Health posts
- May 2, 2013
- 03:53 AM
- 46 views
Treatments Still Aren’t the Right Dose for Kids
by Andrew Porterfield in United Academics
It was an unprecedented move: U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sibelius overruled the FDA when she announced that Teva Pharmaceutical’s Plan B One Step contraceptive pill would not be available to women under 17 years of age. ... Read more »
Funk RS, Brown JT, & Abdel-Rahman SM. (2012) Pediatric pharmacokinetics: human development and drug disposition. Pediatric clinics of North America, 59(5), 1001-16. PMID: 23036241
- May 1, 2013
- 12:29 PM
- 56 views
Pericytes can be used for muscle regeneration
by beredim in Stem Cells Freak
Researchers from the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center (WFBMC) announced today that they may have unveiled some of the mechanisms involved in obesity, diabetes mellitus type 2, muscular dystrophy and other diseases associated with fat replacing muscle tissue, causing it to weaken and degenerate. Their findings have the potential to lead to new therapies for the aforementioned diseases, say the researchers.Read More... Read more »
Birbrair, A., Zhang, T., Wang, Z., Messi, M., Enikolopov, G., Mintz, A., & Delbono, O. (2013) Role of Pericytes in Skeletal Muscle Regeneration and Fat Accumulation. Stem Cells and Development, 2147483647. DOI: 10.1089/scd.2012.0647
- May 1, 2013
- 11:54 AM
- 46 views
Advances In Parkinson's Disease Treatment: Part II
by William Yates, M.D. in Brain Posts
Globus Pallidus Region of Brain Targeted in DBS in YellowIn a previous post, I summarized some of the highlights of a recent review of Parkinson's disease management by the German neurologists Pedrosa and Timmerman.The first post can be located here and was limited to the drug treatment of the motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease.In part II, I want to focus on deep brain stimulation and the treatment of non-motor symptoms.The authors of the review note the following key points regarding deep br........ Read more »
Pedrosa, D., & Timmermann, . (2013) Review: management of Parkinson's disease. Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment, 321. DOI: 10.2147/NDT.S32302
- May 1, 2013
- 09:17 AM
- 57 views
Video Tip of the Week: My Cancer Genome
There are a lot of cancer database resources out there. Most of the ones we’ve focused on have been the data repository types. TCGA, ICGC, CaBIG, COSMIC, Cancer Genome Workbench, UCSC Cancer Genomic Browser, and of course big repositories like GEO. Researchers will need these sources of data to locate key alterations in cancer cells [...]... Read more »
Swanton, C. (2012) My Cancer Genome: a unified genomics and clinical trial portal. The Lancet Oncology, 13(7), 668-669. DOI: 10.1016/S1470-2045(12)70312-1
Yeh, P., Chen, H., Andrews, J., Naser, R., Pao, W., & Horn, L. (2013) DNA-Mutation Inventory to Refine and Enhance Cancer Treatment (DIRECT): A Catalog of Clinically Relevant Cancer Mutations to Enable Genome-Directed Anticancer Therapy. Clinical Cancer Research, 19(7), 1894-1901. DOI: 10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-12-1894
- May 1, 2013
- 03:52 AM
- 56 views
Depression is not much common in U.S. as said
by Usman Paracha in SayPeople
Main point:
Researcher has found that over-diagnosis and over-treatment of depression is common in Americans.
Journal:
Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics
Study Further:
"Depression over-diagnosis and over-treatment is common in the U.S. and frankly the numbers are staggering," said Ramin J. Mojtabai, PhD, author of the study and an associate professor with the Bloomberg School's Department of Mental Health.
Researcher, in this study, worked on 5,639 participants wi........ Read more »
Mojtabai, R. (2013) Clinician-Identified Depression in Community Settings: Concordance with Structured-Interview Diagnoses. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 82(3), 161-169. DOI: 10.1159/000345968
- April 30, 2013
- 07:25 PM
- 48 views
Molecular Evidence for Memory Consolidation during REM Sleep
by Allison in Dormivigilia
Molecular biologists have observed changes in common signaling cascades throughout the course of REM sleep episodes (in rodents) with disruption to these signaling cascades leading to memory deficits. It's good to see a paper focusing on mechanism now that we have a plethora of papers showing that depriving yourself of REM sleep can have detrimental effects on all types of memory (episodic, emotional, declarative, procedural) ... Read more »
Luo, J., Phan, T., Yang, Y., Garelick, M., & Storm, D. (2013) Increases in cAMP, MAPK Activity, and CREB Phosphorylation during REM Sleep: Implications for REM Sleep and Memory Consolidation. Journal of Neuroscience, 33(15), 6460-6468. DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5018-12.2013
- April 30, 2013
- 06:05 PM
- 56 views
Lyme and soda: hold the autism risk?
