Culture

Scientists have long believed that vitamin D, which is naturally absorbed from sunlight, has an important role in the functioning of the body's autoimmune system. Now Prof. Howard Amital of Tel Aviv University's Sackler Faculty of Medicine and Sheba Medical Center has discovered that the vitamin may also affect the outcomes of patients in intensive care.

OTTAWA, Canada -- Dr. Roger Zemek, Director of Emergency Research at the CHEO Research Institute and ED physician, and assistant professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ottawa, has overseen the creation and implementation of a Medical Directive that now empowers nurses to administer an oral steroid treatment, which has reduced wait time and improved patient care. This research is published today in Pediatrics.

When we try to put ourselves in someone else's shoes, we usually go all the way, assuming that they feel the same way we do. But a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that we have limits: we don't extend this projection to people who have different political views, even under extreme circumstances.

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- You've been experiencing severe back pain and weakness in your right leg. Your doctor orders a spinal MRI to help determine the cause. The radiology report diagnoses cancer.

Would you rather read the detailed medical report right away at home or wait until your doctor was available to explain the test results, diagnosis and treatment options?

This scenario was part of a study at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center designed to determine if patients wanted online access to radiology test results and, if so, how quickly.

TORONTO, Ont. April 2, 2012— Doctors are more reluctant to start their patients on insulin than the patients are themselves, according to a new study led by researchers at St. Michael's Hospital.

"It is well-known that insulin is effective in lowering blood sugar," said Dr. Catherine Yu, a researcher at the hospital's Keenan Research Centre and senior author of the paper. "But there are no clear recommendations on the safest and most effective way to start patients on it, and so physicians are often hesitant to do so."

The American College of Rheumatology (ACR) has released the 2012 recommendations for the use of disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) and biologic agents in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). The guidelines published today in the ACR journal, Arthritis Care & Research, are an update to the 2008 recommendations and address the issues of initiating and switching drugs, screening for tuberculosis (TB) reactivation, immunization, and the use of biologics in high-risk RA patients.

A working group convened by the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) has evaluated more than 60 disease activity measures for rheumatoid arthritis (RA). The group narrowed the number of RA disease activity measures and the recommended six for use in U.S. clinical practice are detailed in Arthritis Care & Research, a journal published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the ACR.

Hypnosis can be a highly effective treatment for the bowel disorder IBS. Studies involving a total of 346 patients conducted by researchers at The Sahlgrenska Academy of the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, showed that hypnotherapy alleviated symptoms in 40 per cent of those affected – and that the improvement is long-term.

Around 15 per cent of the Swedish population is thought to suffer from IBS (irritable bowel syndrome), symptoms of which include abdominal pain and alteration of bowel habits, as well as abdominal distension and bloating.

Do an online search for sex offenders living in your neighborhood and you may be alarmed by how many you find. But a new study of sex-offender registries in five states shows that they overestimate the number of offenders actually living in the community by as much as 60 percent.

Chicago (April 2, 2012)—Pediatric surgeons can lower health care costs if they remove a young patient's perforated appendix sooner rather than later, according to new study results published in the April issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons.

The grey seals in the Baltic Sea compete for fish with the fishing industry. The seals locally eat about the same quantities of cod, common whitefish, salmon, sea trout and eel as those taken by fishermen. This is the conclusion from research carried out at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

Competing with the fishing industry

On March 29, 2012, the National Science Foundation (NSF) conducted a bipartisan congressional briefing sponsored by the Coalition for National Science Funding and hosted by the Congressional Research and Development Caucus and its Co-Chairs Rush Holt (NJ-12) and Judy Biggert (IL-13) and special guests Representatives Daniel Lipinski (IL-3) and Sheila Jackson Lee (TX-18).

London -- The latest research developments to reprogram scar tissue resulting from myocardial infarction (MI) into viable heart muscle cells, were presented at the Frontiers in CardioVascular Biology (FCVB) 2012 meeting, held 30 March to 1 April at the South Kensington Campus of Imperial College in London.

CHICAGO — The antiangiogenic drug pazopanib has demonstrated clinically meaningful activity in patients with refractory urothelial cancer, according to results presented at the AACR Annual Meeting 2012, held here March 31 - April 4. The results also revealed that increases in interleukin-8 levels early after treatment with pazopanib may predict a lack of tumor response to the therapy.

CHICAGO - A pair of targeted therapies shrank tumors in some patients with treatment-resistant Ewing's sarcoma or desmoplastic small-round-cell tumors, according to research led by investigators from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center reported at the AACR Annual Meeting 2012.

Five of 17 Ewing's sarcoma patients responded to the combination, with two achieving complete responses, one for 27 weeks. The researchers noted that the ability to manage patients' treatment-related side effects is vital to maintaining the therapy and slowing disease progression.