CHICAGO- The very instant Penny Kukovec was diagnosed with breast cancer her world permanently changed. Suddenly, it felt as if her life was out of her control. She felt powerless and overwhelmed. There were so many unanswered questions. Why me? What's next? What about my family? The feelings Kukovec experienced are felt by many cancer patients following their initial diagnosis and as they pursue treatment.
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BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Women given the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevention drug nevirapine to protect their fetus should not use an HIV-drug regimen that contains nevirapine for at least one year after childbirth, say researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB).
Vitamin D deficiency is almost universal among kidney disease patients who have low blood protein levels and who start dialysis during the winter, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society Nephrology (CJASN). The research identifies a group of patients who are at extremely high risk of being deficient in vitamin D and provides some clues as to why the deficiency occurs in these individuals.
Monash University biomedical scientists have identified a new way to treat castrate resistant cells in prostate cancer sufferers – the most common cancer in Australian men.
Among breast cancer patients, surgical removal of the opposite breast is associated with a small increase in 5-year survival, specifically for younger women with early-stage, estrogen-receptor negative tumors, according to a study published online February 25 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
To prevent subsequent breast cancer, some women with cancer in one breast will have the other breast surgically removed. This study was undertaken because it is unknown if this treatment increases a woman's lifespan.
HOUSTON - Contralateral prophylactic mastectomy (CPM), a preventive procedure to remove the unaffected breast in patients with disease in one breast, may only offer a survival benefit to breast cancer patients age 50 and younger, who have early-stage disease and are estrogen receptor (ER) negative, according to researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.
Scientists trying to find a way to better help patients protect themselves against harm from a heart attack are taking their cues from cardiac patients.
Virtual reality game technology using Wii™ may help recovering stroke patients improve their motor function, according to research presented as a late breaking poster at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference 2010.
The study found the virtual reality gaming system was safe and feasible strategy to improve motor function after stroke.
UCLA AIDS Institute researchers successfully removed CCR5 — a cell receptor to which HIV-1 binds for infection but which the human body does not need — from human cells. Individuals who naturally lack the CCR5 receptor have been found to be essentially resistant to HIV.
Using a humanized mouse model, the researchers transplanted a small RNA molecule known as short hairpin RNA (shRNA), which induced RNA interference into human blood stem cells to inhibit the expression of CCR5 in human immune cells.
UPTON, NY — Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have obtained the first glimpse of miniscule air bubbles that keep water from wetting a super non-stick surface. Detailed information about the size and shape of these bubbles — and the non-stick material the scientists created by "pock-marking" a smooth material with cavities measuring mere billionths of a meter — is being published online today in the journal Nano Letters.
Marine scientists long believed that a microbe called Trichodesmium, a member of a group called the cyanobacteria, reigned over the ocean's nitrogen budget.
New research results reported on-line today in a paper in Science Express show that Trichodesmium may have to share its nitrogen-fixing throne: two others of its kind, small spherical species of nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria called UCYN-A and Crocosphaera watsonii, are also abundant in the oceans.
It's a paradox that's puzzled scientists for a half-century.
Models clearly show that the coexistence of competing species depends on those species responding differently to the availability of resources. Then why do studies comparing competing tree species draw a blank?
Competitors like black gums and red maples have coexisted for millennia in the shaded understories of eastern U.S. forests, yet species-level data offer scant proof that they respond differently to environmental fluctuations that limit access to light, soil moisture and other essential resources.
Researchers have been able to see how heart failure affects the surface of an individual heart muscle cell in minute detail, using a new nanoscale scanning technique developed at Imperial College London. The findings may lead to better design of beta-blockers, the drugs that can slow the development of heart failure, and to improvements in current therapeutic approaches to treating heart failure and abnormal heart rhythms.
Columbus, OH – Researchers from the Ohio State University have developed a rapid, multiplexed genotyping method to identify the single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that affect warfarin dose. The related report by Yang et al, "Rapid Genotyping of SNPs Influencing Warfarin Drug Response by SELDI-TOF Mass Spectrometry," appears in the March 2010 issue of the Journal of Molecular Diagnostics.
Stories of environmental damage and their consequences always seem to take place far away and in another country, usually a tropical one with lush rainforests and poison dart frogs.
In fact, similar stories starring familiar animals are unfolding all the time in our own backyards — including gripping tales of diseases jumping from animal hosts to people when ecosystems are disrupted.
This time we're not talking hemorrhagic fever and the rainforest. We're talking tick-borne diseases and the Missouri Ozarks.