PHILADELPHIA, March 16, 2010 -- An expert panel convened by the American College of Physicians (ACP) says that properly designed pay-for-performance (P4P) programs can strengthen the relationship between physicians and patients and increase the likelihood that physicians will deliver the best possible care. The panel's analysis appears in the March 16 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine.
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MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (March 15, 2010) Researchers at the University of Minnesota Medical School have discovered a chemical that may, over the long term, protect the hearts of Duchenne muscular dystrophy patients – a fatal and most common form of muscular dystrophy in children.
ANN ARBOR, Mich.---The muscle-building abilities of hormones known as insulin-like growth factors (IGFs) are legendary. Just do an online search and you'll find not only scientific papers discussing the effects of IGFs on the cells that give rise to muscle tissue, but also scores of ads touting the purported benefits of IGF supplements for bodybuilding.
But in spite of widespread interest in these potent molecules, key details about how IGFs work on muscle cells have been lacking.
HOUSTON - Increased understanding of the Skp2 gene and its relation to cellular senescence may lead to the development of novel agents that can suppress tumor development in common types of cancer, researchers from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center report in the journal Nature.
ST. PAUL, Minn. – The American Academy of Neurology has issued a new guideline recommending the most effective treatments to help people with Parkinson's disease who experience sleep, constipation, and sexual problems, which are common but often underrecognized symptoms. The guideline is published in the March 16, 2010, issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
Washington, DC – Researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC) have determined that something in female sex chromosomes appears to trigger a rise in blood pressure after the onset of menopause. This finding challenges the current belief that sex hormones are largely responsible for regulating blood pressure.
Parents of children undergoing ear, nose and throat surgery do not appear to remember all of the risks of the procedures explained to them by clinicians, even when detailed surgical risk counseling and data sheets are used, according to a report in the March issue of Archives of Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
More than 10 percent of newborns who receive oxygenation and ventilation using nasal continuous airway pressure in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) may experience complications inside or outside the nose, according to a report in the March issue of Archives of Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Augmenting the lips with grafts of muscle and connective tissue from the neck appears to result in improved appearance for at least two years, according to a report in the March/April issue of Archives of Facial Plastic Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Bathing trauma patients daily using cloths containing the antiseptic chlorhexidine may be associated with a decreased rate of colonization and infection by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and other difficult-to-treat bacteria, according to a report in the March issue of Archives of Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Erectile dysfunction (ED) is a strong predictor of death from all causes and of heart attack, stroke and heart failure in men with cardiovascular disease (CVD), German researchers reported in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.
The link between obesity and disease has been well documented. There's evidence now that obesity and cancer have a strong link, as they've shown in the United States at least 90,000 cancer deaths a year can be attributed to obesity. University of Alberta researcher Richard Lamb is on his way to understanding the correlation and it's a good example of how the scientific process works.
Preventing and treating heart disease in some patients could be as simple as supplementing their diet with extra vitamin D, according to two new studies at the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute in Murray, Utah.
HOUSTON -- (March 15, 2010) -- The popular forage and turf grass called tall fescue covers a vast amount of land in the U.S. -- an area that's estimated to be larger than Virginia and Maryland combined -- and a new study by ecologists at Rice University and Indiana University suggests there is more to fescue than meets the eye.
Results of the six-year study, which are available online in the Journal of Applied Ecology, show that a symbiotic fungus living inside fescue can have far-reaching effects on plant, animal and insect communities.
(Boston) – Educational leaders from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) believe teaching the subject of unhealthy substance use must be incorporated into internal medicine residency training and can be done within existing teaching venues. The findings, which currently appear on-line in BioMedCentral Medical Education, represent a national model for addressing this issue for internal medicine residents.