health - "medicine"

The Vytorin cholesterol fighter sold by Merck & Co and Schering-Plough has not been linked to cancer or cancer deaths in two large ongoing studies of the medicine, an epidemiologist said on Monday during a medical meeting in London.

Gene expression test could help determine who needs more aggressive lung cancer treatment.Researchers from four leading cancer centers have confirmed that an analysis involving a panel of genes can be used to predict which lung cancer patients will have the worst survival. The finding could one day lead to a test that would help determine who needs more aggressive treatment.The study on lung cancer and survival is the largest of its kind and appears online in Nature medicine.read more

Young adults age 35 or younger with a low-level elevation in blood pressure, called 'Prehypertension,' are more likely to have calcium in their coronary arteries later in life, predisposing them to a higher risk of strokes and heart attacks, according to a UCSF study published in Annals of Internal medicine.The study analyzed blood pressure in 3,560 adults age 18 to 30 over 20 years and measured coronary calcium at the end of the study.read more

A widely reported Israeli study, published in the New England Journal of medicine, compared three popular weight loss diets - low fat, which was attributed to the American Heart Association, low carbohydrate/high protein based on the Atkins diet, and Mediterranean style. the researchers found that people on the low carbohydrate/high protein diet lost slightly more weight over a two year period. Does that mean that people who are trying to lose weight should adopt a low carbohydrate/high protein diet?read more

The study of dark-skinned mice has led to a surprising finding about a common protein involved in tumor suppression, report researchers at the Stanford University School of medicine. The results may lead to new treatments for bone marrow failure in humans. The protein, called p53, has been dubbed the 'guardian of the genome' for its ability to recognize DNA damage and halt the division of potentially cancerous cells.

Introgen Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:INGN), a developer of targeted molecular therapies for cancer, announced that the company will present the results from its recently completed Phase 3 trial of ADVEXIN in recurrent head and neck cancer at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Centennial Conference on Translational Cancer medicine 2008: Cancer Clinical Trials and Personalized medicine. The conference will be held July 20-23, 2008 at the Hyatt Regency Monterey in Monterey, CA.

The world's top engineers, physicians and scientists are joining forces to conceptualize, develop and bring to reality the future tools and treatments of 21st century health care through UC San Diego's new Institute of Engineering in medicine. Nanoparticle bombs to kill cancer, molecular-sized bridges to repair damaged hearts, and scarless surgery techniques are now on the frontier of medical innovations in California with the new Institute leading the way.

(Northwestern University) The heavily polluted air in Beijing may trigger serious cardiovascular problems for some spectators. Researchers from Northwestern University's Feinberg School of medicine warn that for people in certain risk groups, breathing high levels of pollution can cause heart attacks and strokes within 24 hours of exposure and increase the possibility of having blood clots in their legs on the plane home. Northwestern research shows that high pollution levels cause hyperclotting of the blood, spurring stokes and heart attacks.

(Case Western Reserve University) Masha, a middle-aged avatar from Second Life, is an integral part of a new research project at the Case Western Reserve University School of Dental medicine and the College of Arts and Sciences department of communication sciences to teach and give students practice time to communicate with mock patients. Not only do findings from the study have potential to revolutionize dental education but also to change the way national testing is done for patient-side communication skills.

(The Peninsula College of medicine and Dentistry) The CUPID study at the Peninsula Medical School in Plymouth has reached an important milestone with the news that the full cohort of 493 people with multiple sclerosis has been recruited to the study.