Clinical Research

Why Are Alcoholics More Often Men?

Alcohol is among the most commonly abused substances and men are almost twice as likely as women to develop alcoholism but there have been no clear reasons for this difference.  A new study in Biological Psychiatry says that it may be biological and that d ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 18 2010 - 10:11am

If Placebos Are Standards For Trials, What's In Placebos?

Medical evidence is based on what is considered the strongest possible foundation, the placebo-controlled trial but a new paper in the Annals of Internal Medicine calls into question this foundation upon which much of medicine rests, by showing that there ...

Article - News Staff - Oct 19 2010 - 11:54am

Gastric Bypass Surgery Reduces Sweet Tooth Also, Says Study

Surgery of any kind is a drastic step, especially for preventable conditions such as obesity, but a new study on g astric bypass surgery in obese rats also showed a decreased preference for sweet-tasting substances, according to Penn State College of Medic ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 2 2010 - 10:58am

Is HDL Really So “Good”?

In 2006, the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer released a state of the art clinical study of a new drug designed to treat high cholesterol, torcetrapid. The results were puzzling. The compound lowered low density lipoprotein, aka LDL or “bad” cholesterol. It al ...

Article - Greg Critser - Nov 7 2010 - 10:13pm

Walking And Endurance: Why Children Tire More Easily Than Adults (And How To Calculate It)

Children have more energy than adults but why is it that when walking children tire first?    Do kids,  and perhaps even shorter adults, walk differently from taller people or do they tire faster for some other reason?   Max Kleiber's work on resting ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 13 2010 - 11:34am

Second U.S. human embryonic stem cell clinical trial gets green light

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved  Advanced Cell Technology for the second human trial of human embryonic stem cells (hESC), in people with macular degeneration, a progressive form of blindness. Advanced Cell Technology said it would start ...

Blog Post - Hank Campbell - Nov 22 2010 - 12:03pm

IGF1 Gel May Reduce Hearing Loss

Sensorineural hearing loss (SSHL) is a condition that causes deafness in 40,000 Americans each year, usually in early middle-age.    A new treatment has been developed SSHL, say researchers writing in BMC Medicine who describe the positive results of a pre ...

Article - News Staff - Nov 30 2010 - 4:00am

A possible new MS treatment within 15 years?

Researchers may have found a way to reverse damage to nerves caused by multiple sclerosis, according to a study by scientists at the universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh. A report by AFP said the team "identified a mechanism essential to regenerati ...

Blog Post - Becky Jungbauer - Dec 7 2010 - 3:06pm

Cleaning your own pollutants may harm you

Many metals have special oxygen transfer properties which improve the utility of hydrogen peroxide. By far, the most common of these is iron which, when used in the prescribed manner, results in the generation of highly reactive hydroxyl radicals (. OH). ...

Blog Post - Robert H Olley - Dec 9 2010 - 4:45am

Someone's High On Placebos

Last Wednesday, this paper, published in PLoS ONE, hit the popular news in the medicine/science category, with articles such as this one from MedPage Today and this, from Reuters. ...

Article - Barry Leiba - Dec 30 2010 - 12:05am