Body

New results from the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) Observational Study provide additional evidence that aspirin may reduce the risk of death in postmenopausal women who have heart disease or who have had a stroke. Jacques Rossouw, M.D., chief of the Women's Health Initiative Branch at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), is available to comment on these findings. NHLBI, part of the National Institutes of Health, funded the research.

LOS ANGELES (EMBARGOED UNTIL: 9 a.m. EST, March 12, 2009) – People over 80 years of age suffering from a certain type of heart failure do not appear to benefit from most commonly prescribed heart medications, according to a study conducted at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute and published in the March 15 issue of The American Journal of Cardiology.

Lumbar disc degeneration is an uncomfortable condition that affects millions of people, but two University of Alberta researchers have identified some of the genes that are causing problems.

Michele Crites-Battie and Tapio Videman, in the Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine, have discovered eight genes that are directly related to disc degeneration.

"We found more genes associated with disc degeneration than was discovered in 30 prior studies," said Videman. "This is very exciting."

DALLAS – March 12, 2009 – Estrogen may be a new postnatal therapy to improve lung function and other outcomes in preterm infants, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found in an animal study.

"Ironically, a hormone that has received great attention as a potential means to optimize the health of older women may be a beneficial treatment for humans during the earliest stages of life," said Dr. Philip Shaul, professor of pediatrics at UT Southwestern and the study's senior author.

Results from a large, international, randomised, controlled trial have shown that there is a strong link between diabetics who have an abnormal heart rhythm (atrial fibrillation) and an increased risk of other heart-related problems and death. The findings are published in Europe's leading cardiology journal, the European Heart Journal [1] today (Thursday 12 March).

Current steroid (testosterone) doping tests should be scrapped for international sport, because they ignore vital ethnic differences in hormone activity, suggests research published ahead of print in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

Testosterone, and other hormones that boost testosterone levels, such as growth hormone, are among the most widely abused performance enhancers used in sport, according to the World Anti-Doping Agency.

Parents are mostly willing to consent to post mortem research on their children, providing they are approached by specialist nurses, experienced in bereavement and family counselling, suggests a small study published ahead of print in the Archives of Disease in Childhood.

Post mortem research is crucial to understanding cases of sudden, unexpected death in children.

It's well known that puffing on cigarettes can eventually leave you out of puff. But why do a quarter of long-term smokers develop serious breathing problems, when others do not? New research published BioMed Central's open access journal Respiratory Research has found that the answers may lie in a smoker's genetics, which affect their chances of developing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in later life.

Berkeley -- Long-term exposure to ground-level ozone, a major component of smog, is associated with an increased risk of death from respiratory ailments, according to a new nationwide study led by a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley.

CHESTNUT HILL, MA (March 11, 2009) – New computer models can now link strangers in a life-saving chain of kidney transplants, promising to increase the number of transplants and overcome obstacles posed by logistics or donors who renege, a team of researchers report in the current edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.

NEW YORK, March 11, 2009 – Long-term exposure to elevated levels of ground ozone—a major constituent of smog—significantly raises the risk of dying from lung disease, according to a new nationwide study of cities that evaluated the impact of ozone on respiratory health over an 18-year period.

The study found that the risk of dying from respiratory disease is more than 30 percent greater in metropolitan areas with the highest ozone concentrations than in those with the lowest ozone concentrations.

BOSTON -- A study led by investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) has demonstrated that a new immunohistochemical test is reliable in diagnosing a dangerous arrhythmic heart disease known as arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC.) Reported in the March 12 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), the new findings offer the possibility of a highly sensitive and specific means of identifying this life- threatening condition at an early stage, when it can be treated with by implanting a cardiac defibrillator.

GALVESTON, Texas —One of the most striking changes in health care over the last two decades has been a dramatic increase in physicians categorized as "hospitalists" — doctors who practice almost exclusively in hospitals, rather than combining both outpatient and inpatient care. But while observers of medical trends knew that the number of hospitalists was rising, there was no national or population-based data on hospitalist care.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Purdue University researchers have determined aprocess that regulates activity of genes that control seed germinationand seedling development.

Mike Hasegawa, the Bruno C. Moser Distinguished Professor ofHorticulture and Landscape Architecture, and Kenji Miura, a formerPurdue postdoctoral researcher and now an assistant professor at TsukubaUniversity in Japan, discovered the step involved in keeping seeds fromgerminating in adverse conditions such as freezing temperatures ordrought, a factor in the survival of plant species.

A novel anti-inflammatory therapy designed by Vanderbilt University Medical Center investigators prevents acute lung injury in mice exposed to an inflammation-causing toxin, the researchers report in the journal Molecular Therapy.

The new therapy may offer a way to protect the lungs from the "runaway inflammation" that can accompany bacterial or viral pneumonia, said Jacek Hawiger, M.D., Ph.D., the leader of the research team that has pioneered the new approach.