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Virus Level could Predict Cervical Cancer Risk

Cervical cancer is one of the most common cancers in women. If it is caught and treated early, it is curable in most cases.// The Pap smear is the standard screening method for the disease. It is used to detect unusual, precancerous changes in cervical cells. Two strains of the human papilloma virus (HPV) are associated with an increased chance of getting the cancer, but not all women who tes...

Lean Protein Could Be Key to Obesity Drugs

A protein that lets mice eat more but weigh less could prove the magic ingredient for diet drugs of the future.British scientists from drug giant SmithKline Beecham and the University of Cambridge have created mice with a human protein known as Uncoupling Protein 3 (UCP3) that increases their metabolism.In what is every dieter's dream, the mice were able to eat more than normal mice but still wei...

Nasal Spray Could Take Drugs Direct to Brain.

Based on early studies in rats, researchers from the Stroke Lab and Alzheimer's Research Center in St. Paul, Minnesota, reported that “a direct path from the nose to the brain” could breach the blood-brain barrier, which p...

Beware of the oral patch! It could be cancer!!!

Oncologists have warned that the common white patches found inside the mouth can lead to oral cancer in many cases. A simple genetic test can help pinpoint if the patches could become cancerous or not.Scientists at the University of Oslo spearheaded this research. If identified early and treated, leukoplakia, as the patches are known, can be cured and the occurrence of cancer prevented....

'Prozac miracle' could end in disaster

A major lawsuit has been launched against the British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline on behalf of a group of people who say they became chronically addicted to an antidepressant drug in the same class as Prozac. The case, which has been filed in California, is the first ever to claim damages for addiction against one of the drug companies that have made billions from SSRIs (selective seroto...

Wonder drug - could end in disaster

Prozac and drugs like it could be making healthy people with no history of mental illness feel suicidal. Prozac is prescribed to more than 38 million people world-wide, and has been one of the pharmaceutical industries biggest success stories of recent years. Prozac and Lustral belong to a group of drugs known as SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors). This class of drugs of which Prozac...

Pollution could be a risk

The Terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon could affect the mental health of Americans over coming weeks and months. As the dust settles over New York and Washington, psychiatrists warn that people will start to feel the full psychological impact of the disaster. Keeping busy and trying to get the cities back to normal keeps anxiety and grief at bay. And the sheer scale of th...

Fright could be more harmful

The fear of biological weapons such as anthrax may be more likely to create illness than the weapons themselves, say experts. Long-term social or psychological damage could be the result of panic caused by the news of anthrax attacks. A letter to the British Medical Journal from researchers in the UK, US and Australia predicted that while bioweapons themselves might not kill many people, for...

Pregnant smokers could harm their child

The children of women who smoke during pregnancy are predisposed to experimenting with tobacco at a young age, claim researchers. Among 10-year-olds who said they had experimented with cigarettes in a survey, the majority had mothers who had smoked while pregnant. The researchers at the University of Pittsburgh say the link may be caused by damage done to the foetus by tobacco smoke while i...

Snoring could be a warning

Women who snore when they are pregnant may be at risk of developing dangerously high blood pressure that could threaten their lives when they give birth. Around 10% of pregnant women suffer from pre-eclampsia, a condition in which high blood pressure can lead to injury or even death in the mother and the foetus. Women can try to reduce their blood pressure by resting or with medication. But d...

Anthrax drug doxycycline could stunt fetal growth

The government warned doctors that doxycycline -- an antibiotic being prescribed to people who may have been exposed to anthrax -- can stunt fetal growth when taken by pregnant women. Instead, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged doctors to prescribe Cipro to pregnant women. The recommendation comes as health officials worry that Cipro is being overprescribed in the general popula...

Hike in drug licence fee could hit several SSI units in TN

The recent hike in the drug manufacturing licence fee and product inspection fee could badly hit several small scale drug units in Tamil Nadu. According to industry sources here, the steep hike in the licensing fees has come at a time when the industry in the state is reeling under tight market conditions with many companies on the brink of closure. // The drug manufacturing licence...

Nasal Spray Could Take Drugs Directly to Brain

Delivering drugs via nasal spray might overcome a major obstacle to treating brain ailments such as strokes according to researchers.Based on early studies in rats, researchers from the Stroke Lab and Alzheimer's Research Center in St. Paul, Minnesota, reported that “a direct path from the nose to the brain” could breach the blood-brain barrier, which protects the brain from foreign substances, i...

Lengthy Fingers could predict heart attacks

Scientists at Liverpool University have related a link between the length of a young boy's finger and their chances of having a heart attack at a later age.// They believe the link could provide doctors with a simple way to to spot potential heart disease victims at a very early age. The research shows that boys with shorter ring fingers tend to be at greatest risk. This is because...