by Paul Whiteley in Questioning Answers
I've talked about the mighty tick previously on this blog and some speculation on how a tick harbouring the bacteria Borrelia burgdorferi (or a close relation) bites and transmits said bacteria to humans which can lead to Lyme disease and whether this might be implicated in some cases of autism. Tickety boo @ Wikipedia The suggestion from that post was that whilst the data was speculative and relatively sparse at that time on whether Lyme disease is common in cases of autism........ Read more »
Mary Ajamian, Barry E. Kosofsky, Gary P. Wormser, Anjali M. Rajadhyaksha, & Armin Alaedini. (2013) Serologic Markers of Lyme Disease in Children With Autism. JAMA, 309(17), 1771-1773. info:/
- April 30, 2013
- 12:30 PM
- 55 views
The Climatic Origins of the Malaysian Nipah Virus Outbreak
by Rebecca Kreston in BODY HORRORS
One of the hardest questions to answer in an infectious disease outbreak investigation is "Why?"
Why then? Why there? These questions can be almost impossible to answer - not only because of their heady metaphysical nature but also because of the difficulty of assessing the minute interactions between microbe, environment and human host. Public health officials are often left shrugging their shoulders, half-heartedly admitting to an unsatisfied public that they just don't know ........ Read more »
Chua KB, Chua BH, & Wang CW. (2002) Anthropogenic deforestation, El Niño and the emergence of Nipah virus in Malaysia. The Malaysian journal of pathology, 24(1), 15-21. PMID: 16329551
- April 30, 2013
- 11:31 AM
- 128 views
Treatment Advances in Parkinson's Disease: Part I
by William Yates, M.D. in Brain Posts
3D Molecular Model of L-DopaDrug treatment of Parkinson's disease is a complex clinical problem. This complexity relates to several factors including incomplete response, multiple symptom domains and adverse effects of commonly used drugs.David Pedrosa and Lars Timmerman from the Department of Neurology at University Hospital Cologne in Germany have recently published an excellent review of Parkinson's disease management.The review is packed with comprehensive tables with specific drug inf........ Read more »
Pedrosa, D., & Timmermann, . (2013) Review: management of Parkinson's disease. Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment, 321. DOI: 10.2147/NDT.S32302
- April 29, 2013
- 12:52 PM
- 90 views
Potential Diabetes Breakthrough
by Perikis Livas in Tracing Knowledge
Researchers at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) have discovered a hormone that holds promise for a dramatically more effective treatment of type 2 diabetes, a metabolic illness afflicting an estimated 26 million Americans. The researchers believe that the hormone might also have a role in treating type 1, or juvenile, diabetes.... Read more »
B.D. COLEN. (2013) Potential Diabetes Breakthrough. Harvard Medical School. info:/
- April 29, 2013
- 11:26 AM
- 68 views
'Invasive Blastocystis' in ECCMID 2013
by Christen Rune Stensvold in Blastocystis Parasite Blog
A post on a Blastocystis abstract submitted for oral presentation in the category 'Emerging Infectious Diseases' at the ECCMID 2013 conference in Berlin.... Read more »
Alfellani MA, Stensvold CR, Vidal-Lapiedra A, Onuoha ES, Fagbenro-Beyioku AF, & Clark CG. (2013) Variable geographic distribution of Blastocystis subtypes and its potential implications. Acta tropica, 126(1), 11-8. PMID: 23290980
Stensvold CR. (2013) Comparison of sequencing (barcode region) and sequence-tagged-site PCR for Blastocystis subtyping. Journal of clinical microbiology, 51(1), 190-4. PMID: 23115257
Stensvold CR, Suresh GK, Tan KS, Thompson RC, Traub RJ, Viscogliosi E, Yoshikawa H, & Clark CG. (2007) Terminology for Blastocystis subtypes--a consensus. Trends in parasitology, 23(3), 93-6. PMID: 17241816
- April 29, 2013
- 10:37 AM
- 66 views
Essential Tremor as a Risk Factor for Parkinson's Disease
by William Yates, M.D. in Brain Posts
The number people suffereing from Parkison's disease in the United States is estimated to be between 500,000 and 1,000,000.The key symptoms of Parkinson's disease include tremor and slowed movement or bradykinesia.Known risk factors for Parkinson's disease include advanced age, male gender, family history of Parkinson's disease and exposure to pesticides.Of note, smokers appear to have a reduced risk of Parkinson's disease although the mechanism for this protective effect is unknown.Romero and c........ Read more »
