Medicine

Administering high-frequency electrical noise to the brain can actually boost math skills up to six months later, according to a small study at the University of Oxford. The finding was published in the journal Current Biology and outlines a technique that consists of placing electrodes on the scalp of the head and administering random electrical noise to stimulate parts of the brain - causing nerve cells to fire. During this study, the electrodes were placed on the head to aim at hitting regions of the brain known to be involved in doing math...

Dysfunctional mitochondria in brain cells can result in learning disabilities, according to a new study in Molecular Cell. The association between dysfunctional mitochondria and Parkinson's disease has been known, but this new study, led by neuroscientist Patrik Verstreken of VIB (Flanders Institute for Biotechnology) and KU Leuven, has revealed that it is also present in other disorders of the brain. Patrik Verstreken (VIB / KU Leuven) said: "This discovery shows that energy production in brain cells is the basis of various brain disorders...

E. coli bacteria are present in over half of all public swimming pools, according to a new report published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. E. coli (Escherichia coli), a fecal indicator was found in 58% of pool samples, the CDC informed. Fecal material (poop material) can get into a pool during a formed or diarrheal fecal incident in the water or washing off of swimmers bodies. In other words, pool water can become contaminated if people don't shower beforehand or poop while in the pool...

Xofigo (radium Ra 223 dichloride) has been approved by the US FDA for symptomatic late-stage (metastatic) castration-resistant prostate cancer that has reached bones but not other organs, i.e. with no known visceral metastatic disease. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Xifogo under the priority review program, three months ahead of schedule. According to an online FDA communiqué published this week, Xofigo is aimed at male patients whose prostate cancer metastasized despite receiving medical or surgical interventions to reduce testosterone levels...

Regulations brought in by the UK to reduce the volume of television advertising of unhealthy foods to children appear to have little impact on the advertising around programmes children actually watch, according to research presented at the European Congress on Obesity in Liverpool, UK. The research is by Dr Emma Boyland and Professor Jason Halford, University of Liverpool, UK, and colleagues. The authors did an analysis of food advertising on television in the UK in 2008 (when some regulation was in place) compared to 2010 (when new regulations had fully taken effect)...

New research presented as the European Congress on Obesity (ECO) in Liverpool, UK, shows that very young children appear to reject story book characters who are overweight, but not those who are disabled. The research is by Professor Andrew Hill, Dr Sarah Harrison, and Dr Maddie Rowlinson, University of Leeds, UK. Previous research has suggested that, far from improving over time, the attitudes and perceptions of children to obesity may have deteriorated since the 1960s...

New research presented at this year's European Congress on Obesity (ECO) in Liverpool, UK, shows that while the FTO genetic variation predicts weight gain over 10 years in men, a different variation on the MMP2 gene predicts weight gain in women. The research is by Freek G Bouwman, Nutrition and Toxicology Research, Institute Maastricht (NUTRIM), Maastricht University, Netherlands, and Dr Jolanda Boer, National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), Bilthoven, the Netherlands, and colleagues...

New research published at the European Congress on Obesity (ECO) shows that abrupt cessation after long-term use of the anti-obesity drug phentermine does not induce amphetamine-like withdrawal symptoms. The research is by Dr Ed Hendricks, Center for Weight Management*, Sacramento & Roseville, California, USA, and was funded by the American Society of Bariatric Physicians (ASBP). Phentermine is a psychostimulant drug of the phenethylamine class, with pharmacology similar to amphetamine...

New Findings Show Inhibiting Powerful Protein with New Agents May Supply Broad Benefit for Lymphoma Patients A soon-to-be-tested class of drug inhibitors were predicted to help a limited number of patients with B-cell lymphomas with mutations affecting the EZH2 protein. However, a research team, led by investigators at Weill Cornell Medical College, now report that these agents may, in fact, help a much broader cross section of lymphoma patients...

CDC provides tools to help all U.S. dialysis facilities reduce potentially deadly infections The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has released results of its Dialysis Bloodstream Infection Prevention Collaborative showing a 32 percent decrease in overall bloodstream infections and a 54 percent decrease in vascular access-related bloodstream infections after CDC prevention guidelines were used. Vascular access-related bloodstream infections are those related to devices used to access the bloodstream for hemodialysis...

