A revolutionary diagnostic technique that sees under the skin sounds rooted in the realms of science fiction. But an invention akin to the Star Trek small handheld body scanner that shines light into the skin to detect early signs of heart disease and stroke could be on the market in less than two years.

The painless test takes no more than five minutes to detect Peripheral Vascular Disease (PVD), a condition that affects over 90 million people worldwide. What starts off as blo

A daily dose of aspirin is an inexpensive, proven strategy for reducing the likelihood of heart disease among those most at risk for such disorders, yet a new study from the Stanford University School of Medicine shows that aspirin therapy is being used by fewer than one-third of the U.S. outpatients who would benefit from it.

Instead, the research found, many doctors are opting to prescribe the more expensive, heavily marketed statin drugs, which are no more effective than aspir

Exercise capacity, as measured in terms of VO2max, is a powerful predictor of death in patients with coronary artery disease, not just patients with heart failure. That is the finding of Mayo Clinic research presented today at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2005 in Dallas.

VO2max is the maximum amount of oxygen a person can take in during exercise. In a VO2max study, a patient walks on a treadmill for about 5 to 15 minutes and breathes through a valve;

Pumps implanted into the chest to maintain circulation can significantly extend the lives of the sickest patients in end-stage heart failure who are not candidates for heart transplantation, according to the results of a clinical trial led by Duke University Medical Center cardiologists.

The pumps, known as left ventricular assistant devices (LVADs), are employed when the heart’s left ventricle – the chamber of the heart that pumps blood throughout the body – is too weak

Chronic stress can induce rapid blocking of arteries after a balloon angioplasty procedure, according to research performed in animal studies at Georgetown University Medical Center. Blocked coronary arteries after angioplasty affect 41 percent of patients who undergo the procedure and can lead to death.

But the Georgetown scientists also demonstrated that this stress-induced atherosclerosis could be prevented by blocking a certain neuropeptide in blood vessels. They say the resu

Not all plaque – the fatty substance that builds up in arteries – is the same and some plaque types are more likely to rupture, which can trigger the formation of a blood clot and a blocked artery. An experimental spectroscopic/imaging technique can provide exact information about plaque components that can help guide treatment, researchers reported at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2005.

“Time-resolved laser-induced fluorescence spectroscopy or TR-LIFS can be u

New research shows that the special training of music conductors seems to enhance the way their senses work together – enabling them to quickly tell who played a wrong note, for example. Scientists hope the research will lead to new discoveries about how music training may change the brain.

“Studies have shown that while students who get music training may sometimes do better academically, no research has explored whether this training actually causes changes in the brain,” said

Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center researchers are encouraged by early results of a treatment vaccine for pancreatic cancer, a disease with few options and low odds for long-term survival. At about two years into a study of 60 patients, the researchers report that 88 percent survived one year and 76 percent are alive after two years.

“Even though our results are preliminary, the survival rates are an improvement over most published results of pancreatic cancer treatment studies,” s

Faster reaction rates, a substantially higher yield and a cleaner production process than is currently possible in the chemical industry. That is the result of a new sustainable chemical process that researchers from Universiteit van Amsterdam and Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen have developed with support from NWO ACTS (Advanced Chemical Technologies for Sustainability). A patent has recently been requested for this discovery.

Faster reaction rates, a substantially higher yield an

A leading neuroscientist at MIT and one from the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) report in the Nov. 4 special issue of Science dedicated to the brain that the controversy is over: The “protomap” and “protocortex” theories of brain development are dead.

The cerebral cortex is a sheet of around 10 billion neurons divided into distinctly separate areas that process particular aspects of sensation, movement and cognition. To what extent are these areas predetermin

Preclinical findings presented at Society for Neuroscience meeting

An experimental treatment that spares disability from acute stroke may be delivered much later than the current three-hour treatment standard – a potential advance needed to benefit more stroke victims.

Researchers at the University of South Florida found that human umbilical cord blood cells administered to rats two days following a stroke greatly curbed the brain’s inflammatory response, reduc

A research team headed by Dr. Scott Bultman (University of North Carolina) has identified an essential role for the mammalian SWI/SNF chromatin remodeling complex in red blood cell formation. The authors generated a partial loss-of-function mutations in the ATPase domain of the SWI/SNF catalytic subunit, Brg1, effectively uncoupling its ATPase and chromatin remodeling activities.

Brg1-mutant mice die at mid-gestation due to defective erythropoiesis. Commenting on the relevance to human dis

Duke University Medical Center researchers have found that patients with six specific variants of genes involved in the body’s immune response are significantly more likely to suffer damage of heart tissue after cardiac surgery.

These findings are important because current analytical methods cannot reliably predict who will be likely to suffer from myocardial infarction (MI), or heart tissue death after cardiac surgery. It is estimated that between 7 and 15 percent of patien

Provides new strategy for designing better treatments

Mayo Clinic researchers, working with colleagues at the University of Minnesota and University of Pittsburgh, are the first to describe a new role for a specialized cell of the immune system in children suffering from a rare muscle-damaging disease known as juvenile dermatomyositis (JDM). The specialized cells, called dendritic cells, have never before been found inside muscle tissue of JDM patients — a discovery that sugg

Southampton-based company iQur has scooped the 2005 Medical Futures Department of Health Award for Best National Healthcare Innovation for its Hepatitis C diagnostic service, that can revolutionise the cost-effectiveness of treatment for Hepatitis C. iQur, formerly named HepCgen Limited, spun out from the University of Southampton in 2003.

The Medical Futures Innovations Awards are often referred to as the ‘Oscars of Healthcare’. iQur was presented with the Award for its research

Meditation is known to alter resting brain patterns, suggesting long lasting brain changes, but a new study by researchers from Yale, Harvard, Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology shows meditation also is associated with increased cortical thickness.

The structural changes were found in areas of the brain that are important for sensory, cognitive and emotional processing, the researchers report in the November issue of NeuroReport.