Culture

A pre-diet measurement of two hormones related to weight regulation can help predict which dieters will be more likely to maintain their weight loss and who will not, according to a new study. The results will be presented Sunday at The Endocrine Society's 94th Annual Meeting in Houston.

With obesity rates in many countries steadily climbing, more people are turning to diets to lose weight. But, for many people, maintaining the weight loss can be extremely difficult, leading to a frustrating cycle of weight loss and gain.

Many patients with type 2 diabetes may be aspirin resistant. That means the standard aspirin dose may not protect them against blood clots that cause heart attacks and strokes among diabetics, a new clinical study finds. The results will be presented Sunday at The Endocrine Society's 94th Annual Meeting in Houston.

Society tends to perceive an increase in the immigrant population with an increase in crime. But, according to a new study, it is not possible to infer this cause-effect relationship in the case of Spain.

"Crime in Spain is low compared to the rest of Europe. Crime rates have increased slightly in recent years, unlike the immigrant population which has grown at a much greater pace. This suggests a positive yet low correlation between immigration and crime," as explained to SINC by César Alonso-Borrego, lecturer in economics at the Carlos III University in Madrid, Spain.

A mathematical model that has been used for more than 80 years to determine the hunting range of animals in the wild holds promise for mapping the territories of street gangs, a UCLA-led team of social scientists reports in a new study.

"The way gangs break up their neighborhoods into unique territories is a lot like the way lions or honey bees break up space," said lead author P. Jeffrey Brantingham, a professor of anthropology at UCLA.

The patient-centered medical home (PCMH) is a concept at the heart of many health care reform models that aim to both improve the quality of care and reduce wasteful spending. But a new analysis of federally qualified health centers finds that clinics with higher scores as medical homes also had higher per-patient operating costs.

The research, published online in the Journal of the American Medical Association and presented today at the AcademyHealth conference in Orlando, Fla., is the first national study to put a price on these additional costs.

CHICAGO – Federally funded community health centers with higher patient-centered medical home ratings on measures such as quality improvement had higher operating costs, according to a study appearing in JAMA. This study is being published early online to coincide with its presentation at the Annual Research Meeting of AcademyHealth.

In testosterone-deficient men, major weight loss was an added benefit of testosterone replacement therapy for most of the patients who participated in a new study. The results will be presented Saturday at The Endocrine Society's 94th Annual Meeting in Houston.

"The substantial weight loss found in our study—an average of 36 pounds—was a surprise," said the study's lead author, Farid Saad, PhD, of Berlin-headquartered Bayer Pharma.

Rockville, Md. – Studies have consistently reported that women require reading glasses or bifocal lenses earlier than men. According to a recent Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science paper, the gender difference is caused by factors other than focusing ability, such as arm length or preferred reading distance, which should be considered when prescribing readers or bifocals.

In a tight economy, with fewer jobs, many people end up working harder and sacrificing more to stay employed. A new study finds that one of those sacrifices is sometimes their own and their family's nutrition.

TORONTO, June 22, 2012 –A new study has found that programs aimed at helping people prevent or manage diabetes are most successful if they are directed at the patient or the health care system. Programs aimed at physicians were only successful for patients with poorer diabetes control.

Such interventions also work best for diabetics in poorer health than those who are managing their illness well, the study found.

Research: Effect of telehealth on use of secondary care and mortality: findings from the Whole System Demonstrator cluster randomised trial

Editorial: Telehealth for long term conditions

For people with long term conditions, telehealth can reduce deaths and help patients avoid the need for emergency hospital care, finds a study published on bmj.com today.

However, the estimated scale of hospital cost savings is modest and may not be sufficient to offset the cost of the technology, say the authors.

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Mayo Clinic researchers have discovered an association between a commonly prescribed blood pressure drug, Olmesartan, and severe gastrointestinal issues such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, weight loss and electrolyte abnormalities -- symptoms common among those who have celiac disease. The findings are published online today in the medical journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

MANHATTAN, KAN. -- Racial profiling has gained national attention in recent years, and a Kansas State University researcher is finding that it can involve an additional factor: gender.

Jeremy Briggs, doctoral candidate in sociology, Topeka, is analyzing police actions during routine traffic stops to understand how race and gender are connected. Perhaps one of his most significant findings is that black and Hispanic women are just as likely as white men to be ticketed, arrested or searched during a traffic stop.

In a 0-60 mph stand off, most cars would be hard pressed to give a cheetah a run for its money, and at their highest recorded speed of 29m/s (65mph) cheetahs easily outstrip the fastest greyhounds. But, according to Alan Wilson from the Royal Veterinary College, UK, there is no clear reason for the cheetah's exceptional performance. 'Cheetahs and greyhounds are known to use a rotary gallop and physically they are remarkably similar, yet there is this bewitching difference in maximum speed of almost a factor of two', he says.

Alcohol may be involved in up to 640,000 hospital admissions and nearly 2 million visits to emergency care departments in England and Wales every year, suggests research published online in Emergency Medicine Journal.

The authors base their findings on the number of patients requiring treatment at one inner city emergency care department in the South West of England, and the extrapolation of those figures.