The potential of carbon nanotubes to diagnose and treat brain tumors is being explored through a new partnership. Nanotechnology may help revolutionize medicine in the future with its promise to play a role in selective cancer therapy.
Otherwise-healthy adults who eat two or more servings of meat a day -- the equivalent of two burger patties -- increase their risk of developing metabolic syndrome by 25 percent compared with those who eat meat twice a week, according to new research.
Our bodies sense painful stimuli through certain receptors located in the skin, in joints and many internal organs. Specialized nerve fibers relay these signals coming from the periphery to the brain, where pain becomes conscious. The spinal cord is placed between these structures as kind of a pain filter. That filter assures that pain is not evoked by everyday stimuli like a light touch.
When low back pain strikes, many people turn to non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), like naproxen and ibuprofen, or their newer COX-2 inhibitor cousin Celebrex. However, these drugs work no better than old faithful acetaminophen (Tylenol), according to a new review of studies. Review data “support guidelines for the management of low back pain in primary care that recommend NSAIDs as a treatment option after paracetamol has been tried, since there are fewer side effects with paracetamol,” said lead reviewer. Paracetamol is the European version of Tylenol.
Adaptive functional evolution may occur in the leptin protein of the pika family, a typical cold-adaptive mammal. Researchers speculated that the cold, rather than hypoxia, may be the primary environmental factor that drives the adaptive evolution of pika leptin.
The dominant model of disease today is, as 30 years ago, still biomedical, with molecular biology being the basic scientific discipline. However, there is evidence for the role of stressful life events and repeated or chronic environmental challenge in modulating individual vulnerability to illness.
Researchers are working with the state of Indiana to develop a system that would use a network of cell phones to detect and track radiation to help prevent terrorist attacks with radiological "dirty bombs" and nuclear weapons.
In an appropriate prelude to American Heart Month, which is just ahead in February, new mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that, since 1999, coronary heart disease and stroke age-adjusted death rates are down by 25.8 percent and 24.4 percent, respectively.
Community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus infections are caused primarily by a single strain -- USA300 -- of an evolving bacterium that has spread with "extraordinary transmissibility" throughout the United States during the past five years, according to a new study led by National Institutes of Health scientists. CA-MRSA, an emerging public health concern, typically causes readily treatable soft-tissue infections such as boils, but also can lead to life-threatening conditions that are difficult to treat.
A chemist has discovered new compounds active for treating tuberculosis and malaria. She describes the synthesis and characterization of 65 derivatives of quinoxaline, the structure of which is similar to a number of antimalalarial and antituberculosis pharmaceutical drugs currently on the market. Of the molecules prepared, four stand out for their antimalalarial activity and 15 for their antituberculosis activity.
Autumn colors are appearing later and later, if at all. Scientists say we can blame increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for prolonging the growing season. And that may actually be good news for forestry industries.
Changing the way consumers pay for prescription drugs so that the system more closely resembles paying for cell phones or computer software could increase drug use without altering patients' out-of-pocket spending, health plan costs or drug company profits, according to researchers.
Diatoms -- some of which are so tiny that 30 can fit across the width of a human hair -- are so numerous that they are among the key organisms taking the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide out of the Earth's atmosphere. The shells of diatoms are so heavy that when they die in the oceans they typically sink to watery graves on the seafloor, taking carbon out of the surface waters and locking it into sediments below.
Researchers have discovered that chronic pain can be successfully treated with novel targeted gene therapy. In an effort to find a more effective treatment for chronic pain, researchers developed a gene therapy technique that simulates the pain-killing effect of opiate drugs.
