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.
CHICAGO – After a concussion, teens who are sensitive to light or noise may be more likely to also have emotional symptoms such as anxiety, according to a study released today that will be presented at The Sports Concussion Conference in Chicago, July 11 to 13, 2014, hosted by the American Academy of Neurology, the world's leading authority on diagnosing and managing sports concussion. The conference will feature the latest scientific advances in diagnosing and treating sports concussion from leading experts in the field.
The symptoms after a concussion can vary widely from person to person. Symptoms can include physical, emotional and cognitive difficulties.
Higher levels of stress, hostility and depressive symptoms are associated with significantly increased risk of stroke or transient ischemic attack (TIA) in middle-age and older adults, according to new research in the American Heart Association journal Stroke.
A TIA is a stroke caused by a temporary blockage of blood flow to the brain.
Researchers investigated how psychological factors might influence risk for chronic disease, using data from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA), an ongoing study on cardiovascular disease risk factors in participants living in six U.S. cities.
The child known as the "Mississippi baby", an infant cured of HIV in a case study published in The New England Journal of Medicine last fall, now has detectable levels of HIV after more than two years without taking antiretroviral therapy and without evidence of virus, according to the pediatric HIV specialist and researchers involved in the case.
Doctors cringe at the idea that patients may come in with specific information they got from the Internet; an athlete may do something good and the Wikipedia entry will say they are the greatest American since Abe Lincoln, while the entry for Science 2.0 says it was invented by a Wired writer in 2012.
But Wikipedia is absolutely enlightened compared to the misinformation that goes around on Twitter and Facebook. Every day some new graphic or claim about health and politics is invented and shared without any fact-checking of any kind.
But people like that. They last thing they want is information gate-keepers from the government. The good outweighs the bad.
Marine biologists at Plymouth University and the activist group WorldFish conducted analyses of catches over the past 90 years and found significant evidence of the practice of 'fishing down the food web' - removal of many top predators from the sea that has left fishermen 'scraping the barrel' for increasing amounts of shellfish.
Sharks, rays, cod, haddock and many other species at the head of the food chain are at historic lows with many removed from the area completely, they say.
The report used catch statistics from the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas to establish a 'mean trophic level' for catches – an average for how far up the food chain the fish are located.
One possible future in the therapy of children with cognitive and motor-skill disabilities could involve the popular Finnish game "Angry Birds" - and a robot.
Georgia Institute of Technology recently paired a small humanoid robot with an Android tablet and then asked kids to teach the robot how to play the game, dragging their finger on the tablet to whiz the bird across the screen.
The robot watches what happens and records "snapshots" in its memory. It notices where fingers start and stop, and how the objects on the screen move according to each other, while constantly keeping an eye on the score to check for signs of success.
People love to latch onto studies that match their confirmation bias, so studies claiming health benefits for red wine, chocolate and organic food get a lot of attention and not much skepticism about controls. Any epidemiology claim will do when it comes to finding benefit or harm.
A new review calls into question previous studies which suggest that consuming light-to-moderate amounts of alcohol (0.6-0.8 fluid ounces/day) may have a protective effect on cardiovascular health. Instead, they find that reducing the amount of alcoholic beverages consumed, even for light-to-moderate drinkers, is more likely to improve cardiovascular health, body mass index (BMI) and blood pressure.
No one worries about children like parents, and having a child with a pacemaker is even more worrisome. But kids who are worried over too much develop a low sense of self-competence which can contribute to decreased quality of life, according to a paper in Journal of Developmental&Behavioral Pediatric.
What's a concussion? Since 10 doctors can give 10 different answers it's unclear, but they are the subject of a lawsuit by former NFL football players, and thus concern has trickled down to school age children and there needs to be a consistent evidence-based definition.
A research review has identified the clinical indicators most strongly associated with concussion as an important first step in the process of developing evidence-based guidelines for concussion diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment.
Based on analysis of the best available research data, a multidisciplinary panel of experts has identified a set of four indicators with the "highest and most consistent prevalence" among patients with possible concussion.
As with people, some chimpanzees are smarter than others, and as with people, a lot of that variation in intelligence depends on the genes that individuals carry and pass on from one generation to the next.
A new study found no effect of either sex or rearing history on the cognitive skills of chimpanzees. That is, chimpanzees raised by human caretakers performed no better on cognitive tests delivered to them by humans than did individuals raised by their chimpanzee mothers.
Researchers have matched an upward curve in temperatures in the last few decades with increases in patient's seeking treatment for kidney stones, which both reflects and foretells a warming planet's impact on human health, they say. Of course, they also found increases in very low temperatures.
Researchers using the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico discovered a split-second burst of radio waves, the first time that a so-called "fast radio burst" has been detected using an instrument other than the Parkes radio telescope in Australia.
Scientists using the Parkes Observatory have recorded a handful of such events but because no other facilities did, the assumption was that the Australian instrument was picking up signals originating from sources on or near Earth.
