Temporarily diverting blood leaving the liver during chemotherapy could prolong the lives of people with primary or secondary liver tumours. The hour-long procedure allows massive doses of chemotherapy drugs to reach the liver and kill the cancer cells without poisoning the rest of the body.
A UCSF research team has developed a simple tool that can improve the effectiveness of communication between doctors and patients about prescribed medications and result in dramatic improvements in health and safety.
Rice University today unveiled plans for a $100 million initiative to create an institute to develop technologies to combat pressing health problems in the developing world, such as HIV/AIDS and child mortality. The initiative was announced today during the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative in New York.
The world’s most common joint disease, osteoarthritis (OA) is a major cause of disability among adults over the age of 50. Whether physical activity is beneficial or detrimental to weight-bearing joints, knees in particular, has been open to debate. Some studies implicate physical activity in provoking knee OA, while others suggest that physical activity may actually protect the knee joint from the disease.
A painful and debilitating condition that affects patients with kidney failure may be more common than previously believed and appears to be strongly associated with prior exposure to certain contrast agents used in imaging studies. In addition, individuals with this syndrome – called nephrogenic systemic fibrosis (NSF) – appear to have a significantly increased risk of dying.
Giardia lamblia, one of the most common human parasites in the United States, causes more than 20,000 intestinal infections a year, often through contact with contaminated drinking or swimming water. In the Sept. 28 issue of Science, an international team led by researchers at the MBL describe the complete genome (genetic sequence) of Giardia, which could lead to the development of new drugs to combat this persistent infection, called giardiasis.
Each year more than half a million infants worldwide, primarily in developing countries, die from diarrhea caused by rotavirus. Even in industrialized countries management of the infection costs economies about $1 billion a year. Now a study in the online open access journal, BMC Microbiology demonstrates that with the addition of probiotic bacteria, preventative measures can potentially be made far cheaper but just as effective.
Researchers from MIT, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals and other institutions have demonstrated the safety of a promising type of genetic therapy that could lead to treatments for a wide range of diseases such as cancer.
New research has yielded a clearer picture of which biomarkers could help doctors more precisely target the treatment of colon cancer, bringing closer the day when patients who will not benefit from chemotherapy are spared it, while those that will, get the more aggressive treatment they need.
Women diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer who have also endured previous traumatic or stressful events see their cancer recur nearly twice as fast as other women, according to a report by a University of Rochester Medical Center scientist.