Different antipsychotic medications may have different effects on brain volume
...onducted at 14 academic medical centers. A matched sample of 58 healthy volunteers underwent MRI and were compared on brain volume measures. "The principle new finding of this study is the significant difference in the course and magnitude of these changes between patients treated with haloperidol, a conve...Differential heart-attack risks among blacks, whites remain mystery
...residents, and it contains the most representative sample of African-American subjects of any other statistical dataset ever used to study Lp(a) and coronary artery calcium levels. In the latest study, scientists looked at the records of 1,288 subjects over the age of 40 -- 380 black women and 241 white wom...Patients with heart disease can lower cardiovascular risk factors with exercise, stress management
...ill need to be evaluated prospectively in a larger sample of patients with IHD. However, the present study provides insight into potential mechanisms by which exercise or stress management training may be of benefit. Our results suggest that exercise and stress management training offer considerable promise...Risk of HIV transmission highest in early stage of infection
...nd monogamous. Study participants provided a blood sample and answered questions about their health and behavior, including questions on number of sexual partners and coital frequency, at 10-month intervals for up to 40 months. From analysis of these data, the researchers found that during early infection (...Lack of vigorous activity linked to functional decline in older adults with arthritis
...of various risk factors, based on a large national sample of older adults with arthritis. Their findings, featured in the April 2005 issue of Arthritis & Rheumatism ( http://www.interscience.wiley.com/journal/arthritis ), offer good news for guiding effective prevention efforts. Among the subjects 5,715 ...Fifteen-year hunt uncovers gene behind 'pseudothalidomide' syndrome
...ch as that to make many copies of DNA from a small sample -- have been around in some form for more than a decade. But others are much more recent developments. For example, the researchers found important genetic changes in part by comparing different species' genetic sequences, most of which were publishe...Blood test can accurately diagnose heart failure in emergency patients
...dition to standard evaluation of symptoms, a blood sample was drawn for NT-proBNP measurement. After the emergency assessment was completed, the attending physicians were asked to estimate the likelihood that the patients' symptoms were caused by heart failure, based on all available information except the ...Smoking doubles risk of degenerative eye condition
...eople. The findings are based on a representative sample of over 4,000 people, aged 75 and older, from 49 general practices across Britain. The participants all underwent a series of detailed eye tests and were asked about their smoking habits, and if they had given up, how long ago. After taking into acco...Smart plastics change shape with light
...created by exposing only one side of the stretched sample to light. The result is the formation of two layers. So "while the deformation is well-fixed for [the irradiated] layer, the other keeps its elasticity. As a result, one contracts much more than the other when the external stress is released, forming...One-meter waistline predicts high risk of diabetes and heart disease
...st and hip circumference were measured and a blood sample was taken to determine insulin sensitivity. Statistical modelling was then used to assess the predictive power of each variable Waist circumference was a very strong independent predictor of insulin sensitivity. A waist circumference of less than 100...Pessimism and depression increase dementia risk
...tory study conducted at Mayo Clinic with a smaller sample of individuals that suggested pessimism, depressio...0 or 40 years later. He and colleagues extracted a sample of approximately 3,500 individuals living in and around Olmsted County, Minn., from 50,000 individua...Alcohol magnifies the rewarding effects of smoking, even for light smokers
... nondependent smokers who smoke even less than the sample in this study. "These 'chippers' may only smoke when they drink or only smoke a few cigarettes a day," she said. "We will be examining their cigarette cravings after alcohol drinking compared to more frequent, regular smokers. We will also look at...Study shows surprising decreased surgical infection risk after age 65
... and had had numerous limitations, including small sample size and data restricted to a single institution or a single surgical category. In an editorial accompanying the study, Thomas R. Talbot and William Schaffner of Vanderbilt University noted that the toll of surgical-site infections is immense: approx...MR spectroscopy may be superior for determining prostate cancer prognosis
...major challenge. Another problem is that a biopsy sample from one area the prostate may miss malignant cells elsewhere in the gland. Removal of the entire prostate can give a more definitive diagnosis, but if the tumor is a slow-growing one, the patient would have undergone unnecessary surgery. Surgery a...American Society of Travel Agents urges healthy travel for consumers
...dents' propensity to be online. Though this online sample is not a probability sample, in theory, with sampl...percent certainty that the results for the overall sample have a sampling error of +/- 3 percentage points. Sampling error for the following sub-sample result...Surgery for children with sleep apnea improves quality of life
...e no significant differences Therefore, since the sample size was larger for the six-month group, we used that group for further analysis of the QOL data." "Children who underwent adenotonsillectomy had significant improvements in QOL scores and PSG parameters," the researchers state. "We found significan...Patients' lives at risk from substandard drugs say heart specialists
... a bleed in the brain. "While we analysed only one sample from most of the batches albeit testing more than...ndreotti said that it was a drawback that only one sample per batch had been tested and she pointed out that the product produced by the authors' company had ...No strong evidence linking mercury levels with worse neurobehavioral performance in older adults
...e and neurobehavioral outcomes in a representative sample of older adults in the United States. The research included 474 randomly selected participants in the Baltimore Memory Study, a longitudinal study of cognitive decline involving 1,140 Baltimore residents aged 50 to 70 years. Total mercury in whole b...Genetic variation linked to alcohol dependence found in a Russian population
... and100 local military personnel as controls. Each sample was genotyped for seven GABRA2 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), which are variations between individuals in the genetic code. Lappalainen and his colleagues found significant associations between two SNPs and alcohol dependence. The structure ......for assault related injuries from a representative sample of 32 major Accident and Emergency departments in England and Wales. The study also looked at the effectiveness of CCTV surveillance in preventing violence, and the reliability of police statistics as a measure of violent crime. The study found th...