A longer, less intense course of radiotherapy provides better value for the money than a shorter, more intense regimen when given to ease pain and other complaints in patients with late-stage non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to a study in the December 20 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
University of California, San Diego biologists have shown that the chemical language with which neurons communicate depends on the pattern of electrical activity in the developing nervous system. The findings suggest that modification of nerve activity could have potential as a treatment for a wide range of brain disorders.
Over the past 3 decades, percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI, or balloon angioplasty) has significantly changed the treatment of coronary artery disease (narrowing of the arteries supplying the heart muscle). Unlike the more invasive coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery, angioplasty is a nonsurgical procedure in which a tiny catheter with a balloon is inserted into the coronary artery.
Experiments on mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease suggest that treatment with male sex hormones might slow its progression. The findings, published in the Dec. 20 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, provide new insight into the relationship between testosterone loss and AD, which affects 4.5 million Americans.
Statistics released today show a reduction in the reported number of heroin users injecting the drug, and a reduction in the number of addicts sharing needles.
The air could be teeming with more than 1,800 types of bacteria, according to a first-of-its-kind census of airborne microbes recently conducted by scientists from the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Whether reopening narrowed kidney arteries benefits patients is a $1.7 billion question a North American study hopes to answer.
Right now there’s no rapid way to diagnose sepsis, a fast-moving blood infection that is a leading cause of death in hospital intensive care units. New research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis suggests that doctors one day could quickly distinguish sepsis from widespread non-infectious inflammation based on genetic profiles of patients’ blood.
How a potentially deadly bacterium that could be used as a bioterrorist tool eludes being killed by the human immune system is now better understood, researchers report in the December issue of the Journal of Leukocyte Biology.
A tiny implant now being developed at MIT could one day help doctors rapidly monitor the growth of tumors and the progress of chemotherapy in cancer patients.