Scientists have found important genetic differences that significantly raise the risk of stroke, and they are found in millions of people.
The study is the first to identify common genetic variants influencing stroke risk in the United States and may lead to better treatments, they reported on Wednesday.
While other stroke-related genes have been discovered, none involved such a wide portion of the population, said Eric Boerwinkle of The University of Texas Health Science Center.
More than half of the newly diagnosed patients with type 1 diabetes who got an experimental treatment for the disease did not need insulin injections for at least a year.
Patients also showed improvements in the functioning of the insulin-producing cells that are attacked and destroyed in patients with type 1 diabetes.
Four of the 23 patients who took part in the study remained insulin free for at least three years and one patient went without insulin injections for more than four years.
A drug that boosts the body’s production of stem cells appears to "jump-start" the bone-healing process to a point that older adults’ bones heal as fast as young people’s, suggest preliminary results released Tuesday by U.S. researchers.
Researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York gave teriparatide (Forteo) to 145 people who had bone fractures that had not healed, many for six months or more. They found that 93 percent of them showed significant healing and pain control after eight to 12 weeks.
Energy drinks may boost performance during exercise by activating the brain, new research suggests.
Apparently, brain areas can be activated by titillation of unknown and mysterious receptors in the mouth, according to a study in the latest issue of the Journal of Physiology.
These receptors are independent of ordinary taste buds, says Ed Chambers, PhD, of the University of Birmingham in England and lead author of the study.
Chambers tells WebMD by email that the "study suggests that the human mouth may have receptors sensitive to carbohydrate that are independent of the ’sweet’ taste receptor. This supports research performed with rodents that suggests these mammals have taste receptors that are responsive to carbohydrate."
A late-stage clinical study of Pfizer Inc’s (PFE) Sutent was halted early after the drug showed significant benefit in patients with a rare form of cancer, the drugmaker said on Thursday, sending its shares up 3.5%.
An independent committee monitoring the study recommended halting it after concluding that patients on Sutent stayed free of disease progression for longer than those on placebo plus best supportive care.
The patients in the study had advanced pancreatic islet cell tumors, a rare cancer with limited treatment options, according to Pfizer.
A decompression chamber may help children with autism, say researchers.
After 40 hours of hyperbaric treatment autistic children showed significant improvements in social interaction and eye contact compared with controls.
The BMC Pediatrics study could not show if the results were long-lasting but should prompt further investigation of the treatment, the US team said.
One theory is that oxygen can help reduce inflammation and improve flow of oxygen to brain tissue.
Hyperbaric treatment – effectively giving high concentrations of oxygen at increased atmospheric pressure – has been shown to have some benefit in other neurological conditions such as foetal alcohol syndrome and cerebral palsy.
Some studies have looked at the treatment in children with autism but they have not compared with a dummy procedure raising questions around a “placebo effect”.
A weapon against the germ that triggers the common cold could be discovered now that scientists have analyzed the DNA of an entire family of cold viruses, a study said.
Colds are difficult to treat and prevent because the rhinovirus that causes them takes many forms, becoming elusive targets for drugs, said Stephen Liggett, a geneticist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine’s Institute for Genome Sciences in Baltimore who led the study.
Liggett and his team sequenced all 99 known strains of the rhinovirus in a report in the journal Science that traced the evolution of the germ.
