. It features cameo appearances by Julia Roberts and other celebrities. It ends with the conviction of two men based on the eyewitness identification of the defendants from a distance of 450 feet. And, in a post-script, an appeals court orders a new trial
Feedback
