Culture

PHOENIX -- Stepping down asthma medicines can be done safely and at less cost for patients says a new Mayo Clinic study published this week in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. It is common for patients and doctors to test out if taking less daily asthma medicine is safe -- primarily because of the high cost of asthma medicine. However, deciding when to step down daily asthma medicines can be challenging, and it would be helpful to understand the risks involved.

MAYWOOD, Ill. - Evidence is mounting that drugs used to treat depression and Alzheimer's disease also can help patients recover from strokes.

But there are conflicting findings from studies of these and other drugs given to recovering stroke patients. Large, well-designed studies are needed before any drug can be recommended routinely for stroke recovery, according to a study in the journal Drugs and Aging by neurologists Xabier Beristain, MD, and Esteban Golombievski, MD, of Loyola University Medical Center and Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine.

Dermal leishmaniasis is an ulcerous skin disease caused by a tropical parasite, all forms of which can be treated with the drug miltefosine. Researchers from the National Institute of Pathology, Indian Council of Medical Research and Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi studied the responses of 86 patients treated with miltefosine over 18 months that indicated a developing parasitic resistance to the drug, supporting a growing evidence base showing the rise of miltefosine resistance.

Neuherberg, October 22, 2015. Gestational diabetes is one of the most common conditions that can occur during pregnancy. Although the symptoms generally disappear after delivery, women suffering from gestational diabetes are at increased risk of developing postpartum diabetes in the following years. Researchers at the Helmholtz Zentrum München have now developed an accurate method of predicting the probability of developing this progressive disease following childbirth. Their findings were published recently in 'Acta Diabetologica'.

October 22, 2015 - A system incorporating a smartphone app may help adolescents and young adults with spina bifida to improve their daily self-management skills, suggests a paper in the American Journal of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, the official journal of the Association of Academic Physiatrists. The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer.

Medical students at Penn State are now receiving training in health systems sciences and patient navigation, along with the traditional areas of medical education.

Alva-Amco Pharmacal Companies, Inc. is recommending that parents give their children a placebo - something real doctors would never do. The product they are selling is called Nauzene and they are promoting it for gastroenteritis, the inflammation of the stomach and intestinal tract that can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal cramping and is commonly called "stomach flu."

Want to hit a fastball like the New York Mets do? It won't surprise you much to learn that baseball players don't think much about hitting the ball - much of it comes from trained muscle memory and a great deal of visual ocularity.

The latest episode of “It’s Okay to Be Smart” outlines the combination of practice, strength, brainpower, and good eyesight that helps players predict the correct time to swing the bat. Fortunately none of those things will make you field the ball like David Murphy, even if you hit like him.

As a result of these difficulties they could not undertake a review to assess the outcomes of these drugs on patients.

The UK team, led by Robert Fleetcroft from Norwich Medical School at the University of East Anglia, argues that "difficulty accessing data from clinical trials means that only part of the evidence base is available" and this may lead to "erroneous clinical decisions."

Researchers from the University of East Anglia are calling for medical trial data to be kept in national repositories.

A BMJ study published today reveals how a series of barriers stopped researchers from reviewing the effects of heart failure drugs such as beta blockers on patients.

Now they are calling for greater transparency in research and recommend that access to data should be a mandatory requirement of funding.

They warn that the risks of not doing so, could lead to "erroneous clinical decisions".

Countries are loosely interpreting the legal meaning of "rational use" of natural resources to escalate fishing efforts in Antarctic waters and hinder efforts to establish marine protected areas in the Southern Ocean, scientists and legal scholars say.

The findings, published online in the journal Marine Policy, come as 24 countries plus the European Union convene in Hobart, Australia, this week for the annual meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) to set fisheries management rules in the Southern Ocean.

Consumers in the developing world are some of the world's best customers - emerging economy markets have contributed more than half of the Coca-Cola Co.'s global revenue since 2006, and Mexico, China, and Brazil were the three largest non-US contributors. But the best way for large consumer packaged goods companies to reach these markets remains a challenge. New research suggests that different combinations of package sizes, price, and merchandising work more effectively depending on whether the products are moving through mom-and-pop stores or large, self-service chains.

Small and hungry prawns are more likely to be resourceful in the face of adversity than their less desperate counterparts according to new research published today in the journal PLOS ONE. However the study found that size and hunger have different effects depending on whether the prawns are acting alone or in a group. Small individuals were more likely to innovate when alone, but when in a group, size didn't matter and it was the hungry prawns that tended to be most resourceful.

SALT LAKE CITY - Truck drivers who are frequently fatigued after work, use cell phones while driving, or have an elevated pulse pressure - a potential predictor of cardiovascular disease - may be at increased risk for getting into truck accidents, according to a study by the Rocky Mountain Center for Occupational and Environmental Health (RMCOEH) at the University of Utah School of Medicine and published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (JOEM).

After more than 30 years of steady growth, the number of postdocs in the biological and biomedical sciences is on the decline in the United States, according to a new paper in The FASEB Journal. The study shows that despite continuing increases in the number of PhD students, there was a 5.5 percent loss in the postdoctoral population from 2010-13, the most recent survey year. The findings have important implications for the biomedical workforce.