Culture

(PHILADELPHIA) – Veterans with liver disease who live more than 100 miles from a Veterans Administration hospital that offers liver transplants are only half as likely to be placed on the liver transplant waitlist to receive a new organ compared to veterans who live closer to transplant centers, according to a new study from the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania. The findings, which are published in the March 26 issue of JAMA, also reveal that the further liver disease patients live from these five transplant centers, the more likely they are to die.

In a study that included nearly 300,000 adults without a known history of diabetes or cardiovascular disease (CVD), adding information about glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c), a measure of longer-term blood sugar control, to conventional CVD risk factors like smoking and cholesterol was associated with little improvement in the prediction of CVD risk, according to a study in the March 26 issue of JAMA.

There has been a sharp decline since 2006 in the use of nuclear myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI; an imaging procedure used to determine areas of the heart with decreased blood flow), a decrease that cannot be explained by an increase in other imaging methods, according to a study in the March 26 issue of JAMA.

A mathematical model created by Penn State researchers can predict with more than 90 percent accuracy the blood glucose levels of individuals with type 1 diabetes up to 30 minutes in advance of imminent changes in their levels -- plenty of time to take preventative action.

For patient safety, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) should require that clinical data be submitted as part of a more rigorous re-evaluation of medical devices that are modified after approval, according to UC San Francisco physician scientists in a commentary published online March 24, 2014 in the Annals of Internal Medicine. According to authors Rita Redberg, MD, UCSF professor of medicine, and UCSF second-year medical student Sarah Zheng, such a requirement could prevent deaths due to insufficiently tested device modifications.

Black and gray markets for computer hacking tools, services and byproducts such as stolen credit card numbers continue to expand, creating an increasing threat to businesses, governments and individuals, according to a new RAND Corporation study.

One dramatic example is the December 2013 breach of retail giant Target, in which data from approximately 40 million credit cards and 70 million user accounts was hijacked. Within days, that data appeared -- available for purchase -- on black market websites.

Wrinkling is a common phenomenon for thin stiff film adhered on soft substrate. Various wrinkling phenomenon has been reported previously. Wu Dan, Yin Yajun, Xie Huimin,et al from Tsinghua University proposed a new method to control wrinkling and buckling of thin stiff film on soft substrate. It is found that the curve pattern on the soft substrate has obvious influence on the wrinkling distribution of the thin film/soft substrate.

TORONTO – 'Watch out for weight gain within a year of giving birth to prevent new risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease.' That advice for women comes from a study published today in the journal Diabetes Care.

While it has long been believed that not losing 'baby weight' for several years after pregnancy carries long-term risks of diabetes and heart disease the research team at Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto, aimed to test this theory by tracking risk factors and weight in the first 12 months after giving birth.

INDIANAPOLIS -- Changing how medication alerts are presented in electronic medical records resulted in safer prescribing, increased efficiency and reduced workload for health care providers who placed drug orders in a study published online in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.

DURHAM, N.C. -- For the millions of people forced to rely on a plastic tube to eliminate their urine, developing an infection is nearly a 100 percent guarantee after just four weeks. But with the help of a little bubble-blowing, biomedical engineers hope to bring relief to urethras everywhere.

An EORTC study published in The Lancet Oncology does not support administration of intensified doxorubicin and ifosfamide for palliation of advanced soft tissue sarcoma, unless the objective is to shrink the tumor.

(Boston)--In a recently to be published study in Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases, researchers have found the use of the drug allopurinol was associated with a reduced risk of death in hyperuricemic (gout) patients. The study, the first in a general population, has found the overall benefit of allopurinol on survival may outweigh the impact of rare serious adverse effects.

Researchers from the Section of Rheumatology and Clinical Epidemiology at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) contributed to this study.

Evidence increasingly suggests that insufficient or disturbed sleep is associated with metabolic disorders such as type 2 diabetes and obesity, and addressing poor quality sleep should be a target for the prevention – and even treatment – of these disorders, say the authors [1] of a Review, published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology journal.

Current system allows approval of modified devices without clinical data

Premarket approval, or PMA, is the process by which the FDA assesses the safety and effectiveness of new devices. When modifications to existing devices are made, a less rigorous process known as a PMA supplement is employed. This process does not require clinical data and researchers are concerned that clinicians and patients may be subjected to unknown risks, especially when devices have multiple PMAs.

Online sexual hook-ups may present a unique opportunity to explore many factors of decision-making that inform sexual health, according to an analysis conducted by Eric Schrimshaw, PhD, at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and Martin J. Downing, Jr., PhD, of the National Development and Research Institutes.