Culture

A home-based exercise program helped people with clogged leg arteries walk farther and faster, according to new research in the Journal of the American Heart Association. The program was beneficial even 12 months after participants started the program.

Previously, studies have shown that supervised exercise can improve walking and lessen the symptoms of peripheral artery disease (PAD), but this is the first to document the long-term benefits of a home-based walking program.

Universal guidelines and improvements in technology are needed to reduce injuries and deaths from improper placement of nasogastric feeding tubes in pediatric patients, according to a comprehensive review of published literature.

ATS 2014, SAN DIEGO— Reminders prompting asthma patients to take their control inhalers if they miss a dose significantly improve medication adherence, according to a primary-care based study conducted by a research team in Australia. In this six-month investigation, patients receiving reminders took on average 73% of their prescribed doses compared to only 46% in patients who did not have reminders.

Out of the thousands of chemicals used for countless everyday products, about 500 have been assessed for potential health risks by the federal program tasked with this colossal duty. The good news is the Environmental Protection Agency, which runs the program, has improved it, but more remains to be done, according to a report from the National Research Council (NRC). Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly news magazine of the American Chemical Society, hits the report's highlights.

EAST LANSING, Mich. --- Cyberbullying isn't just a problem in middle class and affluent areas. Teenagers in poor, high-crime neighborhoods also experience online bullying, finds new research led by a Michigan State University criminologist.

The study suggests the "digital divide" – the gap between people with access to online technologies and those without – may be nonexistent, at least when it comes to cyberbullying, said Thomas J. Holt, MSU associate professor of criminal justice.

Dolutegravir has been approved since January 2014 in combination with other antiretroviral drugs for the treatment of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infected adults and adolescents above 12 years of age. In an early benefit assessment pursuant to the Act on the Reform of the Market for Medicinal Products (AMNOG), the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) now examined whether the new drug offers an added benefit over the appropriate comparator therapy.

Hip osteoarthritis is a prevalent and costly chronic musculoskeletal condition. Clinical guidelines recommend physiotherapy as treatment, although its effectiveness has never been proven.

Now, a study led by the University's Professor Kim Bennell has found that among adults with painful hip osteoarthritis, physical therapy does not produce greater improvements in pain or function compared with a placebo treatment.

21 May 2014, Paris, France: A Great Debate at EuroPCR 2014 saw experts discussing the role of the two most valuable strategies to save the lives of ST-segment Elevation Myocardial Infarction (STEMI) patients: primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) and thrombolysis.

By applying a new method to modeling spatial patterns of crime, University of Texas at Dallas researcher Dr. Yongwan Chun analyzed vehicle burglaries in Plano, Texas, and found factors associated with increased and decreased burglary rates.

Chun, an assistant professor of geospatial information sciences (GIS) in the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences, used GIS data from the Plano Police Department to analyze the 17,549 vehicle burglaries that occurred from 2004 to 2009 in the Dallas suburb.

Weight loss at any age in adulthood is worthwhile because it could yield long-term heart and vascular benefits, suggests new research published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology.

New research published in Diabetologia (the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes) shows that increasing severity of heart failure is associated with an increased risk of developing diabetes. The study is by Dr Malene Demant, Department of Cardiology, Copenhagen University Hospital Gentofte, Copenhagen, Denmark, and colleagues.

Exercise is a valuable yet underused component for post-stroke care, according to an American Heart Association/American Stroke Association scientific statement.

The statement, published in the American Heart Association journal Stroke, suggests that stroke survivors should be prescribed exercise because they experience physical deconditioning and lead inactive lifestyles after stroke. That decreases their ability to perform daily living activities and increases their risk of having another stroke.

Among adults with painful hip osteoarthritis, physical therapy did not result in greater improvement in pain or function compared with a placebo treatment, but was associated with relatively frequent but mild adverse effects, raising questions about its value for these patients, according to a study in the May 21 issue of JAMA.

Despite clear evidence of ineffectiveness, guidelines and more than 15 years of educational efforts stating that the antibiotic prescribing rate for acute bronchitis should be zero, the rate was about 70 percent from 1996-2010 and increased during this time period, according to a study in the May 21 issue of JAMA.

Among adults with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder, treatment with the newer, more costly antipsychotic paliperidone palmitate, compared with the older antipsychotic haloperidol decanoate, found no significant difference on a measure of effectiveness, according to a study in the May 21 issue of JAMA.