Culture

A new research project (PneumoNP) is aimed at tackling antibiotic resistance in respiratory tract infections via the use of inhalable nanotherapeutic compounds. Funded under the FP7 programme by the European Commission, the 4-year long PneumoNP project brings together top research institutes, universities, clinicians and enterprises from 6 EU member states. This novel collaboration will contribute to answer the call of the World Health Organization (WHO), who recently released an alarming report on the global threat of antibiotic resistance.

The new combination agent TAS-102 is able to improve overall survival compared to placebo in patients whose metastatic colorectal cancer is refractory to standard therapies, researchers said at the ESMO 16th World Congress on Gastrointestinal Cancer in Barcelona.

For patients with KRAS wild-type untreated colorectal cancer, adding cetuximab or bevacizumab to combination chemotherapy offers equivalent survival, researchers said at the ESMO 16th World Congress on Gastrointestinal Cancer in Barcelona.

Hundreds of thousands of American youth are following marijuana-related Twitter accounts and getting pro-pot messages several times each day, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found.

The tweets are cause for concern, they said, because young people are thought to be especially responsive to social media influences. In addition, patterns of drug use tend to be established in a person's late teens and early 20s.

The more a child is familiar with logos and other images from fast-food restaurants, sodas and not-so-healthy snack food brands, the more likely the child is to be overweight or obese.

And, unfortunately, studies have shown that people who are overweight at a young age, tend to stay that way.

A new data analysis technique radically improves monitoring of kidney patients, according to a University of Leeds-led study, and could lead to profound changes in the way we understand our health.

The research, published in the journal PLoS Computational Biology, provides a way of making sense out of the huge number of clues about a kidney transplant patient's prognosis contained in their blood.

WASHINGTON — A phenomenological study offers detailed insights into homeless, alcohol-dependent patients often stigmatized by the public and policymakers as drains on the health care system, showing the constellation of reasons they are incapable of escaping social circumstances that perpetuate and exacerbate their problems The study, published online yesterday in Annals of Emergency Medicine, was conducted at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, which has a long history of service to the city's

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. and HARTFORD, Conn. – June 27, 2014 – Research published today in the American Journal of Managed Care demonstrates that analysis of patient records using state-of-the-art data analytics can predict future risk of metabolic syndrome. More than a third of the U.S. population has metabolic syndrome, a condition that can lead to chronic heart disease, stroke and diabetes. These conditions combine to account for almost 20 percent of overall health care costs in the U.S. The study was conducted by Aetna (NYSE: AET) and GNS Healthcare Inc.

A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down—and so do movie tickets, cell phone minutes and discounts on airline flights.

A private South African health plan increased patient use of preventive care such as mammograms and influenza vaccine with a program that incentivized healthy behavior using discounts on retail goods and travel. The study, which was led by researchers at Harvard Medical School and the RAND Corporation, was published today in The American Journal of Managed Care.

A new data analysis technique could radically improve monitoring of kidney transplant patients, according to new research published this week in PLOS Computational Biology.

The research, carried out by a team comprising physicists, chemist and clinicians at the University of Leeds, provides a method for making sense out of the huge number of clues about a kidney transplant patient's prognosis contained in their blood.

Washington, DC (June 26, 2014) — Risk factors for chronic kidney disease (CKD) are present and identifiable 30 years before diagnosis, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN). The findings suggest avenues for future research to determine whether certain early interventions can prevent future kidney disease.

Scientists at VIB and KU Leuven have demonstrated in fruit-flies that over-activity of the enzyme HDAC6 in the nerve ends exacerbates the symptoms of the neurodegenerative condition Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS / Lou Gehrig's Disease). Inhibition of this enzyme could offer a protective effect against ALS.

WASHINGTON – While preferring silence to music from the West, chimpanzees apparently like to listen to the different rhythms of music from Africa and India, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.

Why does one physician in a walk-in practice order laboratory monitoring tests for patients more often than a colleague working down the hallway? Which factors influence the use of these important tests that can help doctors ensure that high-risk drugs are prescribed safely? Clues to these questions lie in the age and general health of the patient, and whether the doctor is a specialist or not, says Shira Fischer of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina presented their joint recommendations on "Scientific Freedom and Scientific Responsibility" on 26 June 2014 in Berlin. Attended by representatives from the media, the Professors Jörg Hacker and Peter Strohschneider, Presidents of the Leopoldina and the DFG respectively, presented recommendations for handling security-relevant research, placing the subject against the background of the current political debate.