The use of a small wireless capsule video device to detect bleeding in the small intestine is safe, well-tolerated, and more accurate than another common diagnostic approach according to a study presented at the 67th Annual Scientific Meeting of the American College of Gastroenterology.

“The investigation of obscure gastrointestinal bleeding is often difficult due to limitations of conventional endoscopic studies in the detection of disorders in the small intestine,” said Ramona M. Lim, M.D

Researchers recommend testing symptomatic patients for the condition

Researchers at the University of Kansas Medical Center (Kansas City) urge physicians to consider adding fructose breath testing to their diagnostic strategy for patients with unexplained abdominal pain, gas, diarrhea, and intestinal rumbling or gurgling. The recent study’s results, presented at the 67th Annual Scientific Meeting of the American College of Gastroenterology, indicate that fructose malabsorption oc

The genetically – inherited disease cystic fibrosis causes severe, unrelenting lung disease in children and adults worldwide. Approximately 1 in 2,500 infants are born with this disease and only half survive past 30 years of age.

Now, researchers from the Women’s and Children’s Hospital, Adelaide have developed a novel system of gene therapy for lungs affected by cystic fibrosis, involving a natural compound found in our lungs which ’conditions’ lung airways to allow cells to take up the t

Onkologen in Italien haben nachgewiesen, dass eine strukturierte Einführung zur Bereitstellung von Gesundheitsinformationen für Krebspatienten wirklich ihr psychologisches und physisches Befinden verbessert und dass dieses Schema in jeder Krebsstation eingeführt werden sollte. Die Ergebnisse einer Studie mit 3.300 Patienten beim Test einer Methode zur Vermittlung von Gesundheitsinformationen für Krebspatienten wurden heute (20 Oktober 2002) beim Kongress der European Society for Medical Oncology in N

Ein innovativer Versuch eines Tests, von traditionellen chinesischen Arzneimitteln mit westlichen Forschungsmethoden, wurde von Onkologen in Hongkong entwickelt, um den Stellenwert der chinesischen Arzneimitteltherapie innerhalb eines Programms zur konventionellen Behandlung zu beurteilen.

Bei seiner (19 Oktober 2002) Rede auf dem Kongress der European Society for Medical Oncology in Nizza, Frankreich, sagte Dr. Tony Mok von der Chinese University of Hongkong, “Sehr viele Personen in China

Early results of North American trials of chemotherapy drug oxaliplatin

For patients with bowel cancer that has spread to other organs despite treatment there has been little hope until now. However, early results of trials in North America of a chemotherapy drug called oxaliplatin, given in conjunction with two standard drugs, 5-FU and leucovorin, delay tumour progression by 70% compared with the control component of the study. There is also a significant improvement in the symptoms

Two parts of the body’s immune system are critical for its normal functioning. One of these, the innate immune component, must defend the body against onslaughts from foreign substances it has never before seen. Failure of the immune system can result in cancer, autoimmune disease, or life threatening viral infections. Scientists at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center have identified a gene called MEF that is essential to the development of Natural Killer cells and Natural Killer T-cells, whi

The world speed record for protein folding apparently goes to an unusually tiny specimen that traces its origins to Gila monster spit.

So reports a team of University of Florida researchers in a paper published this week in the online edition of the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Though significant mainly from a purely scientific standpoint, the finding eventually may be important in researchers’ understanding of the underlying causes behind a host of maladies.

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The animals and plants of our planet are becoming extinct under the pressure of civilization. The scientists have counted that one species vanishes from Earth every hour. The mammoth, passenger pigeon, gare-fowl, Steller`s sea cow – these are the most well-known of extinct species, but hundreds of species are next in turn. Can the scientists forecast what species is the first in this succession and what species is not under the threat of complete extinction? If the answer is known, the effort and fun

Work stress is associated with a doubling of the risk of death from heart disease, finds a study in this week’s BMJ.

Researchers followed 812 healthy employees (545 men, 267 women) of a company in Finland for an average of 25 years. They gathered data on stress, blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and body mass index by questionnaire, interviews, and clinical examinations. Cardiovascular deaths were calculated using the national mortality register.

They found that job strain (high w

Scientists from the McKusick-Nathans Institute for Genetic Medicine at Johns Hopkins may have discovered why a rare genetic disease is more common in children born to older fathers. The disease, Apert syndrome, leads to webbed fingers and early fusion of the skull bones and must be corrected by surgery.

While Apert syndrome itself affects only 1 in 160,000 births, the scientists believe their findings could extend to many of the 20 or so other genetic conditions similarly linked to older fa

Ageing does not only affect the way we look from outside; the microbiota living in our gut also changes with age. The intestinal microbiota of infants is quite well identified, but only 8% of the microbes in elderly people can be characterised at the moment.

We all carry inside us millions of mostly beneficial bacteria that help us manage our diet successfully and maintain our health, although we seldom realise it. So far, the composition of our microbiota is still an area that we know rathe

Researchers have found that a primitive type of ion channel similar to those found in mammalian nerve cells helps bacteria resist the blast of acid they encounter in the stomach of their hosts.

The discovery suggests a plausible mechanism whereby bacteria can fend off stomach acidity long enough to establish themselves in the intestine. More broadly, said the scientists, the finding represents the first insight into why bacteria have forms of the same ion channels — proteins that control t

Our bodies contain proteins that are made of smaller molecules that can be either left- or right-handed, depending upon their structure. Regardless of which hand we use to write, however, all human beings are `left-handed` at the molecular level. Life on Earth uses the left-handed variety and no one knows how this preference crept into living systems. In 2012, ESA`s Rosetta lander will land on a comet to investigate, among other things, if the origin of this preference lies in the stars.

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Elderly people who suffer from depression can take the edge off faster by using a drug called mirtazapine, which appears to work more quickly compared to rival drugs. These results come from a study by researchers at Stanford University Medical Center who compared two drugs in an eight-week trial. Although both drugs treated the depression, mirtazapine began working sooner and eased the patient’s anxiety – a common effect of depression in elderly people.

“There’s a sense that we n

Heat-denatured p24 Antigen Tests Can Cut Cost of HIV Progression Monitoring

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the University of Zurich, Switzerland, have identified a test for monitoring the progression of HIV in the early stages of the disease that is less expensive than current tests used to monitor the progression of HIV. The test, called HIV-1 protein 24 (p24) antigen, predicts disease progression as well as CD4 lymphocyte count and HIV-1 RNA v