JAMA Psychiatry Study Highlights A study by Craig J. Bryan, Psy.D., A.B.P.P., of the National Center for Veterans Studies, Salt Lake City, Utah, suggests that suicide risk is higher among military personnel with more lifetime traumatic brain injuries (TBIs). Patients included 161 military personnel referred for evaluation and treatment of suspected head injury at a military hospital's TBI clinic in Iraq...

JAMA Dermatology Study Highlights A research letter by Kamal Jethwani, M.D., M.P.H., of the Center for Connected Health, Boston, and colleagues suggests that clinicians can learn about the perceptions and misconceptions of diseases like acne via Twitter, and communicate reliable medical information on the popular social media platform...

JAMA Dermatology Study Highlights A study by Chrysalyne D. Schmults, M.D., M.S.C.E., of Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, and colleagues suggests cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (CSCC) carries a low but significant risk of metastasis and death. The ten-year retrospective cohort study was conducted at an academic medical center in Boston, and included 985 patients with 1,832 tumors. Main measures of the study were subhazard ratios for local recurrence, nodal metastasis, disease-specific death, and all-cause death adjusted for presence of known prognostic risk factors...

JAMA Surgery Study Highlights In a study by Brian C. Drolet, M.D., of the Rhode Island Hospital, Providence, and colleagues, the majority of surgical residents who were surveyed reported that they disapprove of the 2011 Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) Common Program Requirements (65.9 percent). A total of 1,013 residents in general surgery and surgical specialties at 123 ACGME-accredited teaching hospitals in the United States and U.S...

JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery Study Highlights A study by Michael D. Seidman, M.D., of the Henry Ford Health System, West Bloomfield, Michigan, and colleagues examined if an association exists between sideness of cell phone use and auditory hemispheric dominance (AHD) or language hemispheric dominance (LHD). An Internet survey was randomly e-mailed to 5,000 individuals, 717 surveys were completed. Sample questions surveyed which hand was used for writing, whether the right or left ear was used for phone conversations, as well as whether a brain tumor was present...

People who have skin cancer may be less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease, according to research published this week in Neurology®. Researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, followed 1,102 people who did not have dementia. They had an average age of 79 and were followed for an average of 3.7 years. 109 people reported that they had skin cancer in the past. During the study, 32 people developed skin cancer and 126 people developed dementia, including 100 with Alzheimer's...

"As doctors, we are missing many diagnoses of coeliac disease," warns a senior GP. Attending a parliamentary reception with policy makers to mark Coeliac Awareness Week, Dr Geraint Preest, a GP Principal in Bridgend is calling on doctors to "have a high index of suspicion when patients present with symptoms applicable to coeliac disease." Dr Preest, who has a young daughter with the condition, conducted a study at his practice and was surprised to find that for every five expected cases of coeliac disease, only one case had been diagnosed...

People suffering from clinical depression express personal goals and reasons for their attainment or failure in less specific terms than people without the disorder. This lack of specificity in representing personal goals may be partially responsible for the motivational deficits seen in these patients, according to research published in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Joanne Dickson from the University of Liverpool, UK and Nicholas Moberly from the University of Exeter, UK...

Organ transplant rejection occurs when the transplant recipient's immune system identifies the transplanted organ as foreign tissue and attacks it. It was previously thought that T cells, the immune cells that mediate rejection, must first be activated by molecules known as chemokines in order to migrate to the transplanted organ. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Fadi Lakkis and colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh used mice to demonstrate that chemokine stimulation of T cells is not required for migration...

For patients with leukemia and other hematological malignancies, transplantation of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCT) can be a powerfully effective therapy. In addition to the desirable anti-tumor effect, transplanted cells can also attack the host tissue, resulting in graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Arnab Ghosh and colleagues at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center found that expression of a protein that causes cell death, TRAIL, in transplanted cells was critical for an effective anti-tumor response...