A new Mayo Clinic study has found that relieving bowel obstructions with a minimally invasive procedure to place a self-expanding metal stent in the intestine is a safe and effective therapy for colon and rectal cancer patients.
Farm children appear to have a lower risk of asthma than their urban counterparts or even those living in a nonagricultural rural environment, according to a University of Alberta study.
More than 20 years ago, doctors at Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA performed a successful bone marrow transplant on a baby girl who was born without a thymus gland and was suffering from severe immune deficiency. It marked the first time a bone marrow transplant, rather than a thymic transplant, had been used to treat the genetic condition known as DiGeorge Syndrome (DGS).
Maintaining the appropriate amount of iron in our bodies is important, too little results in anemia and too much is also toxic to the body. Anemia is a symptom of many different diseases including erythroid protoporphyria and beta-thalassemia.
Eating garlic is one of the best ways to lower high blood pressure and protect yourself from cardiovascular disease. A new study from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) shows this protective effect is closely linked to how much hydrogen sulfide (H2S) is produced from garlic compounds interacting with red blood cells.
Using acupuncture before and during surgery significantly reduces the level of pain and the amount of potent painkillers needed by patients after the surgery is over, according to Duke University Medical Center anesthesiologists who combined data from 15 small randomized acupuncture clinical trials.
Researchers have identified a molecular pathway that plays a critical role in the growth of blood vessels. The finding not only offers an important insight into the development of the vascular system during embryonic development but suggests a potential target for inhibiting the blood vessels that fuel cancers, diabetic eye complications and atherosclerosis, the researchers say.
Science has found one likely contributor to the way that some folks eat to live and others live to eat. Researchers at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, have found that people with genetically lower dopamine, a neurotransmitter that helps make behaviors and substances more rewarding, find food to be more reinforcing than people without that genotype. In short, they are more motivated to eat and they eat more.
For the first time, scientists have linked the all-too-human preference for a food — chocolate — to a specific, chemical signature that may be programmed into the metabolic system and is detectable by laboratory tests. The signature reads ‘chocolate lover’ in some people and indifference to the popular sweet in others, the researchers say.
A person is 100 times more likely to get cancer at age 65 than at age 35. But new research reported today in the journal Nature Genetics identifies naturally occurring processes that allow many genes to both slow aging and protect against cancer in the much-studied C. elegans roundworm.