A study of herbal kelp supplements led by UC Davis public health expert Marc Schenker concludes that its medicinal use may cause inadvertent arsenic poisoning and health dangers for consumers, especially when overused. Schenker and two researchers evaluated nine over-the-counter herbal kelp products and found higher than acceptable arsenic levels in eight of them.
Children born with a foot deformity that causes them to have a rigid flatfoot once faced extensive surgery to fully correct the problem. A treatment developed by a pediatric orthopedic surgeon at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has shown early success in correcting congenital vertical talus with minimal surgery in most cases.
Adapting to the global climate change impacts outlined in the IPCC’s Working Group 2 Report, “Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability”, will require new evaluation tools to help choose the best way forward, according to the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), an international network of environmental scientists.
Flexible electronic membranes may overcome a longstanding dilemma faced by brain researchers: How to replicate injuries in the lab without destroying the electrodes that monitor how brain cells respond to physical trauma.
University of Cincinnati neuroradiologists believe a brain imaging approach that combines standard magnetic resonance imaging scans with specialized contrast-enhanced techniques could lead to more effective diagnoses in patients with difficult-to-detect blood clots in veins of the brain.
iCAD, Inc. (Nasdaq: ICAD), an industry-leading provider of Computer-Aided Detection (CAD) solutions for the early identification of cancer, commented on an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine entitled, “Influence of Computer Aided Detection on Performance of Screening.” CAD uses sophisticated algorithms to identify areas of interest on a mammography film, acting as a “second set of eyes” for the radiologist.
A research team at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, led by Carlos Arteaga, M.D., reports in the May issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation that radiation and chemotherapy increase circulating levels of the growth factor TGF-beta, circulating cancer cells, and tumor metastases in a mouse model of metastatic breast cancer.
In a time when we worry about bird flu and contaminated spinach, Marlene Zuk, an evolutionary biologist at UC Riverside, offers a fresh perspective on disease and the role it plays in our lives.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins may have discovered an unintended benefit in the drugs millions of Americans take to lower their cholesterol: The medications, all statins, seem to lower the risk of a potentially lethal blood infection known as sepsis in patients on kidney dialysis.
Immunology researchers at the Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson studying a multiple sclerosis (MS)-like disease in mice have shown that the amount of “damage” to the central nervous system?s protective blood-brain barrier ? in essence, opening it ? almost always correlates to the severity of the disease.