Sleep-disordered breathing (also known as sleep apnea) is associated with an increased risk of death, according to new results from the Wisconsin Sleep Cohort, an 18-year observational study supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health. Researchers found that adults (ages 30 to 60) with sleep-disordered breathing at the start of the study were two to three times more likely to die from any cause compared to those who did not have sleep-disordered breathing.
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Two thirds of cancer patients receive little or no information about the survival benefits of having palliative chemotherapy before making a decision about treatment, according to a study published today on bmj.com.
Palliative chemotherapy for patients with advanced cancer has modest survival benefits and there is an expectation in the UK that such patients should be given accurate information so they can give informed consent before starting chemotherapy.
Recent changes to working regulations in the UK are seriously damaging the working life and education of junior doctors and patients are also suffering, warn senior doctors on BMJ.com today.
The British government must relax the regulations of the European Working Time Directive (EWTD) or it could spell disaster for medicine in the UK, say the authors.
Doctors who assist in torture or other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment should face prosecution and licensing punishments, says an editorial on BMJ.com today.
Injuries caused by gun and knife crime are costing the National Health Service in excess of £3million a year, new research reveals.
The study, by the Trauma Audit Research Network (TARN) at The University of Manchester, looked at all penetrating trauma injuries that resulted in immediate admission to hospital for three or more days or death within 93 days.
SEATTLE—A Group Health study in the August 2 issue of The Lancet adds fuel to the growing controversy over how well the flu vaccine protects the elderly.
The study of more than 3,500 Group Health patients age 65 found no link between flu vaccination and risk of pneumonia during three flu seasons. "This suggests that the flu vaccine doesn't protect seniors as much as has been thought," said Michael L. Jackson, PhD, MPH, a postdoctoral fellow at the Group Health Center for Health Studies.
A multi-institutional team of scientists has used beamline 9.0.1 at the Advanced Light Source to perform high-resolution x-ray diffraction imaging of an aerogel for the first time, revealing its nanoscale three-dimensional bulk lattice structure down to features measured in nanometers, billionths of a meter.
OAK RIDGE, Tenn., July 31, 2008 – A new material characterized at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory could open a pathway toward more efficient fuel cells.
The material, a super-lattice developed by researchers in Spain, improves ionic conductivity near room temperature by a factor of almost 100 million, representing "a colossal increase in ionic conduction properties," said Maria Varela of ORNL's Materials Science and Technology Division, who characterized the material's structure with senior researcher Stephen Pennycook.
CHAPEL HILL – A common vaginal infection may make women more susceptible to contracting HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health researchers have found.
SANTA ROSA, Calif., July 30, 2008 – While summer is the time of year people like to spend most of their day outside, summer allergens keep many sinus sufferers from enjoying activities such as barbequing, hanging out at the pool and spending time in the park, to name a few.
Arlington, VA—A federal decision to permit the State of Michigan to spray the state's apple orchards with gentamicin risks undermining the value of this important antibiotic to treat blood infections in newborns and other serious human infections, according to the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA).
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Wednesday granted the state of Michigan "emergency" permission to use gentamicin to fight a tree disease called fire blight.
One of the major reasons that treatment for HIV/AIDS often doesn't work as well as it should is resistance to the drugs involved. Now, scientists at McGill University have revealed how mutations hidden in previously ignored parts of the HIV genome play an important role in the development of drug resistance in AIDS patients. Their study will be published Aug. 8 in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.
From the moment we are born, we all come into continuous contact with microbes that can cause disease. To deal with them, we have a highly effective immune system that allows our bodies to identify and eliminate agents that cause infections. Part of this mechanism is innate (already present at the time of birth) and the remaining part improves as we come into contact with new pathogens.
STANFORD, Calif. - It turns out that an old dog - or at least an old fruit-fly cell - can learn new tricks. Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have found that mature, specialized cells naturally regress to serve as a kind of de facto stem cell during the fruit-fly life cycle.
The surprising discovery counters the common belief that the ability to form new cell types or tissues wanes as a cell becomes more specialized.
Using a surprisingly simple, inexpensive technique, chemists have found a way to pull pure oxygen from water using relatively small amounts of electricity, common chemicals and a room-temperature glass of water.
Because oxygen and hydrogen are energy-rich fuels, many researchers have proposed using solar electricity to split water into those elements--a stored energy source for when the sun goes down. One of the chief obstacles to that green-energy scenario has been the difficulty of producing oxygen without large amounts of energy or a high-maintenance environment.