At menopause, women lose hormone protection against heart (cardiovascular) and kidney (renal) diseases, and are likely to become obese. A research team has tested the idea that estrogen deficiency in aged females may trigger the development of high blood pressure and obesity. The results of their study, using an animal model, suggest that estrogen depletion can have these effects.
As national spending on prescription drugs rose faster than any other segment of health-care spending, the health plan at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center was able to maintain constant spending, resulting in savings of more than $6.6 million over three years.
For patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD), the risk of elevated levels of parathyroid hormone (PTH), or hyperparathyroidism?a significant complication that increases the risk of cardiovascular problems and death?increases along with body weight, reports a study in the September Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.
The Summer 2007 issue of the American Heart Hospital Journal explores one of the pivotal issues in cardiology today, the drug-eluting stent. Through commentaries from 10 leading national and international specialists, the issue presents a comprehensive discussion on the explosive growth and the potential risks of DESs.
While the thyroid has long been linked to metabolism, cutting-edge research underway at Rutgers University-Camden is investigating the possibility that thyroid hormones have an important role in sleep regulation.
A literature review published in the August issue of the Journal of Periodontology (JOP) saw a strong relationship between stress and periodontal diseases; 57% of the studies included in the review showed a positive relationship between periodontal diseases and psychological factors such as stress, distress, anxiety, depression, and loneliness.
Almac Diagnostics announced a major study analysing ductal carcinoma in situ tissue samples using its novel Breast Cancer DSA? microarray. DSA? research tools focus on the transcriptome of an individual disease, in this case breast cancer, and contain significant additional data, relevant to the disease of interest that is not available on other generic microarrays.
deCODE scientists have identified a sequence variant responsible for virtually all cases of a major subtype of glaucoma. The protein encoded by the gene appears to have a clear pathophysiologal role.
Scientists have provided new insight into how a gene is related to schizophrenia. In a study to be published in the August 17 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, Amanda J. Law, Medical Research Council Fellow and Associate Professor at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom, and Visiting Scientist at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), along with colleagues at NIH describe for the first time a genetic variation that causes a gene to be overexpressed in the human brain.
University of Alberta researchers stress that all children adopted from outside North America should be screened for tuberculosis. The study shows that in the Canadian province of Alberta, from 2004-2006, 40 percent of foreign-born children under 5 years of age who were found to have tuberculosis were international adoptees.