Body

Workplace wellness programs can lower health care costs in workers with chronic diseases, but components of the programs that encourage workers to adopt healthier lifestyles may not reduce health costs or lead to lower net savings, according to a new RAND Corporation study.

Examining a large employee wellness program offered by PepsiCo, researchers found that efforts to help employees manage chronic illnesses saved $3.78 in health care costs for every $1 invested in the effort.

Using a nomogram that incorporates age, Gleason score, and prostate-specific antigen (PSA) level at diagnosis, individual risks that a screen-detected prostate cancer has been overdiagnosed can be estimated, according to a new study published January 6 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Drinking alcohol appears to have a dose-dependent inverse (opposite) association with the risk of developing multiple sclerosis (MS) and researchers suggest their findings give no support to advising patients with MS to completely refrain from alcohol, according to a study by Anna Karin Hedstrom, M.D., of the Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, and colleagues.

The results of previous studies have been inconsistent about the impact of alcohol and the risk of developing MS.

Some 30 minutes of meditation daily may improve symptoms of anxiety and depression, a new Johns Hopkins analysis of previously published research suggests.

In recent years, non-hematopoietic effects of erythropoietin (EPO), via its binding to the EPO receptor in non-hematopoietic tissues, including cancerous tissues, has been reported by many different laboratories worldwide. However, it remains controversial concerning whether EPO, particularly recombinant EPO that is used to treat anemia in patients, may promote cancer cell proliferation and survival.

Inhibitors of both JAK and Src kinases represent promising targets for cancer therapeutics because of the central importance of these kinases in tumor cell proliferation and survival. Furthermore, in cancer cells activation of JAK has been reported as a compensatory effect in response to Src inhibitor exposure. This implies simultaneous inhibition of both kinases could have a synergy of anti-cancer effects compared to an agent that inhibits one or the other kinases.

With the help of biomimetic matrices, a research team led by bioengineers at the University of California, San Diego has discovered exactly how calcium phosphate can coax stem cells to become bone-building cells. This work is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of Jan. 6, 2014.

ITHACA, N.Y. – Cornell biomedical engineers have discovered a new way to destroy metastasizing cancer cells traveling through the bloodstream – lethal invaders that are linked to almost all cancer deaths – by hitching cancer-killing proteins along for a ride on life-saving white blood cells.

PITTSBURGH, Jan. 6, 2014 – The increased activation of a key oncogene in head and neck cancers could be the result of mutation and dysfunction of regulatory proteins that are supposed to keep the gene, which has the potential to cause cancer, in check, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. The findings, published in the early online version of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest a new target for drugs to treat head and neck tumors, as well as other cancers.

New fossils from Belgium have shed light on the origin of some of the most well-known, and well-loved, modern mammals. Cats and dogs, as well as other carnivorous mammals (like bears, seals, and weasels), taxonomically called 'carnivoraformes', trace their ancestry to primitive carnivorous mammals dating back to 55 million years ago (the beginning of the time period called the Eocene).

Researchers had known for several decades that a certain chemical modification exists on messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA), which is essential to the flow of genetic information. But only recently did experiments at the University of Chicago show that one major function of this modification governs the longevity and decay of RNA, a process critical to the development of healthy cells.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — After being inadvertently introduced in the United States from South America, Argentine ants have successfully invaded urban, agricultural, and natural settings nationwide. In urban California, the Argentine ant is among the primary pest ants. For example, this particular species of ants makes up 85 percent of ants sampled by commercial pest control companies in just the Greater San Diego Area.

They went boating alone without life vests and gave no thought to shimmying up very tall coconut trees.

And although they were only figments of a writer's imagination, the fictional adventurers helped provide new insight into how humans, especially men, gauge the threat of a potential adversary. Those reading the stories — dozens of residents of a small village on the Fijian island of Yasawa — judged the characters to be risk-seekers.

LOS ANGELES (Jan. 6, 2014) – Researchers at the Cedars-Sinai Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute and Department of Neurosurgery identified immune system targets on cancer stem cells – cells from which malignant brain tumors are believed to originate and regenerate – and created an experimental vaccine to attack them.

A new idea to cut back on air pollution: spray water into the atmosphere from sprinklers atop tall buildings and towers, similar to watering a garden. This suggestion comes from Shaocai Yu of Zhejiang University in China, and North Carolina State University in the US. In an article published in Springer's journal Environmental Chemistry Letters, Yu suggests this course of action as a novel approach to help curb the severe air pollution and heavy haze that is experienced in many Chinese cities, as well as others around the world.