Body

ROSEMONT, Ill – The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) recently approved and released an evidence-based clinical practice guideline on the Treatment of Distal Radius Fractures. A distal radius fracture –one of the most common fractures in the body– usually occurs as a result of a fall. For example, a fall may cause someone to land on his or her outstretched hands, breaking the larger of the two bones in the forearm, near the wrist.

LOS ANGELES (Feb. 4, 2010) – Patients with mild gallstone pancreatitis usually stay in the hospital for several days, waiting for the symptoms to subside, before undergoing surgery to remedy the condition. A new study from researchers at Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute (LA BioMed) indicates patients may no longer have to wait so long for surgery and could leave the hospital sooner.

Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists are tapping into the DNA of a wild oat, considered by some to be a noxious weed, to see if it can help combat crown rust, the most damaging fungal disease of oats worldwide.

Researchers at the University of Copenhagen have become the first in the world to synthesize the entire protein that is responsible for life-threatening malaria in pregnant women and their unborn children. The protein known as VAR2CSA enables malaria parasites to accumulate in the placenta and can therefore potentially be used as the main component in a vaccine to trigger antibodies that protect pregnant women against malaria. The research team is now planning to test the efficacy of the protein-based vaccine on humans.

February 4, 2010 -- Children who were exposed to acetaminophen prenatally were more likely to have asthma symptoms at age five in a study of 300 African-American and Dominican Republic children living in New York City. Building on prior research showing an association between both prenatal and postnatal acetaminophen and asthma, this is the first study to demonstrate a direct link between asthma and an ability to detoxify foreign substances in the body. The findings were published this week in the journal Thorax.

Exposure to ecstasy or cocaine during adolescence increases the "reinforcing effects" that make people vulnerable to developing an addiction. This is the main conclusion of a research team from the University of Valencia (UV), which has shown for the first time how these changes persist into adulthood.

The involvement of healthy volunteers (HV) in clinical and preclinical research, especially in the gastroenterology, has grown dramatically over the past few years. However, many issues of ethical, methodological or even legal concerns have not been systematically studied.

A research article to be published on January 28, 2010 in the World Journal of Gastroenterology addresses this question. A research team lead by Professor Peter Malfertheiner, evaluated prospectively the changes in quality of life (QOL) in ten HV during a long-term endoscopy-based study.

Conventional hepatectomy is an effective way to treat hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, it is invasive and stressful. Laparoscopic surgery, a kind of minimally invasive surgery, has recently gained considerable advances. The use of laparoscopy in hepatectomy, while technically demanding, reduces surgical invasiveness and stressfulness but still achieves complete resection with adequate margins.

An approach to decision making based on soft metrics could allow problems to be solved where no definitive "yes-no" answer is possible in fields as diverse as healthcare, defense, economics, engineering, public utilities and science. Writing in the International Journal of Intelligent Defence Support Systems Mihaela Quirk of Los Alamos National Laboratory explains how.

Colonoscopy is operator-dependent and substantial numbers of pre-cancerous polyps are missed during colonoscopy. Colonoscopies are often poorly documented, with only a few still photographs taken of anatomic landmarks and abnormal findings. Video recording is rarely used in colonoscopy except for teaching purposes; therefore, the potential impact of systematic video recording on the quality of colonoscopy is unknown.

The drug pazopanib (Votrient) slowed the progression of advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC), a form of kidney cancer, in patients by 54% percent, according to a new study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Researchers at Yale School of Medicine have developed a simple urine test to rapidly predict and diagnose preeclampsia, a common, but serious hypertensive complication of pregnancy.

Dubbed the "Congo Red Dot Test" by the research team, the test accurately predicted preeclampsia in a study of 347 pregnant women, allowing health care providers to offer better preventive care to pregnant women. The research will be presented February 4 at the Annual Scientific Meeting of the Society for Maternal Fetal Medicine (SMFM) in Chicago.

CHICAGO, FEB. 4, 2010 — New evidence that genetics play a significant role in some premature births may help explain why a woman can do everything right and still give birth too soon.

Research presented today at the 30th Annual Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM) meeting -- The Pregnancy Meeting™ -- showed that the genes of both the mother and the fetus can make them susceptible to an inflammatory response that increases the risk of preterm labor and birth.

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health have identified DNA variants in mothers and fetuses that appear to increase the risk for preterm labor and delivery. The DNA variants were in genes involved in the regulation of inflammation and of the extracellular matrix, the mesh-like material that holds cells within tissues.

Children with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) may one day be able to have an injection or use a throat spray instead of getting their tonsils removed to cure their snoring, according to a new study from the University of Chicago, which found that a specific gene product may be responsible for the proliferation of adenotonsillar tissue that can cause pediatric OSA.