ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Frailty can affect people of all ages and demographics. Defined simply as "an increased vulnerability to adverse health outcomes," frailty can affect a patient's chances of surviving a surgical procedure or needing a nursing home. A new study from physicians at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., published recently in the Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation, is among the first to show a definitive connection between frailty and survival after a lung transplant procedure.
Culture
An evolutionary biologist has analysed political opposition to evolution and found it has evolved.
Dr Nick Matzke from The Australian National University (ANU) analysed the text in anti-evolution legislation using software for building genetic family trees.
He found the different bills presented in different legislatures shared traits and relationships in a similar way to plants and animals.
Increasing numbers of grandmothers across the United States are raising their grandchildren, many of them living in poverty and grappling with a public assistance system not designed to meet their needs.
LaShawnDa Pittman, an assistant professor in the University of Washington's Department of American Ethnic Studies, interviewed 77 African American grandmothers living in some of the poorest areas of south Chicago. Her findings were published in November in the first issue of The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences.
Boston, MA -- In India, nearly 40% of all children are stunted--of extremely low height for their age--and nearly 30% are underweight. A new study from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health has now pinpointed the five top risk factors responsible for more than two-thirds of the problem.
The study--the first to comprehensively analyze and estimate the relative importance of known risk factors for child undernutrition--appears online in Social Science & Medicine.
HOUSTON - (Dec. 17, 2015) - The rate of adults without health insurance across the U.S. dropped nearly twice as much as in Texas from 2013 to 2015, according to a new report released today by Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy and the Episcopal Health Foundation (EHF).
The report found that since enrollment began in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in September 2013, the adult uninsured rate in the U.S. fell by 41 percent. Researchers found Texas' uninsured rate dropped just 21 percent during the same time.
When it comes to trust in their physicians, minority groups in the United States are less likely than white people to believe their doctors care about them, according to research by University of Pennsylvania's Abigail Sewell.
CHICAGO (Dec. 17, 2015): It is too early to change the standard treatment of appendicitis in U.S. adults to initial antibiotic therapy only, rather than surgical removal of the appendix, or appendectomy, authors of a new systematic review study conclude. Conducted by surgeons and emergency medicine physicians, the review article appears online as an 'article in press' on the Journal of the American College of Surgeons website in advance of print publication early next year.
FOR RELEASE from the UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
Singapore/Lugano - Novel strategies are on the way for difficult-to-treat and advanced head and neck cancer, the most heterogeneous group of malignancies which are generally associated with poor survival, and encouraging results have been presented at the first ESMO Asia 2015 Congress in Singapore.
Future Science Group (FSG) today announced the publication of a new article in the Journal of Comparative Effectiveness Research, discussing the recent recommendations from the Center for Medical Technology Policy's (CMTP) Green Park Collaborative (GPC-USA). The recommendations, released in August, discuss the conduct of studies that compare sequences of therapies in areas of advanced and metastatic cancer where a range of therapeutic options exist, but evidence is lacking on the optimal choices for sequential or combination therapy.
Females of the vinegar fly Drosophila melanogaster show an especially strong response to the odor of their most dangerous enemies, parasitic wasps of the genus Leptopilina. In nature, up to 80 percent of Drosophila larvae are parasitized by these wasps, which lay their eggs into the larvae. The wasps' larvae grow and consume the Drosophila larvae from within. However, an innate early warning system alerts female flies when wasps are near and thus increases the chance the flies' offspring will survive.
A clinical trial to test the effectiveness of a stem cell therapy among adults with difficult to treat Crohn's disease has found it is not significantly better than conventional treatment in producing sustained disease remission after one year.
Ever wonder how much the price you pay for an All-You-Can-Eat (AYCE) buffet influences how you feel at the end of the meal? To explore this idea and address the lack of studies that do, this study examines whether pricing affects key indicators such as overeating, physical discomfort, and guilt. Researchers discovered that lower paying diners feel more physically uncomfortable and guiltier compared to the higher paying diners, even when eating the same amount - a finding that has implications for consumers, restaurants, and public health officials.
LOS ANGELES -- Retinal implants that deliver longer pulses of electrical current may noticeably improve image sharpness for individuals who have lost their sight due to retinitis pigmentosa, according to a new study by researchers from the USC Eye Institute and USC Viterbi School of Engineering.
The research will be published in the peer-reviewed journal Science Translational Medicine online on Dec. 16, 2015.
Across the United States, record quantities of corn and soybeans have been harvested in recent years. However, according to a BioScience article by David Gustafson of the International Life Sciences Institute Research Foundation and his colleagues, this trend may soon change.