Body

Without administering a simple blood test in the first few days after surgery, 85 percent of the heart attacks or injuries patients suffer could be missed, according to a study in the March issue of Anesthesiology. Globally, more than 8 million adults have heart attacks or injuries after surgery every year, and 10 percent of those patients die within 30 days.

Two types of regional anesthesia do not make patients more prone to falls in the first days after having knee replacement surgery as some have previously suggested, according to a study based on nearly 200,000 patient records in the March issue of Anesthesiology.

PRINCETON, N.J.—Tubal ligation – commonly referred to as having one's "tubes tied" – is widely used to prevent unintended pregnancies. However, current Medicaid policies create roadblocks for low-income women trying to obtain the procedure, according to a review written by researchers at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School and other U.S. institutions.

New Rochelle, NY, February 18, 2014—New evidence that chronic intake of THC, the primary psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, can protect critical immune tissue in the gut from the damaging effects of HIV infection is reported in AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses website at http://www.liebertpub.com/aid.

Researchers have developed the technology for a catheter-based device that would provide forward-looking, real-time, three-dimensional imaging from inside the heart, coronary arteries and peripheral blood vessels. With its volumetric imaging, the new device could better guide surgeons working in the heart, and potentially allow more of patients' clogged arteries to be cleared without major surgery.

Peptides are an intriguing class of drugs. They are made of amino acids, just as humans are, and because of their intimate relationship with our own biological molecules, they have the potential to fight some of the most intractable diseases, including cancer.

PHILADELPHIA – The body uses mucus as a protective barrier to defend against pathogens, toxins, and allergens in the upper respiratory tract that can lead to such conditions as chronic sinusitis. Aiding in this defense are antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), a diverse group of small proteins found in mucus that kill bacteria, viruses, and fungi. In addition to these known defensive systems, researchers have recently surmised that taste receptors serve "double duty" by also acting as first line sentinels against infection in the upper airway.

An innovative vaccine technology makes use of reengineered salmonella to deliver protective immunity. If such recombinant attenuated salmonella vaccines or RASVs can be perfected, they hold the promise of safe, lost-cost, orally administered defenses against viral, bacterial, fungal and parasitic infections.

In a new study, lead author Karen Brenneman and her colleagues at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University, propose an improved method of screening salmonella vaccines in small animal studies and enhancing their effectiveness in humans.

In a study published in Nature Communications, researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Uppsala University in Sweden present a new drug candidate, which selectively kills dormant cells within a cancer tumour through starvation. These tumour cells, which are found in less oxygenated parts of solid tumours, are resistant to conventional treatments.

A team of researchers at Chalmers University of Technology has found that kidney cancer cells have a quite different metabolism than other types of malignancies. The findings pave the way for new methods of diagnosing kidney cancer at an early stage, a feat that had eluded researchers earlier, and thereby fresh approaches to treatment.

Premature babies who receive an interventional therapy combining their mother's voice and a pacifier-activated music player learn to eat more efficiently and have their feeding tubes removed sooner than other preemies, according to a Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt study published today in Pediatrics.

The randomized clinical trial performed in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Children's Hospital tested 94 premature babies, pairing their mother's voice singing a lullaby with a pacifier-activated music player.

The notion of environmental "footprinting" as a way to represent the impact of human activity on the planet's environment has become a veritable industry over the last two decades.

Since the concept first gained popularity in the 1990s — when it was introduced by researchers William E. Rees and Mathis Wackernagel — footprinting has been used to explain a range of complicated phenomena as a single metric, spawning carbon footprints, water footprints, and various other indicators to communicate the carrying capacity of Earth.

Debilitating side effects associated with prescription medication for some of today's most common conditions could be eradicated if they mimicked the body's natural hormone secretion cycles, a new report has said.

Scientists from Exeter and Bristol have studied how conventional steroid treatments – commonly used to treat a range of conditions from steroid deficiency to inflammatory diseases such as asthma and arthritis – can have serious side effects due to the way in which they are delivered to the body.

CLEMSON, S.C. — Clemson University researchers have developed nanoparticles that can deliver drugs targeting damaged arteries, a non-invasive method to fight heart disease.

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One of the standard ways to treat clogged and damaged arteries currently is to implant vascular stents, which hold the vessels open and release such drugs as paclitaxel.

A commonly-used HIV drug has been shown to kill-off the human papilloma virus (HPV) that leads to cervical cancer in a world-first clinical trial led by The University of Manchester with Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) in Nairobi.

Drs Ian and Lynne Hampson, from the University's Institute of Cancer Sciences and Dr Innocent Orora Maranga, Consultant in Obstetrics and Gynaecology at KNH in Nairobi examined Kenyan women diagnosed with HPV positive early stage cervical cancer who were treated with the antiviral HIV drug lopinavir in Kenya.