Romero JP, Benito-León J, & Bermejo-Pareja F. (2012) The NEDICES Study: Recent Advances in the Understanding of the Epidemiology of Essential Tremor. Tremor and other hyperkinetic movements (New York, N.Y.). PMID: 23439396
- April 29, 2013
- 10:02 AM
- 72 views
Autism and the folding placenta
by Paul Whiteley in Questioning Answers
Men don't generally talk about placentas it has to be said. But today, in the name of blogging, I'm going to.I'm going to start by telling you how the placenta really is a marvel of biological engineering. An absolutely vital part of our existence in-utero that nourishes us and protects us during our earliest days living in the amniotic sac. Little wonder that whole nations have come to revere the placenta as mother, sibling even doubles of ourselves (see here). Although I have to say I do ........ Read more »
Walker, C., Anderson, K., Milano, K., Ye, S., Tancredi, D., Pessah, I., Hertz-Picciotto, I., & Kliman, H. (2013) Trophoblast Inclusions Are Significantly Increased in the Placentas of Children in Families at Risk for Autism. Biological Psychiatry. DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2013.03.006
- April 28, 2013
- 12:42 PM
- 31 views
Fruits and Vegetables Are Healthy—The Study That Made Your Mother Say, “I Told You So”
by Shawn Radcliffe in Branáin
It may not come as a surprise to anyone who has a mother, but a new study found that eating fresh fruits and vegetables is good for your health.... Read more »
Leenders, M., Sluijs, I., Ros, M., Boshuizen, H., Siersema, P., Ferrari, P., Weikert, C., Tjonneland, A., Olsen, A., Boutron-Ruault, M.... (2013) Fruit and Vegetable Consumption and Mortality: European Prospective Investigation Into Cancer and Nutrition. American Journal of Epidemiology. DOI: 10.1093/aje/kwt006
Sun, Q. (2012) Red Meat Consumption and MortalityResults From 2 Prospective Cohort Studies. Archives of Internal Medicine, 172(7), 555. DOI: 10.1001/archinternmed.2011.2287
- April 28, 2013
- 12:25 PM
- 65 views
Roundup, having glyphosate, could be the cause of cancer and many other diseases
by Usman Paracha in SayPeople
Main points:
Researchers have reported that glyphosate (N-(phosphonomethyl)glycine), the active ingredient in Roundup, could be the cause of a number of health related disorders such as gastrointestinal disorders, obesity, diabetes, heart disorders, depression, autism, infertility, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.
Journal:
Entropy
Study Further:
Roundup, world's most popular and best selling weed and grass killer developed by Monsanto, is sprayed on millions of acres of crops in ........ Read more »
Samsel, A., & Seneff, S. (2013) Glyphosate’s Suppression of Cytochrome P450 Enzymes and Amino Acid Biosynthesis by the Gut Microbiome: Pathways to Modern Diseases. Entropy, 15(4), 1416-1463. DOI: 10.3390/e15041416
- April 27, 2013
- 07:28 AM
- 98 views
The Science of Guns and Violence in America
by Stephanie Swift in mmmbitesizescience
I read a Nature News article recently about gun control in the USA that horrified me so much that I now have to write a bit about this horrifying topic myself. It goes without saying that there is a huge … Continue reading →... Read more »
Wintemute GJ. (2013) Tragedy's legacy. The New England Journal of Medicine, 368(5), 397-9. PMID: 23268646
- April 27, 2013
- 06:37 AM
- 66 views
A vaccine for autism symptoms? Not exactly
by Paul Whiteley in Questioning Answers
"Vaccine". "Autism".I'm struggling to think of two words in combination which, in modern times, are any more likely to stir up emotion, debate and even argument. Indeed in these times of measles outbreaks and seemingly daily news reporting on the very, very strong requirement for vaccination to protect against the disease, it is coincidental that two research papers should now land in my inbox which mention both of those words in the title.Paradise in Zakynthos @ Wikipedia The fi........ Read more »
Pequegnat B, Sagermann M, Valliani M, Toh M, Chow H, Allen-Vercoe E, & Monteiro MA. (2013) A vaccine and diagnostic target for Clostridium bolteae, an autism-associated bacterium. Vaccine. PMID: 23602537
- April 26, 2013
- 03:46 PM
- 73 views
North Korea and the USA can indeed unite: in the battle against TB.
