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MAYWOOD, Ill. -- Three new oral blood-thinning drugs nearing approval by the Food and Drug Administration are more convenient than the standard drug Coumadin® because they do not require monthly visits to adjust doses.

But the promising drugs also could be subject to dangerous interactions when taken alongside widely used prescription drugs, over-the-counter medicines such as aspirin and even herbal supplements such as St. John's Wort, according to a Loyola University Health System study.

MAYWOOD, Ill. -- Researchers often get frustrated when doctors fail to adopt treatment guidelines backed by the best evidence-based research.

But a study published in the May 24, 2010, Archives of Internal Medicine found that using techniques similar to those employed by pharmaceutical sales reps can help persuade doctors to follow the guidelines.

National Institutes of Health scientists have discovered that the activation of immune cells called basophils causes kidney damage in a mouse model of lupus nephritis. These findings and the team's associated research in humans may lead to new treatments for this serious disease, a severe form of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) that affects the kidneys and is difficult to treat.

Galactosemia is a metabolic disease resulting from an inherited defect that prevents the proper metabolism of galactose, a sugar commonly found in dairy products, like milk. Exposure of affected people to galactose, can damage most of their organ systems and can be fatal. The ability to study the disease is limited by a lack of animal models. New information suggests that similarities between humans and flies may provide scientists with useful clues.

Although the tropics appear to the casual observer to be busily buzzing and blooming with life's rich variety when compared with temperate and polar regions—a fact that scientists have thoroughly documented—the distribution of species in space and time actually varies around the globe in surprising and subtle ways. So explains Janne Soininen of the University of Helsinki in an article published in the June 2010 issue of BioScience.

The American College of Radiology's (ACR) Task Force on Relationships between Radiology Groups and Hospitals and Other Healthcare Organizations has proposed several steps that can help improve relationships between radiologists and the health care systems that they service, according to an article in the June issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology (www.jacr.org).

Transplant surgeons at Johns Hopkins who have reviewed the medical records of more than 20,000 heart transplant patients say that it is not simply racial differences, but rather flaws in the health care system, along with type of insurance and education levels, in addition to biological factors, that are likely the causes of disproportionately worse outcomes after heart transplantation in African Americans.

NEW YORK (May 31, 2010) -- A compound found in sunless tanning spray may help to heal wounds following surgery, according to new results published by plastic surgeons from NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City and biomedical engineers at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., where the novel compound was developed.

MADISON — Genetic abnormalities are most often discussed in terms of differences so miniscule they are actually called "snips" — changes in a single unit along the 3 billion that make up the entire string of human DNA.

"There's a whole world beyond SNPs — single nucleotide polymorphisms — and we've stepped into that world," says Brian Teague, a doctoral student in genetics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "There are much bigger changes in there."

Canada needs to change its approach to mentally ill prisoners as correctional facilities worldwide contain a higher percentage of people with mental illness than the general population, states an editorial (pre-embargo link only) http://www.cmaj.ca/embargo/cmaj100405.pdf in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) .

Fewer than two per cent of cesarean births in British Columbia were a result of maternal request, but the number of cesarean and assisted vaginal deliveries varied widely across health regions in B.C., according to a new study by University of British Columbia researchers.

"There is a misconception that the overall increase of cesarean births is the result of maternal request," says lead author Gillian Hanley, a PhD student in the UBC School of Population and Public Health. "Our analysis of B.C. data shows that this is not the case."

An international group of researchers has identified the genetic cause of an inherited condition that causes severe foetal abnormalities.

The work, co-led by geneticists at the University of Leeds, together with colleagues from institutes and universities in Paris, Rome and San Diego, should allow couples at risk of conceiving babies with the profoundly disabling Meckel-Gruber and Joubert syndromes to be identified beforehand through genetic screening.

Scientists from Singapore, China and USA have identified three new susceptibility genes in a genome-wide association study of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). The study, led by the Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS), a biomedical research institute of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), and the Sun Yat-Sen University Cancer Centre, identified genetic risk factors of NPC that advance the understanding of the important role played by host genetic variation in influencing the susceptibility to this cancer.

An international group of researchers has identified the genetic cause of an inherited condition that causes severe fetal abnormalities.

The work, co-led by geneticists at the UCSD Institute for Genomic Medicine, together with colleagues from institutes and universities in Paris, Rome and England, should allow couples at risk of conceiving babies with the profoundly disabling Meckel-Gruber and Joubert syndromes to be identified beforehand through genetic screening.