Culture

WASHINGTON - As plaque accumulates on the inside of arteries, it can cause the arteries to thicken and harden. When that plaque ruptures, it can ultimately block blood flow and lead to a heart attack, stroke or other problem throughout the body.

The condition, known as atherosclerosis, is a major form of cardiovascular disease, which over the past century has become the leading cause of death worldwide. Currently, no imaging tools are available to consistently and accurately diagnose plaque at risk of rupturing in living patients.

An international review team has prepared a Cochrane systematic review to assess the accuracy of a point-of-care urine test for diagnosing and screening tuberculosis (TB) in people living with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

Signaling a potential new approach to treating diabetes, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Harvard University have produced insulin-secreting cells from stem cells derived from patients with type 1 diabetes.

People with this form of diabetes can't make their own insulin and require regular insulin injections to control their blood sugar. The new discovery suggests a personalized treatment approach to diabetes may be on the horizon -- one that relies on the patients' own stem cells to manufacture new cells that make insulin.

Common measures used by government agencies and public rankings to rate the safety of hospitals do not accurately capture the quality of care provided, new research from the Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality suggests.

May 10, 2016--The Lancet Commission's groundbreaking report released today, "Our Future: A Lancet Commission on Adolescent Health and Wellbeing," finds that years of neglect and underinvestment have had serious detrimental effects on the health and wellbeing of adolescents aged 10-24 years. Launched in London, the report shows that two-thirds of young people are growing up in countries where preventable and treatable health problems like HIV/AIDS, early pregnancy, unsafe sex, depression, injury, and violence are an ongoing threat to their health and wellbeing.

The price of curing hepatitis C in the long term is much cheaper than the ongoing expense of older therapies or delayed treatments, including liver transplants, according to a group of studies published this month in a special edition of the American Journal of Managed Care.

COLUMBIA, Mo. - Previous studies have shown that as humans age, cognitive declines are inevitable. Now, a recent study by researchers at the University of Missouri and Texas Tech University has confirmed that this cognitive decline extends into financial literacy. The researchers also found that older individuals retain a strong sense of self-confidence, which could add to the problem, leading to significant mistakes when making financial decisions.