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease caused by a bacterium. It spreads through cough or sneeze from subjects with an active infection. While in most cases the disease is asymptomatic, a minority of latent infections does become active (i.e. the subject develops symptoms), and when it does, if left untreated, the disease can be deadly. According to the CDC one third of the world's population are infected with TB, and while in the US the incidence of the disease has been declining over time,........ Read more »
Stone, R. (2013) Public Enemy Number One. Science, 340(6131), 422-425. DOI: 10.1126/science.340.6131.422
- April 26, 2013
- 12:47 PM
- 76 views
This Month In Blastocystis Research
by Christen Rune Stensvold in Blastocystis Parasite Blog
The first post in a series of monthly updates on Blastocystis research mainly based on emerging papers in PubMed.... Read more »
Gould R, & Boorom K. (2013) Blastocystis surface antigen is stable in chemically preserved stool samples for at least 1 year. Parasitology research. PMID: 23609598
Dogruman-Al F, Simsek Z, Boorom K, Ekici E, Sahin M, Tuncer C, Kustimur S, & Altinbas A. (2010) Comparison of methods for detection of Blastocystis infection in routinely submitted stool samples, and also in IBS/IBD Patients in Ankara, Turkey. PloS one, 5(11). PMID: 21124983
Alfellani MA, Stensvold CR, Vidal-Lapiedra A, Onuoha ES, Fagbenro-Beyioku AF, & Clark CG. (2013) Variable geographic distribution of Blastocystis subtypes and its potential implications. Acta tropica, 126(1), 11-8. PMID: 23290980
Alfellani MA, Jacob AS, Perea NO, Krecek RC, Taner-Mulla D, Verweij JJ, Levecke B, Tannich E, Clark CG, & Stensvold CR. (2013) Diversity and distribution of Blastocystis sp. subtypes in non-human primates. Parasitology, 1-6. PMID: 23561720
Abdulsalam AM, Ithoi I, Al-Mekhlafi HM, Khan AH, Ahmed A, Surin J, & Mak JW. (2013) Prevalence, predictors and clinical significance of Blastocystis sp. in Sebha, Libya. Parasites , 86. PMID: 23566585
Clark CG, van der Giezen M, Alfellani MA, & Stensvold CR. (2013) Recent developments in blastocystis research. Advances in parasitology, 1-32. PMID: 23548084
Malheiros AF, Stensvold CR, Clark CG, Braga GB, & Shaw JJ. (2011) Short report: Molecular characterization of Blastocystis obtained from members of the indigenous Tapirapé ethnic group from the Brazilian Amazon region, Brazil. The American journal of tropical medicine and hygiene, 85(6), 1050-3. PMID: 22144442
- April 26, 2013
- 11:05 AM
- 96 views
The Shambulance: Reflexology and Other Stories
by Elizabeth Preston in Inkfish
The Shambulance is an occasional series in which I try to find the truth about bogus or overhyped health products. Helping me keep the Shambulance on course are Steven Swoap and Daniel Lynch, both biology professors at Williams College.
Sticking a Q-tip up one’s nose is not the source of many great insights. Yet it’s how an American doctor in the early 20th century developed the theory that became modern reflexology. He would be proud—though maybe a little confused—to see people to........ Read more »
Ernst, E., Posadzki, P., & Lee, M. (2011) Reflexology: An update of a systematic review of randomised clinical trials. Maturitas, 68(2), 116-120. DOI: 10.1016/j.maturitas.2010.10.011
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