Pregnancy complications and maternal cardiovascular risk: opportunities for intervention and screening? BMJ Volume 325, pp 157-60 Recent evidence suggests that women with a history of complications in pregnancy may be at increased risk of diabetes and heart disease in later life. Researchers in this week’s BMJ suggest that these women should be screened and given relevant health education. Women who develop diabetes during pregnancy (a condition known as gestational diabetes) are

When a man is first diagnosed with prostate cancer, the initial visit to the doctor becomes a blur. Complex decisions about treatment now face the patient, yet formulating adequate questions is often difficult. Further clouding the picture is the tendancy of some physicians to only recommend treatment options in which they specialize. To empower patients facing these difficult and complex decisions, Temple University’s College of Engineering and the Fox Chase Cancer Center (FCCC), armed

Bacteria prefer milk chocolate to dark chocolate and will swim towards it on an agar plate, so teachers have found out this week (15-19 July) at a summer school run by the Society for General Microbiology at the University of Reading. The experiment is one of a series of A-level practicals currently being produced for teachers by the Society.
“We have developed the chocolate experiment to show that bacteria can detect a food source and swim towards it – a process called chemotaxis. But we’ve see

In a groundbreaking telemedicine development, doctors in Massachusetts earlier this month helped a physician at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station to surgically repair the damaged knee of a meteorologist spending the winter in Antarctica. Using a “telemedicine” connection operated by Raytheon Polar Services Co. (RPSC) of Centennial, Colo., orthopedic surgeon Bertram Zarins and anesthesiologist Vicki Modest, both of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, helped South Pole physician Dr. Timothy Polla

As Congress considers legislative proposals aimed at saving Medicare+Choice, a new study published today on the Health Affairs Web site shows that under the best-case scenario, enrollment in the troubled managed care program would stabilize at about 5 million beneficiaries. Under the worst case of the four policy proposals to boost sluggish M+C reimbursement, enrollment would shrink to just 3.3 million by 2005, according to the article by health care scholars Kenneth E. Thorpe and Adam Ather

Two seemingly unrelated Native American children have one painful thing in common: juvenile Paget’s disease (JPD), an extremely rare, bone metabolism disorder. Now, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Shriners Hospitals for Children, St. Louis, have discovered that the two patients also share an unusual genetic defect. The research team found that both patients are completely missing the gene for a recently discovered protein called osteoprotegerin, known to

The effect of extremely low frequency electromagnetic fields (ELF-EMF), such as those emitted around high-voltage transmission lines on human health, is controversial. Some studies suggest an association between exposure to ELF-EMF and incidence of leukaemia, although little direct evidence exists that exposure causes damage to biological molecules. A new study, published in the Cancer Cell International, presents experimental evidence to show that extremely low frequency electro-magnetic fields can

Researchers from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) have found that women in a large study who used estrogen replacement therapy after menopause were at increased risk for ovarian cancer. The report was published in the July 17, 2002, issue of JAMA.* The scientists followed 44,241 women for approximately 20 years. Compared to postmenopausal women not using hormone replacement therapy, users of estrogen-only therapy had a 60 percent greater risk of developing ovarian cancer. The risk increased with

The annual sunburn is still a tradition for many Americans, with nearly 60 percent of young adults reporting at least one sunburn in the past year, according to a new study.

Sun damage is the leading preventable cause of both the most deadly form of skin cancer, melanoma, and of the most common forms, basal cell and squamous cell carcinomas. Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer, occurring in more than 1 million Americans annually. Sunburn represents severe skin damage and

Despite two decades of consistent warnings from public health authorities that pregnant women should not drink alcoholic beverages, the vast majority of widely used medical textbooks fail to communicate this message unequivocally, a new study reveals. Many texts, including those published recently, contradict these public health guidelines, researchers report in the August issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. “Medical texts are used for training as well as for reference,” ob

Over the past few years, covalent modifications of histone tails have emerged as an important mechanism of gene regulation in eukaryotes. Now, scientists have identified a major euchromatic histone methyltransferase in mammalian cells that is crucial for normal embryonic development, and possibly the prevention of cancer. In a report published in Genes & Development, Dr. Yoichi Shinkai and colleagues have identified a protein called G9a as an enzyme that adds a methyl group to the lysine 9 amino acid

A team of Johns Hopkins researchers has identified and successfully tested in animals a potential new treatment for liver cancer, a disease for which there are few effective treatments. Writing in the July 15 issue of Cancer Research, the scientists report that only cancer cells were killed when the compound, 3-bromopyruvate, was given to rabbits with experimental liver tumors. “It’s very exciting because we expected the compound to be pretty toxic, but somehow normal c

Disease-free survival from advanced prostate cancer could be almost doubled if hormone-suppression therapy is used during and after radiotherapy for a duration of 3 years, suggest authors of an international study in this week’s issue of THE LANCET.
Long-term survival after radiotherapy for people with advanced prostate cancer is poor. Michel Bolla from University Hospital, Grenoble, France, and colleagues investigated the added value of long-term male-hormone (androgen) suppression in locally ad

Children in America are less likely to die during infancy than they were in previous years, less likely to smoke in 8th or 10th grade, and less likely to give birth during adolescence, according to the 6th annual report, America’s Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2002. The report also noted improvements in some of the economic security indicators: children are more likely to have at least one working parent and to have health insurance. Moreover, children from ages 3 to 5 are mor

Dr. Irv Binik investigates pain during intercourse For some women sex can be uncomfortable. For others it can be downright painful. Dr. Irv Binik, a Psychology professor at McGill and director of the Royal Victoria Sex and Couples Therapy Service is trying to ease the pain. He has been studying the problem of sex-associated pain in women, paying particular attention to two recurrent acute conditions, pain during or after intercourse (dyspareunia) and involuntary spasms of the vagina (v

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has asked for additional information, but no additional clinical trials, as it considers approval of FluMist, an influenza vaccine delivered as a nasal spray. FluMist was invented by Hunein “John” Maassab after more than four decades of research at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Gaithersburg, Md.-based MedImmune has licensed the rights to FluMist from U-M, and has a marketing agreement with pharmaceutical giant Wyeth. “I am