Just a small fraction of patients who have a stroke receive the only drug — TPA — available to treat the condition. Now doctors and scientists at the University of Rochester Medical Center have developed a potential new treatment that will reach a milestone in the next few months, when the experimental treatment is tested for the first time in people who have suffered a stroke or “brain attack.”
Today marks a bittersweet anniversary for one Cambridge-based national charity, as the Alzheimer?s Research Trust marks 100 years since the discovery of the disease by the German neurologist Dr Alois Alzheimer.
The heart health benefits of omega-3 fatty acids — found in salmon, tuna and other cold-water fish — have long been touted. But according to the November issue of Mayo Clinic Women’s HealthSource, new research indicates that omega-3 fats might not be as beneficial as previously believed.
You may have heard claims that the supplement coenzyme Q10 can lower blood pressure, boost the immune system and improve certain heart diseases. There are also claims it can help fight cancer, Parkinson’s disease, wrinkles, diabetes, gum diseases and many other problems.
Mayo Clinic heart researchers have devised a new strategy to improve the effectiveness and safety of heart stents, which are used to open narrowed blood vessels and have been the recent subject of clotting concerns. Their novel approach is based on magnetizing healing cells from the patient’s blood so the cells are quickly drawn to magnetically coated stents.
Researchers at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and Ohio State University, have identified a cellular protein that acts as a regulator for blood flow by blocking blood vessel relaxation induced by nitric oxide (NO). This mouse study appears in the November 2, 2006, online issue of Blood*.
Overweight aged male mice whose high calorie (fat) diet was supplemented by resveratrol, a natural compound found in common foods like grapes, wines and nuts, had better health and survival than aged overweight mice who did not receive it, according to a study published online in the Nov. 1 issue of Nature. The study was conducted and supported in part by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Infants who die of sudden infant death syndrome have abnormalities in the brainstem, a part of the brain that helps control heart rate, breathing, blood pressure, temperature and arousal, report researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health. The finding is the strongest evidence to date suggesting that innate differences in a specific part of the brain may place some infants at increased risk for SIDS.
The health effects of wine (and alcohol in general) are the subject of considerable ongoing study. In the USA, a boom in red wine consumption was touched off in the 1990s by ’60 Minutes’, and other news reports on the French paradox. Wine is an alcoholic beverage produced by the fermentation of the juice of fruits, usually grapes.
Researchers have used a single compound to increase the lifespan of obese mice, and found that the drug reversed nearly all of the changes in gene expression patterns found in mice on high calorie diets–some of which are associated with diabetes, heart disease, and other significant diseases related to obesity. The research, led by investigators at Harvard Medical School and the National Institute on Aging, is the first time that the small molecule resveratrol has been shown to offer survival benefits in a mammal. The study is reported in the November 1 advanced online edition of Nature.