American Thoracic Society news tips for June (second issue)
...seriously reduce patient exacerbations. COPD is a slowly progressive airway disease caused by cigarette smoking that produces a major, non-reversible decline in lungfunction. In the 14-person placebo group of patients with advanced disease, there were a total of 10 exacerbations, compared with three among...Novel diagnostic tool detects life-threatening infections faster than standard nuclear imaging tests
...gns of infection. These tests detect infection by slowly concentrating in areas where white blood cells have collected to fight infection. The detection of abnormality often depends on the concentration of the tracer over many hours or days before the abnormalities are visualized. Test results can take f...Eye drops delay onset of glaucoma in people at higher risk
...However, for unknown reasons, the fluid passes too slowly through the meshwork drain. As the fluid builds up, the pressure inside the eye rises. Elevated eye pressure can damage the optic nerve; a healthy optic nerve is necessary for good vision. When the optic nerve is damaged from increased pressure, glau...Hairy treatments for winter ills
...r medicinal herbs. Some of these plants grow very slowly and demand is greater than supply," says Dr Philip Franks, leader of the Food Science Australia's biotechnology research. Food Science Australia's scientists and collaborators in the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for Bioproducts are researching h...Futuristic system brings vision to blind
...earned to use the prosthetic system well enough to slowly drive cars on private property. They could walk freely around a laboratory, avoid obstacles and look outside a window to see a tree. "It's amazing now. It was science fiction a few years ago," said William H. Dobelle, Ph.D., chairman and chief execu...American Thoracic Society news tips for June (first issue)
...OOD Airway remodeling in asthma, which, over time, slowly becomes less reversible and manifestsitself in impaired lung function, begins in childhood and continues into adult life, according toCanadian and New Zealand researchers. For over a decade, the investigators studied a birthcohort of 1,037 New Zeala...Definitive CWRU study says exercise, no smoking leads to longer life in adults over 75
... She says that the wheels of science grind slowly in collecting information, but the message from this study is that practicing healthy behaviors such as exercising and not smoking should be carried out throughout ones life. Stopping them diminishes their benefits, she concludes. Kahana pro...New breast cancer therapy trials show dramatic results
...t preferentially delivered there. Hence, the drugs slowly leak out into normal tissues over a period of three or four weeks long enough for the liver and spleen to blunt its toxic side effects. In several cases, the treatment has remarkably destroyed all visible signs of the tumor. In others, the treatmen...Faster detection of bacteria in water, food
...rganisms. By tracking differences that accumulated slowly in bacterial genomes over time, the study of the patterns of variation among strains can lead to greater insight into bacterial evolution. "The new identity card approach will enable us to further distinguish between bacterial strains that have diffe...Mastiffs could aid treatment of retinitis pigmentosa
...al) factors cause the blinding disease to progress slowly in some individuals, more rapidly in others and not at all in the lucky few who evidently have the genetic mutation but do not appear to go blind? That information might help design treatments to halt, reverse or even prevent some RP blindness in hu...Choline prevents liver failure in patients on IV nutrition
...etabolize it. Without a source, regardless of how slowly choline is metabolized, eventually the bodys supply will be depleted," Buchman said. Lecithin, which contains 13 percent choline, was originally given to patients receiving TPN because there was no commercially manufactured form of choline. Also, p...Stanford team prevents kidney transplant rejection without drugs
...nst the transplanted organ. At this time, the team slowly weaned the patient away from the immune-suppressive drugs. Millan said this study represents the direction in which transplantation will move in the future. In the past, the goal was to have a transplanted organ function in the recipient. Doct...Support for colorectal cancer screening
...ening is feasible as most invasive tumours develop slowly from non-cancerous polyps. In the UK, flexible sigmoidoscopy is judged a more suitable tool for population screening than colonoscopy (advocated in the USA), because it is safer, cheaper, quicker, and more convenient, and uptake rates are much higher...Medical microspheres provide precision-release drug delivery
...eres generally release encapsulated compounds more slowly and over longer time periods. Microcapsules, on the other hand, can be made to release their payload only after the shell has dissolved to the point of rupture. Therefore, by varying the shell size and thickness, the researchers can control the time...Genetic connection in link between permanent hair dye use and bladder cancer risk
....Female study participants whose bodies could only slowly flush out carcinogens known as arylamines, which are an ingredient of hair dye, had a higher risk of bladder cancer than women whose bodies eliminated the carcinogens more quickly, the investigators reported. The body's efficiency in removing such to...Jefferson study shows low concentrations of chemotherapy drugs have antiangiogenic effects
...ery vascular tumor - had been implanted. The pumps slowly released low doses of the drugs. They found the tumors became smaller because the drugs inhibited the growth of endothelial cells, which are key to the development of new blood vessels. When they sectioned the tissue and looked at the blood vessels,...UCLA scientists discover African strain of AIDS in two American infants
... a poorly controlled infection that responded more slowly to medication than the other children in the study. We underestimated the severity of this childs disease for a year, Krogstad said. We didnt treat his case as aggressively as we could have because we thought his viral load didnt require it. This may...Baldness induced by dopamine treatments may be reversible
...rson to person. For some, the disease can progress slowly over 20 or 30 years and for others, the progression is faster....Rat makes a partial recovery following a spinal cord lesion
...ved. It appeared that one of the two neural tracts slowly recovered. The second spinal cord lesion examined by the researchers was the complete transection at the height of the eighth vertebra. The spinal cord is completely severed, comparable in humans to a spinal cord lesion after a violent knife stab in ......man shivering response to being cold, and are then slowly warmed. Previous studies have demonstrated that this process helps protect heart tissue, and Lee said cooling is likely to be most effective when initiated early - before permanent heart muscle damage occurs. The 25-center study, which will in...