Many consumers take precautions against identity theft, but what about medical identity theft? In addition to financial peril, victims can suffer physical danger if false entries in medical records lead to the wrong treatment.
In a study of the maternity records of more than 6,000 women, David J.P. Barker, M.D., Ph.D., and Kent Thornburg, Ph.D., of Oregon Health & Science University discovered a strong correlation between the size and shape of a woman’s hips and her daughter’s risk of breast cancer. Wide, round hips, the researchers postulated, represent markers of high sex hormone concentrations in the mother, which increase her daughter’s vulnerability to breast cancer.
MIT has announced a $100 million gift from Koch Industries executive and MIT alumnus David H. Koch that will usher in new paradigms in highly integrative cancer research. The gift will bring together MIT scientists and engineers under one roof to develop new and powerful ways to detect, diagnose, treat, and manage this often deadly disease.
A UNSW researcher has developed a world-first test which will radically improve cancer management. Professor Philip Hogg, the co-director of UNSW’s Lowy Cancer Research Centre, has developed the technology which will determine whether cancer cells are dying within one day of a patient’s treatment with radiation or chemotherapy.
British adults now believe that moderate activity is more beneficial than vigorous exercise, according to new research by the University of Exeter and Brunel University. Although most large studies show that the greatest health benefits are derived from regular participation in vigorous activities, such as jogging and competitive sports, 56% of men and 71% of women now believe moderate activities, like walking, are most beneficial.
Long denigrated as vestigial or useless, the appendix now appears to have a reason to be – as a “safe house” for the beneficial bacteria living in the human gut.
Rapid assessment and treatment of minor strokes and transient-ischaemic attacks (TIAs) massively reduces the chances of occurrence of subsequent major stroke, conclude two separate studies, one early Online and in an upcoming edition of The Lancet, and the other early Online and in the November issue of The Lancet Neurology.
People who experience chronic job strain after a first heart attack double their risk of suffering from a second one, reports a research team from Université Laval’s Faculty of Medicine in the October 10 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
FAV Health 2007, an International Symposium on Human Health Effects of Fruit and Vegetables (FAV) is scheduled for the first time in the United States from October 9 till 13 in Houston, TX.
The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), today announced grants totaling more than $80 million over the next four years to expand the ENCyclopedia Of DNA Elements (ENCODE) project, which in its pilot phase yielded provocative new insights into the organization and function of the human genome.