A voluntary counseling and testing (VCT) program using a mobile van to travel to marketplaces in townships and villages overcomes the structural barriers to HIV testing in Sub-Saharan Africa, according to UCSF researchers.
“Mobile VCT eliminates the cost and inconvenience of having to travel to urban centers for HIV testing, while the presence of the mobile van with outreach workers in busy marketplaces creates familiarity with the testing process and reduces the stigma associated with this
More than 20 percent of preschool children lack required immunizations, placing them and their classmates at risk for illness, according to a new study based on the federal National Immunization Survey.
Whether the children were in day care made no difference in immunization rates, say Carol A. Stanwyck, Ph.D., and two colleagues from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Their work appears in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
“School entry legislation in the
People who often chew aspirin over a prolonged period could severely damage their teeth, according to a case study in this month’s issue of the Journal of the American Dental Association (JADA).
“Aspirin can cause severe damage to both the hard and soft tissues of the mouth,” said researchers from the University of Maryland Dental School, Baltimore. “Dentists should counsel and educate patients and other health care practitioners about the dangers to both hard and soft oral tissues from che
From the late 1950s to the end of 1961, thalidomide was a popular sedative and treatment for morning sickness until it was discovered to cause fetal malformations, which proved fatal within the first year of life in 40 percent of affected infants.
The drug was never marketed in the United States or approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. But researchers recognized the drug’s properties might have cancer-fighting potential. This possibility has driven promising studies into thalidomid
UCSF researchers have found that some HIV patients treated with antiretroviral therapy early after infection do test negative, at some point, for the virus. Study findings showed this result in six of 87 patients.
“First, these patients are not cured. When these patients went off therapy, HIV virus levels rebounded. These results do show that with effective early treatment that reduces the virus to very low levels, the immune system may have less antibody response to HIV,” said the study&#
Technology opens door for study of cause, treatment of Alzheimer’s
UCLA neuroscientists using a new MRI analysis technique to examine myelin sheaths that insulate the brain’s wiring report that as people age, neural connections that develop last degenerate first. The computer-based analysis method is unique in its ability to examine specific brain structures in living people at millimeter resolution.
Published online by the Neurobiology of Aging earlier this year and sch
News tip from the 2004, XV International Conference on AIDS, July 11-16, Bangkok, Thailand
Researchers at Johns Hopkins and the Perinatal HIV Research Unit, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, have determined that the actual average cost for providing primary care to an HIV-infected patient is $30 USD per visit.
“Health care providers and government policy makers can use the information to plan and prepare budgets for aid programs in South and sub-Saharan Africa, w
Human antibodies that thwart the SARS virus in mice can be mass-produced quickly using a new laboratory technique developed by an international research team collaborating with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), one of the National Institutes of Health. The new technique could become an important tool for developing a cocktail of SARS-specific antibodies that might help protect people recently exposed to the SARS virus or at high risk of exposure. The technique could
Biologists from the University of Arizona in Tucson are teaming up with health officials from the Mexican state of Sonora to learn more about the mosquitoes that carry dengue and West Nile viruses and about the disease-causing organisms.
The reported number of dengue fever cases in Sonora has been increasing in the last several years, and the disease appears to be moving north. The dengue fever season in Sonora is seasonal and peaks mid-October, after the summer rainy season.
The
The University Hospital at Navarre University has developed a system for the percutaneous implantation of palladium 103 seeds, a new technique in permanent bradytherapy for the treatment of lung cancer. Recently, the fourth experiment was carried out and the results remitted to the scientific magazine, “Bradytherapy”, for its publication. To date there has been no description in world scientific literature of any case using this therapeutic procedure.
The Clínica Universitaria has hosted the
No beneficial effects were found on cognitive function, bone mineral density or plasma lipids when postmenopausal women age 60 years or older took soy protein supplements with isoflavones for one year, according to a study in the July 7 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
“The sudden decline in estrogen levels after menopause coincides with acceleration of several aging processes,” according to background information in the article. “On average, bone mineral den
A new technology developed by a research group headed by Nimmi Ramanujam, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will be a “third eye” during breast biopsies and can increase the chance for an accurate clinical diagnosis of breast cancer.
Doctors currently use X-ray or ultrasound – two-dimensional pictures – to guide the biopsy needle into a three-dimensional region. To ensure that they are doing the biopsy at the right spot, they take up to a
The factor that puts children at greatest risk of being overweight is having obese parents, according to a new study by Stanford University School of Medicine researchers. By identifying the risk factors that lead to childhood obesity, the researchers hope to pave the way toward preventive measures.
“The findings of this study suggest that at-risk children may be identifiable in the first few years of life,” said W. Stewart Agras, MD, professor emeritus of psychiatry and behavioral sciences
Studies of the geographic variation of colon and rectal (colorectal) cancer mortality rates in the U.S. have long indicated that they are primariliy linked to solar ultraviolet-B (UVB) radiation: the more UVB in summer, the lower the mortality rate.
The hypothesis to explain this result is that UVB radiation produces vitamin D in the skin, and vitamin D acts to reduce the risk of colorectal and over a dozen other types of cancer. One major study found that intake of 150 IU/day of vitamin D
Research in monkeys suggests that a diet high in the natural plant estrogens found in soy does not increase the risk of breast or uterine cancer in postmenopausal women.
“This is convincing evidence that at dietary levels, the estrogens found in soy do not stimulate cell growth and other markers for cancer risk,” said Charles E. Wood, D.V.M., lead researcher, from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. “The findings should be especially interesting to women at high risk for breast
More than 8,000 international scientists and clinicians will arrive in Montreal to share the latest advances in Immunology in the July heat. Researchers from 70 countries will arrive in the city on July 18 to attend the weeklong 12th International Congress of Immunology (ICI) and 4th Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies (FOCIS) Meeting.
“There will be over 5,000 presentations including diverse topics such as, asthma, stem cell and bone marrow transplantation, vaccines, art
Feedback