Watching television for long hours could lead to agressiveness

Researchers claim that children who watch television for long hours are more likely to be agitated.The research was carried out by Jeffrey Johnson, of Columbia University// and the New York State Psychiatric Institute. His team tracked more than 700 children through adolescence to adulthood. They found that those who had watched one or more hours of television a day appeared much more...

Osteoporosis could be caused by irregular periods

According to researchers, at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), young women who experience irregular menstrual periods may be at high risk for developing osteoporosis in the future. There has been a way in which they studied nearly 40 women under age 45 with a condition called premature ovarian failure. //This occurs when the ovaries stop producing eggs and repr...

Nightlights could ward diabetic blindness

According to researchers, illumination during the hours of darkness might prevent retinal damage in diabetes. One of the major complications of diabetes is a form of blindness called diabetic retinopathy. This results from damage to the retina //- the layer of tissue at the back of the eye which responds to light.In diabetes, the blood supply to the eye is impaired and this has an impact on the r...

Hypertension drugs could lower Disability

According to reseasrches, drugs used to treat hypertension could delay muscle loss and disability in seniors. Dr.Graziano Onder, research associate at University of Hopkins has suggested new, beneficial effects of (Angiotensin Converting Enzyme) ACE-inhibitor //drugs, which are widely used for hypertension, beneficial effects on muscle strength and overall physical performance in older adults. Th...

Surprising Cystic Fibrosis Finding That Could Be A Helpful Treatment Option

Cystic fibrosis is a genetic disease where the patient has frequent respiratory infections, breathing difficulties and eventually permanent lung damage. // It’s believed that patients with CF have too much mucus in their airways. But new research shows patients actually have too little mucus. Researchers say that may studies have been done in the past , but it has never proven, that CF...

Dietary Changes Could Reduce The Risk for Stroke

Dietary modification could be a simple way to reduce the risk of stroke say researchers. The research shows a diet that consists of meats,// refined grains and desserts is associated with a greater risk for stroke than a diet of fruits, vegetables, fish, legumes and whole grains. The study included dietary information on 71,768 female nurses between 38 and 63 years old. The women had no...

Excessive Belly Fat Could Increase Risk Of Gallstones In Women

Women who have excessive fat around the waist are twice as likely to develop gallstones compared to their counterparts. // Gallstones are collections of solid crystals (predominantly cholesterol) in the gallbladder or in the bile ducts (biliary tract). Americans undergo more than 800,000 gallstone operations each year and it is the most common abdominal illness seen among women in th...

WHO Says Travelers Could Spread Avian Flu in NZ

Shigeru Omi, a senior World Health Organization’s (WHO) Western Pacific regional director said that overseas travelers could result// in an outbreak of the deadly H5N1 bird flu in New Zealand. He doubted any human pandemic of the disease would begin in New Zealand and that its arrival in the South Pacific country from migratory birds was not so likely. At a news conference in...

Meniscal Damage Could Lead To Cartilage Loss And Knee Osteoarthritis

A new study has now provided insights into association between cartilage loss, meniscal damage and knee osteoarthritis. Osteoarthritis is a severe disabling disease// that affects nearly 20 million Americans, characterized by loss of cartilage. A pair of meniscus, situated on either side of the knee offer support and protection to keep it healthy. The C-shaped tissue performs many fu...

Vision loss could result due to MSG

A recent study which was published in the Experimental Eye Research journal cautioned that Monosodium Glutamate (MSG), which is used in flavouring oriental and processed foods could result in vision loss due to retina// injury. Glutamate is an amino acid which acts as a neurotransmitter, a chemical that sends signals between nerve cells. The findings were published following a study w...

Unhappy relationships could result in more than just heart breaks!

Relationships are the key to survival on planet earth. Every one of us knows and understands that happy relationships can make for happy living. But how many of us know that the continuous //tension of a distressed intimate relationship can raise blood pressure, continuously over a 24 hour period? According to a new study by researchers in Canada, when intimate relationships become strained, ther...

Myostatin gene could hold the key to treatment for DMD

Recent studies to establish an effective treatment for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) have discovered that drugs or molecules used to inhibit myostatin - a protein that inhibits muscle growth - might prove to be the anticipated// answer. MDA grantee Kathryn Wagner of John Hopkins University showed in a new study, published online, that muscle mass and strength in mice with DMD is in...

Women with diabetes could benefit from HRT

A recent study called 'HERS' conducted by researchers of the University of California, which looked at more than 2700 menopausal women, has found that Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) may be able to reduce the risk that women with heart disease// go on to develop diabetes as well. The study involved some women who already had diabetes and others who did not or had "impaired fasting g...

