Culture

DURHAM, N.H. – Parents are much more likely to blame and doubt their children when their child has been sexually abused by another adolescent instead of an adult, according to new research from the Crimes against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire.

New evidence-based guidelines from the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP) address the many risk factors for developing a deep vein thrombosis (DVT), or blood clot, as the result of long-distance travel. These risk factors include the use of oral contraceptives, sitting in a window seat, advanced age, and pregnancy.

New evidence-based guidelines from the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP) recommend considering individual patients' risk of thrombosis when deciding for or against the use of preventive therapies for deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and venous thromboembolism (VTE).

Counties and parishes with a greater concentration of small, locally-owned businesses have healthier populations — with lower rates of mortality, obesity and diabetes — than do those that rely on large companies with "absentee" owners, according to a national study by sociologists at LSU and Baylor University.

In the UK, the exercise electrocardiogram (ECG) is the most common initial test for the evaluation of stable chest pain and has been used widely for almost half a century. However, recent NICE guidelines recommend that it should not be used to diagnose or exclude stable angina in patient assessments. New research published in the BMJ Open finds that the test has other uses that transcend its technical contribution to diagnosis.

PHILADELPHIA -- The American College of Physicians (ACP) recommends that clinicians add metformin as the initial drug treatment for most patients with type 2 diabetes when lifestyle modifications such as diet, exercise, and weight loss have failed to adequately improve high blood sugar.

ACP also recommends that clinicians add a second drug to metformin when treatment with metformin and lifestyle changes fail to control blood sugar levels. Citing insufficient evidence, ACP does not recommend one class of drug over another as a second medication.

ST. PAUL, Minn. – A new scoring method can help doctors quickly decide which stroke patients will respond well to the clot-busting drug alteplase, according to a study published in the February 7, 2012, print issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

The DRAGON score was 86 percent accurate in predicting the outcome three months after people had the stroke and received the drug within four-and-a-half hours after their first stroke symptoms.

BOSTON--Treatment with three relatively new "targeted" cancer drugs has been linked to a slightly elevated chance of fatal side effects, according to a new analysis led by scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. They added that the risk remains low, but should be taken into account by physicians and patients.

Hard hit by one of the worst recessions in nearly a century, hundreds of thousands of Californians lost insurance coverage across the state as employers shed jobs and the health plans that came with those jobs, according to a new report from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.

Among the most alarming trends resulting from the so-called Great Recession: a significant jump in California's already high rate of residents with medical debt.

A large Scandinavian study, that has been running for 30 years, has finally provided convincing evidence that the combined oral contraceptive pill does, indeed, alleviate the symptoms of painful menstrual periods reports scientists from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

A short spinning session can trigger the same biochemical indications as a heart attack – a reaction that is probably both natural and harmless, but should be borne in mind when people seek emergency treatment for chest pain, reveals a study from the Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — University of Illinois researchers determined that an adult stem cell present in muscle is responsive to exercise, a discovery that may provide a link between exercise and muscle health. The findings could lead to new therapeutic techniques using these cells to rehabilitate injured muscle and prevent or restore muscle loss with age.

There are ways in which patients who leave the hospital against medical advice wind up paying for that decision. Being saddled with the full cost of their hospital stay, however, is not one of them.

Insurance companies know this. Patients who walk out may know this. But many physicians, according to a study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, do not.

Much orthopaedic research has been devoted to determining why women are far more susceptible to knee ligament injuries than men. According to a new study, the answer may lie in geometry – the length and shape of a patient's knee bone – more than gender.

Research recently published in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (JBJS), compared magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of male and female athletes with non-contact anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries with those of athletes who participated in similar, at-risk sports but without a history of ligament injury.

MAYWOOD, Ill. -- Within a few years, a new generation of easy-to-use blood-thinning drugs will likely replace Coumadin for patients with irregular heartbeats who are at risk for stroke, according to a journal article by Loyola University Medical Center physicians.

Unlike Coumadin, the new drugs do not require patients to come in to the clinic on a regular basis to check the dose. Nor do the drugs require extensive dietary restrictions.