In the days following a heart attack, patients who have no or mild symptoms and undergo a procedure called angioplasty to mechanically open their totally blocked coronary arteries do not reduce their risk of having another heart attack, going into heart failure or dying, according to the results of a new study.
Huge areas of sea floor (around 3,250 km?) have been freed up by the collapse 4 years ago of the Larsen B platform along the Antarctic Peninsula. Polarstern, the research flagship of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, will shortly conduct the first major biological research there. Forty-seven scientists from more than a dozen different nationalities will focus on the biological characteristics of this blank spot, from November 2006 to January 2007.
For two consecutive years, researchers examined measures of cardiovascular fitness and self-esteem in sophomore girls attending Trenton Central High School and found students are making better health choices with an intervention program. Low Density Lipoprotein levels — the unhealthy cholesterol — also decreased significantly. WHF Teen Esteem is a gender-specific approach to teen girls’ health and wellness and is meant to be a replacement for traditional gymnastics and health classes.
In a fascinating study appearing in the November issue of the American Naturalist, biologists investigated the response of small animals to climate change on a remote sub-Antarctic Island. From an evolutionary standpoint, acclimatizing to a change in circumstances seems to make evolutionary sense. However, Steven Chown and Jacques Deere (both of Stellenbosch University) found that terrestrial animals don’t adapt. Why not?
Teenagers do not think they are immortal. But they take risks anyway. Here is why and what we can do about it.
ALTRAN, the European leader in innovation and high technology consulting, unveiled at the EcoBuilding Performance Forum on November 8-9 in Paris, three new eco-innovative concepts, to enable the best use of energy in the building and urban environment sectors. The “eco-innovation” is one of the pillars of the environment policy recently adopted by the EU, emphasizing that a “green” product is not enough, but that the product’s life cycle must be energy efficient.
The rate of colorectal cancer screening appears to be increasing among Veterans Affairs patients, although use of colonoscopy is less common than other screening procedures, according to a report in the Nov. 13 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. A second report in the same journal shows that younger veterans with other illnesses and reduced life expectancies may not necessarily benefit from such screening and may even be harmed, but continue to be screened at high rates.
Retinoids, a derivative of vitamin A, may provide little clinical benefit for patients with emphysema, shows a new study.
New research reported in the journal CHEST shows that prescription sleep aids may do little to improve the use of continuous positive airway pressure among patients with obstructive sleep apnea. The study found that patients with OSA who were given prescription sleep aids were no more likely to use their CPAP machines than patients with OSA taking a placebo.
As the prevalence of allergic rhinitis appears to be rising, there are increasing concerns about its impact on health, sleep, work and school performance, as well as unmet patient needs regarding its treatment according to experts presenting new data at the Annual Meeting of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI).