Novel therapy tested in mice could chase away cat allergies
... respond by spewing out histamine. Allergy experts estimate that 14 percent of children 6 to 19 years old are allergic to cats. The treatment comprises a molecule that loosely tethers a feline and a human protein together. The feline end is the notorious protein (called Fel d1) found in cat dander and saliva...Hospital acquired infections present major problem for infants in developing countries
...loping countries has reached alarming levels. They estimate that 70% of pathogens isolated from bloodstream infections in babies in hospital nurseries may not be treatable by the antibiotics ampicillin and gentamicin, which are currently recommended by the World Health Organisation for this purpose. The high ...Chronic fatigue patients show lower response to placebos
...ns. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that as many as 500,000 Americans may have CFS or related conditions. With so many mysteries surrounding CFS, a great deal of controversy exists among both doctors and patients as to whether its origins are primarily psychological or physiological. C...Mailman School of Public Health receives Manhattan Tobacco Cessation Center grant
...n intervention among Chinese Americans in order to estimate smoking prevalence among New York City Chinese Americans....College alcohol problems exceed previous estimates
...students in 1998 led to an upward revision of that estimate to about 1,500 deaths. The same methods were used to calculate the 2001 estimates in the current review article. Dr. Hingson and colleagues from the Schools of Public Health at Boston University and Harvard University gathered information about drin...Yale authors raise concerns regarding regionalized heart attack care
...e could be done with perfect clinical accuracy, we estimate that you would need to transfer more than 500,000 Americans from the hospitals at which they are currently treated so that they could have access to interventional treatments like cardiac catheterization and bypass surgery," Epstein said. "That's a h...US life expectancy about to decline, researchers say
... death rates and escalating health care costs." To estimate the current impact of obesity on life expectancy, the researchers calculated how much longer people would live if obesity did not exist. To do this, they used recently published health statistics and assumed that everyone who is currently obese acqui...Antiretroviral therapy may prevent excess risk of some cancers in people with HIV
...d with behavioral risk factors such as smoking. To estimate excess cancer risk in people infected with HIV and investigate the modifying effects of the use of HAART and behavioral factors on this cancer risk, Gary M. Clifford, Ph.D., of the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, and coll...Community care tops medical care at preventing heart disease in black Americans
...esearchers also used the Framingham Risk Score, an estimate of the likelihood of developing major heart problems, such as a heart attack, within 10 years. Roughly half (196) of the participants were provided with community-based care and the rest (168) were provided with enhanced primary care. Participants f...HIV-1 spread through six transmission lines in the UK
...ng number of infected individuals through time and estimate the demographic parameters shaping the epidemic. During the exponential growth phase, the transmission chains had an average growth rate of a doubling of the number of people infected each year, similar to that estimated for the US subtype B epidemi...Many children are undervaccinated or have delayed vaccinations in their first 2 years of life
...households and mailing to vaccination providers to estimate vaccination coverage rates for U.S. children aged 19 to 35 months. Data for this study were limited to 14,810 children aged 24 to 35 months. The researchers wanted to determine the cumulative days children were undervaccinated during the first 24 mo...English-speaking Hispanic youth more likely to have sex early
...hives journals. Although researchers have begun to estimate the contribution of other social factors such as income or family structure to reported differences among ethnic/racial groups in sexual behavior, sexually transmitted diseases, and pregnancy, a focus on between-group differences within racial/ethnic...Chest radiographs can predict risk of death in SARS patients
Radiologists can estimate the risk of death to a SARS patient by the seventh day from the onset of symptoms by using chest radiographs, according to a new study by researchers in Hong Kong. This early determination can allow a physician to better tailor treatment for the SARS...Other highlights in the March 2 JNCI
...and participation and economic costs are needed to estimate the effectiveness of the various programs. To compare participation and detection rates achievable through different strategies for invitation to colorectal cancer screening, Nereo Segnan, M.D., of the Centro Prevenzione Oncologica Regione Piemonte a...Adverse drug events in nursing homes are far more common than previously identified
...and applied to that total population, then one can estimate there are some 1.9 million adverse drug events a year, some 40% of which are preventable, and approximately 86,000 life-threatening or fatal adverse drug events each year in the United States, of which nearly 70% may be preventable. "This seems to be...Researchers model brain's electrical storm during a seizure
...t organizes memories, is smaller than normal. "We estimate that two-thirds of patients with epilepsy will respond to medication," said Kirsch, who also co-authored the paper. "For a number of the remaining one-third of patients, surgical removal of the part of the brain where seizures begin may offer a cure....Folic acid recommendations have had little impact on birth defects
...he proved effectiveness of folic acid. The authors estimate that thousands of pregnancies that would otherwise have been healthy were affected by neural tube defects in the study area alone since 1992. The most likely explanation for these results is that recommendations were not implemented widely enough to ...Mothers' exposure to air pollutants linked to chromosome damage in babies
...rker of cancer risk," said Perera. "While we can't estimate the precise increase in cancer risk, these findings underscore the need for policymakers at the federal, state, and local levels to take appropriate steps to protect children from these avoidable exposures." Previous studies conducted by Perera and c...Flu vaccination impact on elderly deaths may be over-estimated
...ases, and colleagues, used statistical models that estimate the winter-seasonal all-cause mortality above an estimated baseline to determine influenza-related mortality indirectly. Their model incorporated information on deaths among the elderly from pneumonia and influenza and all other causes from 33 winter...High levels of airborne mouse allergen in inner-city homes could trigger asthma attacks
...use of chronic illness among children. Researchers estimate that asthma is twice as common in the inner city in comparison to other areas. The study was sponsored by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and the National Heart, Blood, and Lung ...