Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers have a developed a totally new approach to treating liver failure – manipulating the immune response. If the results of the animal study can be applied in human patients, the approach may be able to keep patients alive until donor organs become available or to support liver function until the organ can regenerate itself, eliminating the need for a transplant.
Over a decade in the making, the WalkAide® System is a small device that makes a big difference for its users. Now the Canadian invention is receiving international recognition as a recipient of a 2007 da Vinci Award, to be presented by General Motors at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, Dearborn, MI, on Friday, September 28, 2007.
Birds, fish and amphibians can do something that humans and other mammals generally cannot: re-grow damaged or lost inner ear hair cells. Loss of these cells causes hearing deficiencies and disabling balance problems in an estimated 250 million people worldwide.
A new version of a colon cancer screening test effectively detects colorectal cancer and may be a good replacement for the test that is currently used, according to a study in the Sept. 25 Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
An under-used colon cancer screening test now available in the U.S. effectively detects colorectal cancer and may help to improve colon cancer screening rates, according to investigators at the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research. The study appears in the September 25, 2007 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI).
Despite strong evidence that cardiac rehabilitation reduces disability and prolongs life, fewer than one in five people receive rehabilitation services after a heart attack or coronary bypass surgery, according to a Brandeis study in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.
Although anorexia nervosa is categorized as an eating disorder, it is not known whether there are alterations of the portions of the brain that regulate appetite. Now, a new study finds that women with anorexia have distinct differences in the insulta – the specific part of the brain that is important for recognizing taste – according to a new study by University of Pittsburgh and University of California, San Diego researchers currently on line in advance of publication in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology.
By better understanding how antimicrobials bind and thereby get inactivated in the mucus of air passages, researchers at the University of Illinois may have found a way to help cystic fibrosis patients fight off deadly infections.
A new review of inpatient data from US hospitals shows that the number of infections caused by a common bacterium increased by over 7 percent each year from 1998 to 2003. The attendant economic burden to hospitals increased by nearly 12 percent annually.
Researchers at Texas A&M University are participating in developing a medicine that is worth sneezing about: a treatment for influenza that forms a jelly when sprayed into the nose.