Much as surfers have their own peculiar lingo, they also incur an array of injuries from the sport that can be just as peculiar to physicians, according to research presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

When surfers are injured, many times there are no telltale abrasions since the impact is often with water and not a solid object. Surfers are also usually leashed to their boards, making it easier for them to strike the boards even a

A new clinical study has shown that imatinib mesylate (Gleevec) has activity in AIDS-related Kaposi’s sarcoma (KS). Imatinib inhibits important pathways that spur cancer growth, resulting in the regression of KS tumors within 4 weeks in some patients. The study will be published November 30 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO).

“Imatinib is a targeted therapy originally shown to be effective in treating chronic myelogenous leukemia and gastrointestinal stromal tumors. Th

Adding supplement to antidepressant medication can help patients with continuing symptoms

Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers have found that adding the nutritional supplement SAMe to a standard antidepressant may be helpful to patients who have not responded to single-drug treatment for clinical depression. The pilot study, appearing in the December Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology, found that treatment with both SAMe and an antidepressant improved symptoms i

Funded by NIH grant, College of Pharmacy researchers show welfare recipients benefit from ’work therapy’

It’s said that “idle hands are the devil’s workshop.” A pair of University of Houston professors studying employment and drug use now provide support for that proverb. Led by Isaac D. Montoya, clinical professor at the UH College of Pharmacy, this National Institutes of Health (NIH) study found that employment reduces the chronic drug use of female welfare recipients. “Our re

New help for tailoring treatments

Mayo Clinic researchers have discovered a key molecule that lets doctors identify one of the most aggressive types of kidney cancer. Patients with renal cell carcinoma who have higher levels of a molecule known as B7-H1 in their tumors are nearly five times more likely to die from the disease than patients with low levels or an absence of the molecule.

This key finding can help to improve treatment of the disease, or to serve as a tar

The significance of a detected colon polyp matches closely with the confidence score of an interpreting radiologist using virtual colonoscopy. This suggests that virtual colonoscopy may help determine if polyp removal is truly needed, thereby avoiding overuse of invasive conventional colonoscopy, according to a new study in the December 2004 issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology.

Virtual colonoscopy is a relatively noninvasive examination that uses a CT scan to evaluate the colo

Also helps some patients avoid hysterectomy

MRI-guided ultrasound therapy is an effective way to treat women with uterine fibroids, improving their quality of life and avoiding hysterectomy, a new study shows. The study reviewed the use of MRI and the ExAblate 2000, a device that was recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

About 25% of women have uterine fibroids with a substantial proportion of these experiencing symptoms, said Dr. Wladyslaw Gedroyc of St

Ordinary tap or bottled water could help people suffering from low blood pressure who faint while standing, claim researchers from Imperial College London and St Mary’s Hospital.

According to research published in the latest issue of Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, drinking two glasses of water can raise blood pressure, potentially providing a solution for patients with low blood pressure while standing, caused by autonomic failure. Autonomic failure is where par

Vaccination with the anthrax capsule, a naturally occurring component of the bacterium that causes the disease, protected mice from lethal anthrax infection, according to scientists at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID). In addition, the capsule enhanced the effects of protective antigen (PA), the protective component of the current licensed human vaccine. The work was recently published in the journal VACCINE.

According to senior author

T cells activated in the gut during inflammatory bowel disease can be re-routed to the liver and cause chronic liver disease, according to Eksteen and colleagues in the December 1 issue of The Journal of Experimental Medicine.

A chronic liver disease known as primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) has been linked to inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in the past. But the connection between the two disorders has been unclear, especially as the liver condition often develops years afte

Researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, have shown that rifampicin, an antibiotic used to treat leprosy and tuberculosis, can prevent the formation of protein fibrils associated with the death of brain cells in people with Parkinson’s disease. The drug also dissolved existing fibrils in laboratory tests.

The researchers studied the effects of rifampicin in test tube experiments and are currently doing studies with cell cultures and mice to see if the sa

A drug withdrawn from pharmacy shelves over 20 years ago may point the way to a new treatment for spinal muscular atrophy, or SMA, a muscle-wasting and often life-threatening childhood disease.

A new study suggests that the drug, called indoprofen, increases the production of a protein that is key to the survival of the nerve cells affected by the disease. Indoprofen was taken off the market in the early 1980s due to reports of serious gastrointestinal reactions as well as report

Austrian researchers are successfully treating incontinent women with the patient’s own muscle-derived stem cells. The findings of the first clinical study of its kind were presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

“Urinary incontinence is a major problem for women, and for an increasing number of men,” said Ferdinand Frauscher, M.D., associate professor of radiology at the Medical University of Innsbruck and the head of urorad

A recent discovery unveils the chemical secret that gives old bees the authority to keep young bees home babysitting instead of going out on the town.

A hard-to-detect pheromone explains a phenomenon Michigan State University entomologist Zachary Huang published 12 years ago – that somehow older forager bees exert influence over the younger nurse bees in a hive, keeping them grounded until they are more mature, and thus more ready to handle the demands of buzzing about.

A protein found on the surface of nerve cells makes fruit flies tolerant to a drug after just a single, brief exposure, which may reveal ways to address this early step toward addiction in humans.

Neuroscientist Nigel Atkinson at The University of Texas at Austin and his laboratory determined this by studying the response of fruit flies (Drosophila) to a 15-minute exposure to benzyl alcohol coated on the inner walls of test tubes. Flies that had had one previous exposure to the or

Four years ago in Science, Stuart Kim, a Stanford University developmental biologist, made the case for describing the broad strokes of a complex physiological process before defining its mechanisms. “A powerful, top-down, holistic approach,” he wrote, “is to identify all of the components of a particular cellular process, so that one can define the global picture first and then use it as a framework to understand how the individual components of the process fit together.” To get a broad view of