A study to determine whether chronic disease management of individuals with diabetes and/or congestive heart failure improves health outcome and lowers healthcare costs trial provides the first scientifically valid look at what one might expect from chronic disease management programs that serve low-income individuals.
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Long-term harmful effects of marijuana (MJ) include risk for heart attacks and strokes in addition to impaired learning and memory. The active chemical in MJ called delta-9-tetrahyrdocannabinol (THC) is believed to exert these effects by binding to cannabinoid (CB) receptors located on several cell types in various organs.
| | | | | | | | | Research into whiplash published in this week's PLoS Medicine has found that an individual's expectation of getting better plays a crucial role in the likelihood of his or her recovery, even after the severity of their physical and psychological symptoms are taken into account. Lena Holm at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden and colleagues from Sweden and Canada investigated the role of individuals' expectation of recovery by using a questionnaire-based study of adult insurance claimants.
| | | | | | | | | A review of past studies examining whether people who participate in clinical research wish to know the results has found that most people do wish to be told, even if receiving the results might cause distress or anxiety. The review is published in this week's PLoS Medicine.
| | | | | | | | | The risk of being hospitalized from being violently assaulted increases when there is increased alcohol sales near the victim's residence, finds a new study in this week's PLoS Medicine.
| | | | | | | | | In March, the US House Energy and Commerce Committee launched an investigation into potential conflicts of interest in scientific panels that advise the Environmental Protection Agency on the human health effects of toxic chemicals. The committee identified eight scientists that served as consultants or members of EPA science advisory panels while getting research support from the chemical industry to study the chemicals under review. Two scientists were actually employed by companies that made or worked with manufacturers of the chemicals under review.
| | | | | | | | | Plants have an ambivalent relationship with light. They need it to live, but too much light leads to the increased production of high-energy chemical intermediates that can injure or kill the plant. The intermediates do this because the efficient conversion of sunlight into chemical energy cannot keep up with sunlight streaming into the plant. "The intermediates don’t have anywhere to go because the system is jammed up down the line," says ASU chemist Devens Gust.
| | | | | | | | | A team of researchers has recently shown that the administration of sildenafil protects the heart in mice with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. The findings are published today in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
| | | | | | | | | POISE is the world's largest randomized trial addressing perioperative cardiac complications. POISE evaluated the effects of a beta-blocker versus placebo given to patients around the time of surgery.
| | | | | | | | | In an important step toward demystifying the role protein clumps play in the development of neurodegenerative disease, researchers have created a stunning three-dimensional picture of an Alzheimer's peptide aggregate using electron microscopy. Researchers from Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., and the Leibniz Institut in Jena, Germany, have shown -- for the first time -- how A-beta peptide, found in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients, forms a spaghetti-like protein mass called an amyloid fibril.
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