Antidepressants could pose grave implications

Researchers in a recent study have found that people who take anti-depressants to relieve symptoms of depression could be at higher risk of developing gastrointestinal bleeding. The study which was conducted over a four year period included 26000 anti-depressant// users, who were compared for hospitalizations due to upper GI bleeding with non-users of the drugs. Researchers found peopl...

Autopsy reports could be valuable and informative

The Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality recently conducted an analysis of 50 autopsy studies going back forty years to show the importance of autopsies in revealing discrepancies in diagnosis that could be clinically// informative. The study indicated that the correct cause of death escapes clinical detection in about 8 to 23 per cent of cases. Out of this, in about 4 to 8 per cent of cases,...

Just one cigarette could cause significant damage

Researchers at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, have found from a recent study that there is an acute increase in arterial stiffness after smoking even one cigarette in both chronic and non-smokers. The researchers compared acute and chronic effects of smoking on large artery properties in 185 healthy young smokers and non-smokers aged 22 ± 5 years. 116 non-smokers// were compared with 41 chroni...

Response to chemotherapy could be measured by Prostate-Specific Antigen Doubling Time

Researchers from the department of urology in a hospital in Switzerland who investigated whether chemotherapeutic response to hormone-refractory prostate cancer could be measured via changes in prostate-specific antigen (PSA) found that prostate cancer doubling time may be an auxiliary marker of response to chemotherapy// in patients with hormone refractory prostate cancer. The study...

Immune function could benefit from exercise

Several studies in the past have shown that exercise could benefit both the young and the old in more ways than one. A new study has now shown that exercise not only helps the elderly in protecting their bones, it also helps boost the immune function, thus reducing the risk of Upper Respiratory Infections(URI). URIs, which could be caused by virus, bacteria// or other organisms, are the most comm...

Progression of Glaucoma could be controlled with early detection

Glaucoma, according to doctors, is a disease of the eye, which has no early warning signs and many affected patients are unaware they have the disease until it has advanced. And once someone has lost his or her vision from glaucoma, it cannot be regained. Researchers in New York and Sweden, focusing on a previous study called The Early Manifest Glaucoma Trial, conducted a study which looked// at...

Adult COPD or asthma could be effectively treated with Xopenex

COPD - Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease - including chronic bronchitis and emphysema, is characterized by breathing difficulty due to partial blockage of the bronchial tubes. Asthma is a chronic lung disease caused by inflammation of the lower airways resulting in episodes of airflow obstruction, which has been found to be the fourth most common// cause of death and affects nearly 16 million...

Fear of the dark could be more than just fear!

Researchers have found that children who complain that they are afraid of the dark, may have night blindness, a diagnosis that can be easily missed. They said that parents who do not monitor their children's night time behaviours and who do not have a family history of visual problems may miss the rare form of the disease called stationary night// blindness. A child with no visual problems obviou...

Resistant tumors could be treated with the discovery of a new molecule within cancer cells

A new research study published in the journal, Cancer Cell reported that scientists have discovered why some tumors respond less well to drug treatment as compared to others. Researchers have found that high levels of a specific molecule within cancer cells seem to block the effect of drugs such as Taxol, which are used to treat a number of cancers in their later stages. In the study, the// resea...

Migraine & Juvenile stroke could be associated

The February issue of Headache reported a study that confirms the findings of previous studies that there is a significant association between juvenile stroke and migraine in women. The researchers involved 160 consecutive patients, less than 46years of age with first-ever ischaemic stroke or transient ischaemic attack and 160 strictly sex- and age-matched controls, in the study. They excluded pa...

Children who used anaesthesia drugs could suffer brain damage

Recent findings that appeared in the February issue of the Journal of Neuroscience suggest that brain damage occurred in children who had used common anaesthesia drugs. The researchers, who studied the effect of commonly used anaesthesia drugs in paediatric surgery, on infant rats, found that the rats suffered from learning and memory problems. The researchers anaesthetized 7-day-old rats with a...

Hypertensives could benefit regular alcohol consumption

A recent study reported by researchers in the Journal of Hypertension indicates that hypertensive patients could reduce their cardiovascular morbidity and improve their atherosclerotic risk profile by consuming alcohol on a regular basis. The researchers indicated that serum lipoprotein(a), a powerful predictor of organ damage, was reduced with regular alcohol consumption. The researchers studied...

A cup of coffee could hamper your diet

Coffee in its "purest" form has no fat and no calories whatsoever. However, the accompaniments with coffee like cream and flavoured syrup can add on to calories that pile up on your waistline. Those delicious chocolate or blended coffee drinks can add up to 500 calories or more. Here is a list of add-ons and their effects on your waistline. Two tablespoons of flavored nondairy creamer (liq...