Body

Too much television, video games and Internet can increase body fat in teens. A five-year study from the University of Montreal and the Sainte-Justine Hospital Research Center, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, has found teenagers have four different patterns of screen use: increasers, decreasers, consistently high and consistently low users.

Gastric cancer is a major cause of cancer deaths in the world. The outcome of large gastric tumors and those with lymph node involvement remains poor after surgical resection. The optimal adjuvant therapy after surgical resection remains to be determined. The most common strategies in the adjuvant treatment of gastric cancers include fluoropyrimidine-based chemotherapy with or without radiation. The introduction of capecitabine has largely replaced continuous-infusion 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) owing to its ease of administration.

Delayed hepatic arterial hemorrhage after pancreaticoduodenectomy (PD) is not a common but a fatal complication, occurring in 7% of all patients. Its ideal management remains unclear and controversial.

Severe acute pancreatitis (SAP) requires an adequate nutritional support. Enteral nutrition (EN) should be preferred to total parenteral nutrition in patients with SAP, as it is associated with reduced mortality and complications. However, in clinical practice EN is employed far less frequently than it should. The main obstacle to EN diffusion is that it is considered complicated, as to ensure full pancreatic rest, nutrition tubes should be placed in the jejunum, requiring often troublesome procedures.

Children who have a high risk of developing type 2 diabetes might be identified earlier by way of tell-tale genetic indicators known as biomarkers. Some of those new biomarkers might be pinpointed in research led by Nancy F. Butte and funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service's National Institutes of Health.

More than 80% of hospitalized patients suffer more severe pain than necessary. This is the conclusion of Christoph Maier (Bochum University Hospital, Bochum, Germany) and his coauthors in their interim report of the Pain-Free Hospital Project ("Schmerzfreies Krankenhaus"), which appears in the current issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2010; 107[36]: 607-14). The project, which was initiated in 2003, has the goal of improving pain management in hospitals across Germany.

Hyperkinetic disorders among children and adolescents are becoming increasingly common. In the current issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International, Ingrid Schubert of the PMV Research Group at the University of Cologne and her colleagues address the question how this has affected the frequency of prescriptions for methylphenidate, a stimulant drug that is used to treat such disorders (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2010; 107[36]: 615¬21).

Treating hospital patients with thigh-length surgical stockings, rather than knee-high socks, can reduce life threatening blood clots, a new study suggests.

Researchers found that knee-high stockings, which are similar to flight socks, do little in stroke patients to prevent deep vein thrombosis (DVT), a life threatening form of blood clot that can travel up into the heart and lungs, .

Novel electronic biosensing technology could facilitate new era of personalized medicine

The multi-welled microplate, long a standard tool in biomedical research and diagnostic laboratories, could become a thing of the past thanks to new electronic biosensing technology developed by a team of microelectronics engineers and biomedical scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

MOSCOW and NEW YORK, 20 September – A group of Russian AIDS activists are charging that the Russian Ministry of Health is denying that there are drug stock-outs that prevent patients from starting or continuing treatment. "In this situation, people with HIV face a choice: to die quietly at home or try to attract the attention of the government and the media," said Alexey Yaskovich, a Russian activist from Novgorod.

Caring for children can be a tough job, particularly if you are a female cichlid fish.

Native to the crater lakes of Nicaragua, cichlid fish look after their young by defending them against would-be predators. While male and female cichlid fish generally share parental responsibilities, research shows that this is not always the case.

Secrets of birds' sexual signals revealed

Patterned feathers, previously thought to be used only for camouflage in birds, can play an important role in attracting a mate and fending off rivals, a University of Melbourne study reveals.

Protein behind development of immune system sentinels identified

A protein called PU.1 is essential for the development of dendritic cells, the sentinels of the immune system, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute researchers in Melbourne, Australia, have shown.