Oral nutritional interventions help increase nutritional intake and improve some aspects of quality of life (QOL) in malnourished cancer patients or those who are at nutritional risk, but do not effect mortality, according to a study published February 15 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
Body
In the beginning was the word – yes, but where exactly? Last year, Quentin Atkinson, a cultural anthropologist at Auckland University in New Zealand, proposed that the cradle of language could be localized in the southwest of Africa. The report, which appeared in Science, one of the world's leading scholarly journals, was seized upon by the media and caused something of a sensation.
URBANA – When food prices spiked in 2008, the number of households that moved into poverty was overestimated by about 60 percent, according to a recent University of Illinois study. In middle-income countries such as Mexico that have more diversity in their diets, households are able to substitute other foods and cope with the change in prices.
"In 2008, there was a lot of quick-response research trying to measure the poverty effect across the world from the food price increase," said U of I agricultural economist Carl Nelson.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (February 15, 2012) – Prions, the much-maligned proteins most commonly known for causing "mad cow" disease, are commonly used in yeast to produce beneficial traits in the wild. Moreover, such traits can be passed on to subsequent generations and eventually become "hard-wired" into the genome, contributing to evolutionary change.
Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have made a surprising discovery about the origin of diabetes. Their research suggests that problems controlling blood sugar — the hallmark of diabetes — may begin in the intestines.
The new study, in mice, may upend long-held theories about the causes of the disease. Because insulin is produced in the pancreas and sugar is stored in the liver, many scientists have looked to those organs for the underlying causes of diabetes.
The findings are reported Feb. 16 in the journal Cell Host & Microbe.
A UCSF stem cell study conducted in mice suggests a novel strategy for treating damaged cardiac tissue in patients following a heart attack. The approach potentially could improve cardiac function, minimize scar size, lead to the development of new blood vessels – and avoid the risk of tissue rejection.
TAMPA, Fla. – A recent study conducted by researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Fla., and the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., has found that female cancer survivors receiving screening mammography have "worse health behaviors" than women receiving mammography screening and who had never had cancer.
The study was published in a recent issue of the American Journal of Clinical Oncology.
DENVER - As oncologists already know and newly diagnosed lung cancer patients learn, the kind of treatment given to patients is increasingly becoming dependent on the specific gene mutation present in the cancer. But, as lung cancer moves from being one common disease to multiple different diseases at the molecular level, learning about and getting access to the right treatment within clinical trials can be challenging for these subpopulations of patients that may be widely dispersed around the globe.
Computer engineers may have just provided the medical community a new way of figuring out exactly how one of the three building blocks of life forms and functions.
University of Central Florida Engineering Assistant Professor Shaojie Zhang used a complex computer program to analyze RNA motifs – the subunits that make up RNA (ribonucleic acid).
RNA is one of three building blocks of life along with DNA and proteins. Knowing how all three building blocks work together and how they go awry will go a long way to understanding what causes diseases and how to treat them.
New Rochelle, NY, February 15, 2012—Therapeutic cancer vaccines, which stimulate the body's immune system to target and destroy cancer cells, are being used in combination with conventional chemotherapy with growing success, as described in several illuminating articles in Cancer Biotherapy and Radiopharmaceuticals, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. (http://www.liebertpub.com).
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- According to a new study, smoking causes the body to turn against its own helpful bacteria, leaving smokers more vulnerable to disease.
Despite the daily disturbance of brushing and flossing, the mouth of a healthy person contains a stable ecosystem of healthy bacteria. New research shows that the mouth of a smoker is a much more chaotic, diverse ecosystem—and is much more susceptible to invasion by harmful bacteria.
Children may be receiving the highest exposure to nanoparticles of titanium dioxide in candy, which they eat in amounts much larger than adults, according to a new study. Published in ACS' journal, Environmental Science & Technology, it provides the first broadly based information on amounts of the nanomaterial – a source of concern with regard to its potential health and environmental effects – in a wide range of consumer goods.
Groundwater in aquifers on the East Coast and in the Central U.S. has the highest risk of contamination from radium, a naturally occurring radioactive element and known carcinogen.
Laser light in combination with certain drugs – known as photodynamic therapy – can destroy cancer tumours, but is today used mostly to cure skin cancer. The reason that internal tumours are not treated with the method is that the technology does not exist to check that the precise amount of light is administered. However, software developed by researchers in atomic physics at Lund University in Sweden looks like being able to solve the problem.
TORONTO, Ont. -- One of the first things people ask new parents is how much does their baby weigh.
For some immigrant parents, especially South Asians, the question may be stressful. Many of their newborns are incorrectly diagnosed as being significantly underweight, meaning they could be at higher risk of developmental issues.
Researchers at St. Michael's Hospital say many of these infants are in fact the correct birthweight for their ethnic group and should not be compared to those of babies of Canadian-born mothers.