Traditional Chinese exercises may increase efficacy of flu vaccine
...this study, we found that five months of an easily performed behavioral Taiji and Qigong intervention could improve the magnitude and duration of the HI anti-influenza antibody titer response in a small cohort of older adults, write the authors, who also include Karl S. Rosengren, a U. of I. professor of psych...DNA vaccine against multiple sclerosis appears safe, potentially beneficial
...ce imaging (MRI) and other safety evaluations were performed at the beginning of the study, and again after five, nine, 13, 26, 38 and 50 weeks. BHT-3009 was safe and well tolerated, provided favorable trends on brain MRI and produced beneficial antigen-specific immune changes, the authors write. These changes...Comparison of obstetric outcomes between on-call and patients' own obstetricians
...tetrician who did not provide antenatal care. They performed a cohort study of all live single term births between 1991 and 2001 at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montral. In all, there were 28,332 eligible deliveries attended by 26 obstetricians; 21,779 (76.9%) of the women were attended by their own obstetri...Study says COPD testing is not measuring up
... in those patients who were 75 years and older was performed less frequently, with only 28% of patients in this population receiving spirometry. Researchers point to the issue of ageism and question whether or not a patients age influences a physicians decision to order diagnostic testing. The bad news is th...Penn researchers discover novel pathway for increasing 'good' cholesterol
...f heart attack and stroke. Although this study was performed in mice, humans have the same proprotein convertases and endothelial lipase, and these enzymes are conserved in all vertebrates. Jin and Rader expect that the same pathway for controlling HDL-C will apply to humans. The next step is to study how ...Maternal obesity prior to pregnancy associated with birth defects
...excluded from the study, and when the analysis was performed also excluding women with gestational diabetes, the results were similar. However, undiagnosed cases of type 2 or gestational diabetes may have affected the results. Our study supports previous evidence as well as provides new evidence for the asso...Young children's taste preferences may be influenced by fast-food branding
... A total of 63 children completed the study and performed a total of 304 individual tasting comparisons. On average, children preferred the tastes of foods and drinks in the McDonalds packaging over the same foods in unmarked packaging (48.3 percent vs. 36.7 percent for hamburgers, 59 percent vs. 18 percent...ADHD appears to be associated with depressed dopamine activity in the brain
...ealthy controls (average age 30). Brain scans were performed using positron emission tomography (PET) and a dru...), which binds with dopamine receptors. Scans were performed twice, after injections of placebo and of methylphenidate; the participants did not know which drug ...Inhaled nitric oxide safe for tiny preemie lungs, UCSF study finds
...tals around the country. Laboratory studies were performed in 83 of these infants to examine whether inhaled nitric oxide had a negative effect on pulmonary surfactant, a lipid-protein mixture that coats the lungs and greatly reduces surface tension. Surfactant essentially allows the lungs to inflate easi...Statin drugs may delay progressive artery damage in children
...d and Drug Administration based on clinical trials performed in children with FH....Many heart attack patients still not getting emergency clot-busting treatment
...art attack patients treated, if the angioplasty is performed in a timely manner. The study involved patients...for every 1,000 heart attack patients treated when performed in a timely manner. In fact, the authors state that hospitals should be judged in part by their a...Electric fields have potential as a cancer treatment
... stalling the progression of cancer. The research, performed by an international team led by Yoram Palti of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, is explained in the August issue of Physics Today, the flagship magazine of the American Institute of Physics. In the studies, the research team us...Study says normal but out-of-control enzyme may be culprit that signals some cells to become cancer
...easier to keep turned on all the time. The team performed several experiments to determine whether high TOPK activity could lead to cancer. When they engineered mouse skin cells to produce excessive amounts of the enzyme and then injected the cells into other mice, those mice developed tumors. Control ...HealthGrades study: Bariatric surgery patients have fewer complications at high-volume hospitals
...those with better-than-average patient outcomes -- performed about twice the number of procedures compared with...es studies, almost half of all the procedures were performed in just four states New York, Pennsylvania, Texas and Florida Last year, a study published by th...Children and young people show elevated leukaemia rates near nuclear facilities
... wider conclusions. Eight separate analyses were performed including unadjusted, random and fixed effect models and the figures they produced showed considerable consistency. But the authors point out that dose-response studies they looked at - which describe how an organism is affected by different lev...Helicopter flight trials for EGNOS
...anding pad in the city. The Lausanne trials were performed by Eurocopter, using their EC155 experimental all-...and consisted of a number of validating approaches performed by the HTT to a Helicopter Emergency Medical Services (HEMS) pad located on the roof of Lausanne Uni...Lower mortality rates associated with hospitals that rank highest on quality of care indicators
...r each hospital, a score was calculated for how it performed treating patients with AMI, CHF and pneumonia. Examples of performance indicators included whether hospitals gave aspirin and beta-blockers at arrival and discharge for AMI and, for pneumonia, how quickly antibiotics were administered. The results...Study finds HIV protease inhibitor drugs may adversely affect the scaffolding of the cell nucleus
...ly some of them. All of the current studies were performed in cultured cells, not tissues from HIV-treated patients. In future studies, the UCLA team would like to assess the biochemical and pathological side effects of the HIV protease inhibitors in humans taking these medications. Ultimately, we would li...Patients with soft tissue sarcomas should be treated at high volume centers
...t was done. A total of 256 institutions in Florida performed at least one resection of a soft tissue sarcoma be...e excluded from the main analysis), 7 institutions performed 1504 cases (32.2%) and were classified as high volume centres. The remaining two thirds of instituti...Women's mortality rates for cardiovascular disease differ widely among hospitals
...f the 513 study hospitals in the 19 states studied performed at the level of the best-performing hospitals during the years 2003 through 2005, 15,925 deaths among women hospitalized for cardiovascular disease could have been potentially prevented. The national number would be much higher. The greatest opportu...