As stem cells in the blood grow older, genetic mutations accumulate that could be at the root of blood diseases that strike people as they age, according to work done in mice by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.
The American College of Physicians today gave its strong support to the bipartisan High-Need Physician Workforce Incentives Act of 2007. The six-part bill introduced today by Reps. Michael C. Burgess, MD, and Henry Cuellar of Texas focuses on workforce issues of physicians.
Low levels of testosterone may increase the long-term risk of death in men over 50 years old, according to researchers with the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine.
Birth weight has significant and lasting effects, a new study finds. Weighing less than 5.5 pounds at birth increases the probability of dropping out of high school by one-third, reduces yearly earnings by about 15 percent and burdens people in their 30s and 40s with the health of someone who is 12 years older.
Even low doses of Ecstasy may be associated with a decline in language-related memory, according to a report in the June issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Over the past half-century, the social terrain of health and illness has been transformed. What were once considered normal human events and common human problems — birth, aging, menopause, alcoholism and obesity — are now considered medical conditions. For better or worse, medicine increasingly permeates daily life.
Researchers at the University of Alberta (Edmonton, AB) and Cortex Pharmaceuticals (Irvine, CA) believe that AMPAKINE drugs may provide protection from drug-induced respiratory depression, while simultaneously allowing the sedative or analgesic to continue working as it was intended.
Early results from a three-site federal study show mice live longer when fed an anti-inflammatory substance found in the creosote bush. The substance extended median lifespan. Whether it allows the mice to live beyond their maximum expected lifespan will be known in six to 10 months.
Genomic instability?the rearrangement of chromosomes or an abnormal number of chromosomes?is a hallmark of many human cancers.
Adding a medication to a standard treatment regimen for major depressive disorder in the elderly improves chances of recovery in those who do not adequately respond to the first-course therapy or who relapse from it, finds a University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine study published in the June issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry, the official journal of the American Psychiatric Association.