Scientists have reported that an experimental vaccine targeting one of the most common genetic drivers of pancreatic cancer, called mutant KRAS, is safe and generated a durable immune responses aimed at preventing the cancer.
After the last wave of 'American children don't perform well on international standardized tests' articles in news media, the Obama administration gutted No Child Left Behind, the program approved with overwhelming bipartisan over a decade earlier, and replaced it with Common Core standards. American teachers, who didn't like the feeling that they were having to 'teach to the test' in order for students to do as well on standardized tests as kids from countries who primarily teach to the test, have now been handed an entirely new and even more restrictive set of demands to teach to the test.
America is a liberal democracy.
Given the modern colloquial connotation of 'liberal' and its undertones of social authoritarianism, calling the United States a liberal democracy will make conservatives bristle, but it's true, and it is part of the reason they then say America is the greatest country in the world, or at least was until January of 2009. Ironically, conservatives, even those living in a liberal democracy, are happier than liberals pretty much...anywhere.
An analysis of 16 Western European countries found that liberals are less happy overall, while conservatives tend to be more cheery, say psychologists.
Generic drugs and biosimilar drugs are conceptually equivalent, though a biosimilar drug is not a generic drug.
Generics drugs are equivalent copycats - exact copies of molecules that were developed at great cost by companies that are now outside the patent window. Biosimilars are instead copies of molecules of a protein nature involving biological processes and materials, like cell culture or the extraction of products using living organisms, which is why there is no product that is exactly the same as the other. Basically, that is why the name 'biosimilar' exists, because unlike generics they are not 'bioequivalent' to the drugs that have survived rigorous testing and approval.
Treatment with xenon gas reduces the extent of brain damage after a head injury reduces the extent of brain damage, according to a new study.
Head injury is the leading cause of death and disability in people under 45 in developed countries - due primarily to falls and road accidents. The primary injury caused by the initial mechanical force is followed by a secondary injury which develops in the hours and days afterwards. This secondary injury is largely responsible for patients' mental and physical disabilities, but there are currently no drug treatments that can be given after the accident to stop it from occurring.
Tiny single-cell organisms living underground could help with the problem of nuclear waste disposal, according to a paper in the ISME (Multidisciplinary Journal of Microbial Ecology) Journal.
This is good news for Americans, since the Obama administration has lost the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository application even more often than the U.S. Internal Revenue Service has lost the emails showing they targeted political opponents.
Bacteria with waste-eating properties have been discovered before, but in relatively pristine soils. This is the first time finding microbes that can survive in the very harsh conditions expected in radioactive waste disposal sites.
Reducing hyperactivity in kids may be as simple as getting them out to play.
Kids are full of energy so having them trapped in a classroom all day from a young age isn't easy. For some, it is bordering on impossible and many of those have been saddled with the Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) label. Rather than putting kids on expensive - and in the case of Ritalin, dangerous - medications, the solution may be as simple as some play time before school starts.
By pairing two unconventional forms of carbon – one shaped like a soccer ball, the other a tiny diamond – scientists have created a molecule that acts as a rectifier - it conducts electricity in only one direction, which means it could be possible to cheaply shrink computer chip components down to the size of molecules.
Positive results from its final preclinical toxicology study of SYN-004 have led Synthetic Biologics
to get ready for clinical trials of the anti-infective, second-generation product candidate for Clostridium difficile (C. difficile).
Synthetic Biologics
is in the final stages of preparing its SYN-004 IND application for submission to the FDA, with the expectation of initiating Phase Ia and Ib clinical trials in the fourth quarter of 2014, and a Phase II efficacy study in the first half of 2015.
The Institute of Medicine has recommended that clinicians minimize interventions in patients with life-limiting disease and instead focus on maximizing quality of life but more than half of nursing home residents with advanced dementia - a terminal illness marked by severe cognitive impairment and functional dependence - continue to receive medications of questionable benefit, including medications to treat dementia and lower cholesterol, at substantial financial cost.
Nearly 1 in 3 young adults ages 19 to 25 years lacked health insurance in 2009 - in most cases, they didn't want to incur the cost but one of the goals of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, was to get all young people or their parents paying for coverage so that the people who could not get it could afford to be subsidized.
Thus, an early provision of Obamacare mandated that young people had to pay for health insurance - or insurance companies had to let them stay on their parents' policies until age 26. For a recent paper, Meera Kotagal, M.D., M.P.H., of the University of Washington, Seattle, and colleagues examined coverage, access to care and health care use among 19- to 25-year-olds compared with 26- to 34-year-olds after the Obamacare mandate.
Though nearly every medical body and the United Nations would rather that epidemiologists stop talking about "pre-diabetes", concerns are still there. Governments are worried that working up the public about pre-diabetes will increase patient costs by 500 percent while advocates for it to be taken seriously believe it might head off serious issues later in life.
Pre-diabetes is a general term that refers to a vague intermediate stage between normoglycemia and diabetes mellitus. It has been broadened to include individuals with impaired glucose tolerance (IGT), impaired fasting glucose (IFG) or a combination of the two.
Results to date from prospective cohort studies investigating the link between prediabetes and risk of cancer are controversial.
A team of researchers have evaluated mepolizumab, a new antibody-based drug for certain patients with severe asthma, and found it can replace traditional, steroid-based treatments for a specific subset of patients, resulting in improved outcomes and reduced side effects.
Patients with severe asthma often require high doses of steroid-based treatments that can significantly impair their quality of life.
These high doses can cause debilitating side effects including mood swings, diabetes, bone loss, skin bruising, cataracts and hypertension.
Previous research at the Hamilton institutions has identified specific types of patient with severe asthma have an overabundance of a particular type of white blood cell (eosinophils) present in their sputum.
