Body

A new meta-analysis published today in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine (2013;19(10):1-12)1 found the Transcendental Meditation® technique (TM) has a large effect on reducing trait anxiety for people with high anxiety. Trait anxiety is a measure of how anxious a person usually is, as opposed to state anxiety, which refers to how anxious we are at the moment.

More than 90 percent of the public supports organ donation, yet less than half the population registers as donors, surveys show.

What if registration was better promoted to those who had previously turned it down? And at the place almost everyone makes that decision, the DMV?

Research at 40 Department of Motor Vehicles facilities in Illinois shows such efforts can make a difference. An article about the work was published in the September/October issue of the journal Clinical Transplantation.

MINNEAPOLIS –Stroke treatments and prevention to improve quality of life for people who experience a stroke is poorer than researchers hoped, with stroke still taking nearly three out of five quality years off a person's life, according to a new study published in the October 9, 2013, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

Researchers say the findings leave considerable room for improvement in stroke treatment.

Stroke is the leading cause of adult disability and the fourth-leading cause of death in the United States.

An individual’s race or ethnic background could be a determining factor when it comes to risk of atrial fibrillation, the most frequently diagnosed type of irregular heart rhythm, according to researchers at UC San Francisco.

In a study to be published online October 8 and in the November 12 issue of Circulation, researchers discovered that self-described non-Hispanic whites are more likely to develop atrial fibrillation than people from other race or ethnic groups.

New Rochelle, NY, October 9, 2013—A national survey has found that uterine fibroids have a disproportionate impact on African American women, causing more severe symptoms, interfering with their daily life, and causing them to miss work. These new findings are reported in Journal of Women's Health, a peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Journal of Women's Health website at http://www.liebertpub.com/jwh.

Fairfax, Va., October 9, 2013—Standard and reduced high-dose volume radiation therapy for muscle-invasive bladder cancer provide comparable tumor control and decreased late toxicity when compared to surgery, according to a study published in the October 1, 2013 print edition of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology ● Biology ● Physics, the official scientific journal of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO).

Using mice, lab-grown cells and clues from a related disorder, Johns Hopkins researchers have greatly increased understanding of the causes of systemic sclerosis, showing that a critical culprit is a defect in the way certain cells communicate with their structural scaffolding. They say the new insights point the way toward potentially developing drugs for the disease, which affects approximately 100,000 people in the United States.

Johns Hopkins researchers, working with elderly mice, have determined that combining gene therapy with an extra boost of the same stem cells the body already uses to repair itself leads to faster healing of burns and greater blood flow to the site of the wound.

Their findings offer insight into why older people with burns fail to heal as well as younger patients, and how to potentially harness the power of the body's own bone marrow stem cells to reverse this age-related discrepancy.

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- As baby boomers enter their retirement years, health care costs for complex and debilitating conditions such as Alzheimer's disease are expected to soar. Not drawing as much attention is the likelihood of similarly rising expenses for common age-related medical procedures. A Mayo Clinic study looked at one of those -- cataract surgery-- and found that more people are getting the vision-improving procedure, seeking it at younger ages and having both eyes repaired within a few months, rather than only treating one eye.

As human life expectancy increases, so does the percentage ofinvasive and endangered birds and mammals, according to a new studyby the University of California, Davis.

Two purportedly royal relics recently surfaced on the collectors' market in France: a mummified head and a handkerchief with blood residues. The head was said to be that of French king Henry IV and the blood on the handkerchief that of King Louis XVI. This was confirmed by Spanish and French researchers, who reported positive DNA matches. Several historians voiced doubts about these claims and enrolled the help of forensic identification specialist Professor Jean-Jacques Cassiman and his team to investigate the relics.

For the first time, researchers have created a model that could help unlock what causes adenomyosis, a common gynecological disease that is a major contributor to women having to undergo hysterectomies.

In a two-step process, a team led by Michigan State University's Jae-Wook Jeong first identified a protein known as beta-catenin that may play a key role in the development of the disease. When activated, beta-catenin causes changes in certain cells in a woman's uterus, leading to adenomyosis.

Philadelphia, PA, October 9, 2013 – Investigators who studied a group of recreational marathon runners have established that strenuous exercise such as running a marathon can damage the heart muscle. Although they found the effect is temporary and reversible, they warn that these effects are more widespread in less fit distance runners and that recreational distance runners should prepare properly before marathons. Their findings are published in the October issue of the Canadian Journal of Cardiology.

(PHILADELPHIA) High levels of high density lipoprotein (HDL), also known as the "good cholesterol," are thought to protect against heart disease. However, what's good for one disease may not be good for another. High levels of HDL have also been linked to increased breast cancer risks and to enhanced cancer aggressiveness in animal experiments.

WASHINGTON, DC—Researchers at the University of Michigan Department of Surgery have begun testing an alternative to embryonic stem cells that could one day regenerate muscle tissue for babies with congenital heart defects. A research-in-progress report on this new approach, which uses amniotic stem cells, was presented today at the 2013 Clinical Congress of the American College of Surgeons. Although this research is still in an early phase, this new approach has the potential to one day help thousands of babies born each year with congenital heart defects.