Body

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — A new way of using blood pressure-lowering medications could prevent more than a fourth of heart attacks and strokes – up to 180,000 a year – while using less medication overall, according to new research from the University of Michigan Health System and the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System.

Using telemedicine to unite clinicians and provide health education for them — and by extension, their patients —is an effective way to manage childhood obesity in remote areas. For these communities, which often have limited access to pediatric subspecialists, having a HEALTH-COP can make all the difference.

UC Davis research published in the American Journal of Medical Quality has found that HEALTH-COP — the Healthy Eating Active Living TeleHealth Community of Practice — improved health in rural communities throughout California.

Much of the shortage of primary care physicians expected over the next decade could be eliminated if the nation increases use of new models of medical care that expand the role of nurse practitioners and physician assistants, according to a new RAND Corporation study.

Expansion of patient-centered medical homes and nurse-managed health centers could help eliminate 50 percent or more of the primary care physician shortage expected to face the U.S. by 2025, according to findings published in the November edition of the journal Health Affairs.

A new test that checks the level of a placental protein could help doctors determine if a woman will develop a severe form of high blood pressure during pregnancy, according to a study in the American Heart Association journal Circulation.

High blood pressure affects 6 percent to 8 percent of pregnant women in the United States, according to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

Foreign-educated and foreign-born health professionals play a vital role in the U.S. health care workforce, but strategic shifts such as changes in immigration laws may be needed to stabilize the nation's health workforce, according to a new RAND Corporation study.

The two groups fill important gaps in the U.S. health care workforce, particularly among primary care physicians, nurses in hospital settings and other areas with worker shortages, according to findings published in the November edition of the journal Health Affairs.

Bethesda, MD – No living mammal is more peculiar than the platypus. It has a broad, duck-like bill, thick, otter-like fur, and webbed, beaver-like feet. The platypus lays eggs rather than gives birth to live young, its snout is covered with electroreceptors that detect underwater prey, and male platypuses have a venomous spur on their hind foot. Until recently, the fossil record indicated that the platypus lineage was unique, with only one species inhabiting the Earth at any one time.

A team of scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, the University of Basel, and Radboud University Nijmegen has now revealed the details of an important microbial process regulating the global nitrogen budget in the oceans. They present their results in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

Wild boars look more or less the same in Israel as they do anywhere else: stalky and hairy with big heads, long snouts, and beady eyes. So scientists had no reason to suspect Israeli wild boars were any different than their brothers and sisters roaming the Middle East, from Egypt to Iran.

FORT LAUDERDALE-DAVIE, Fla. - The old saying goes: "Don't judge a book by its cover." Well, the same could be said about bottlenose dolphins.

ALEXANDRIA, VA — A multidisciplinary clinical practice guideline to improve the accurate and efficient diagnosis and treatment of Bell's palsy was published Monday in the journal Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery. The guideline is intended for clinicians in any setting who are likely to diagnose and manage patients with Bell's palsy, the most common single nerve disorder, usually associated with facial paralysis.

A new study from the University of Waterloo shows that snakes can optimize their vision by controlling the blood flow in their eyes when they perceive a threat.

Kevin van Doorn, PhD, and Professor Jacob Sivak, from the Faculty of Science, discovered that the coachwhip snake's visual blood flow patterns change depending on what's in its environment. The findings appear in the most recent issue of the Journal of Experimental Biology.

BELLINGHAM, Washington, USA – Researchers at the University of Chicago are developing computer-aided diagnosis (CADx) and quantitative image analysis (QIA) methods for mammograms, ultrasounds and magnetic resonance images (MRIs) to identify specific tumor characteristics, including size, shape and sharpness, said lead researcher Maryellen Giger, A.N. Pritzker Professor of Radiology/Medical Physics and director of the Imaging Research Institute at the University of Chicago.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (November 4, 2013) – Whitehead Institute scientists report that the gene mutated in the rare hereditary disorder known as Birt-Hogg-Dubé cancer syndrome also prevents activation of mTORC1, a critical nutrient-sensing and growth-regulating cellular pathway.

PITTSBURGH, Nov. 4, 2013 – For millions of Americans struggling with obesity and considering surgical procedures to achieve weight loss and alleviate obesity-related health complications, a new study adds weight to the health benefits attributed to bariatric surgery.

With the promise of personalized and customized medicine, one extremely important tool for its success is the knowledge of a person's unique genetic profile.

This personalized knowledge of one's genetic profile has been facilitated by the advent of next-generation sequencing (NGS), where sequencing a genome, like the human genome, has gone from costing $95,000,000 to a mere $5,700. So, now the research problem is no longer how to collect this information, but how to compute and analyze it.