Gaining 15 pounds or more over several years is the major contributor to progression of risk factors for heart disease and development of metabolic syndrome, while maintaining a stable weight — even in individuals considered obese – significantly reduces those risks, according to a study led by a Northwestern University researcher.

Donald Lloyd-Jones, M.D., assistant professor of preventive medicine and of medicine at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, pr

A new study finds tobacco may act as an environmental trigger for patients with an inherited genetic predisposition to pancreatic cancer. The authors of the report say the findings underscore the importance of strongly counseling patients with a family history of pancreatic cancer to avoid smoking. The study will be published in the December 15, 2004 issue of CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society. A free abstract of this study will be available via the CANCER News Room

A new study gives people in their 50s and 60s another reason to get off the couch and be physically active — especially if they have conditions or habits that endanger their hearts, like diabetes, high blood pressure or smoking.

The study, based on data from 9,611 older adults, shows that those who were regularly active in their 50s and early 60s were about 35 percent less likely to die in the next eight years than those who were sedentary. For those who had a high heart risk be

Patients who undergo coronary artery bypass surgery are prescribed life-saving medications at discharge significantly less frequently than heart attack patients who receive less invasive angioplasty procedures, according to a new analysis by researchers at the Duke Clinical Research Institute.

These findings are important, the researchers said, because the drugs in question — aspirin, ACE inhibitors, beta blockers and statins — have been proven effective by multi-center clinical

A Penn State study has shown that a diet rich in alpha-linolenic acid from walnuts, walnut oil and flaxseed oil not only lowered bad cholesterol but also decreased markers for blood vessel inflammation in men and women representative of typical Americans at cardiovascular risk.

While previous studies have shown that walnut supplementation favorably affects cholesterol and other lipids that are signs of cardiovascular risk, this new study is the first to demonstrate that a diet

Cath lab procedure could replace major heart surgery in some patients

The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP) is participating in a nationwide clinical trial of a new valve repair device that could replace major heart surgery in some patients. A tiny clip – delivered by a catheter and deployed in the heart to repair a malfunctioning and leaking mitral valve – is building a favorable safety and feasibility profile as the EVEREST Phase I clinical trial nears completion.

A new magnetic navigation system shows promise for use during percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI), researchers reported at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2004.

“The computer-controlled magnetic system is useful to steer guide wires and navigate turns in tortuous coronary arteries that would otherwise be impossible to negotiate,” said study co-author Neal S. Kleiman, M.D., director of cardiac catheterization laboratories at the Methodist DeBakey

The cells of higher organisms have an internal mechanism for chewing up and recycling parts of themselves, particularly in times of stress, like starvation and disease. But nobody is quite sure yet whether this recently discovered process protects cells, or causes damage.

This process of internal house-cleaning in the cell is called autophagy – literally self-eating – and it is now considered the second form of programmed cell death (PCD). Apoptosis, the first kind of programme

For those who have wondered why they like or dislike certain things, or how they decide what to order from a menu, a team of researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder says it’s dopamine.

A CU-Boulder team studying Parkinson’s disease patients found strong evidence that dopamine in the brain plays a key role in how people implicitly learn to make choices that lead to good outcomes, while avoiding bad ones. The finding could help researchers understand more abo

The best treatment doctors currently have for stroke can accelerate the death of brain cells in addition to dissolving blood clots, researchers report in the journal Nature Medicine. But they also found good news: Another drug currently used to treat patients with severe sepsis counters the harmful effects, offering the possibility that a combination of two already-approved drugs might offer a powerful new stroke treatment that would give doctors a bigger window of time to treat patients.

Immune responses to prevent or delay the spread of melanoma, a deadly form of skin cancer, are more likely to prolong survival in patients if their immune cells carry a special kind of marker on the surface, according to a team of researchers at the University of Virginia Health System. The finding is published in the November 1 issue of the journal Cancer Research, found on the web at http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/

The researchers correlated the presence or absence of the p

Because 60 percent of yeast genes have at least one clearly identifiable human counterpart, the advance, described in the Nov. 5 issue of Molecular Cell, should speed advances in understanding human gene and protein functions, as well as improve the reliability of what scientists think they know about this extremely useful microorganism. Eventually the work with yeast could reveal particular gene interactions that could become targets for therapies to fight cancers or fungal infections, say the

Researchers at the Monell Chemical Senses Center and the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to reveal that food cravings activate brain areas related to emotion, memory and reward – areas also activated during drug-craving studies. Study lead author Marcia Levin Pelchat, PhD, a Monell Center sensory psychologist, comments, “This is consistent with the idea that cravings of all kinds, whether for food, drugs, or designer shoes, have com

Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center may have made a crucial discovery in the understanding of cellular aging.

In a study published in the Nov. 1 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, the researchers report that as cells and tissues age, the expression of two proteins called p16INK4a and ARF dramatically increases. This increase in expression, more than a hundredfold in some tissues, suggests a strong lin

By using a device only six-millionths of a meter long, researchers at Cornell University have been able to detect the presence of as few as a half-dozen viruses — and they believe the device is sensitive enough to notice just one.

The research could lead to simple detectors capable of differentiating between a wide variety of pathogens,i ncluding viruses, bacteria and toxic organic chemicals. The experiment, an extension of earlier work in which similar devices were used to det

Researchers using extremely high resolution imaging have found an atomic switch capable of discriminating color in a bacterial membrane protein.

In a paper posted today on Science Express, the rapid advance publication page of Science, scientists from The University of Texas Medical School at Houston and the University of California , Irvine , describe the versatile light-sensing protein at levels of resolution smaller than a nanometer – one billionth of a meter.

“Hig