(MedPage Today) — Dysphagia among hospitalized patients — particularly the elderly — not only lengthens hospital stays and increases the risk of dying, but also carries significant economic burdens.
(MedPage Today) — A chocolate habit may protect women from heart failure later in life — but only when enjoyed in moderation, researchers found.
(MedPage Today) — Switching away from red meat could help women cut down on their heart disease risk, according to a large observational study.
(MedPage Today) — Childhood overweight and obesity rates have started to stabilize or decline for most ethnic groups, although not for black or American Indian girls, according to a population-based study.
(MedPage Today) — Medicare will pay for intensive diet and exercise programs developed under the Ornish and Pritikin brands for reducing cardiovascular event risk, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced.
(MedPage Today) — Patrons of fast-food restaurants may see packets containing statins next to the ketchup and salt at the self-serve counter if the suggestion of British researchers becomes reality.
Infections like the flu are common occurrences during pregnancy, and research has shown that children born to mothers who suffered from flu, viruses and other infections during pregnancy have about a 1.5 to 7 times increased risk for schizophrenia. A new study out of Temple University examines what’s behind that link…
These days people commonly don’t die from a heart attack. But the damage to heart muscle is irreversible, and most patients eventually succumb to congestive heart failure, the most common cause of death in developed countries. Stem cells now offer hope for achieving what the body can’t do: mending broken hearts. Engineers and physicians at the University of Washington have built a scaffold that supports the growth and integration of stem cell-derived cardiac muscle cells. A description of the scaffold, which supports the growth of cardiac cells in the lab and encourages blood vessel growth in living animals, is published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences……..
The brain has been mapped to the smallest fold for at least a century, but still no one knows how all the parts talk to each other. A study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences answers that question for a small area of the rat brain and in so doing takes a big step toward revealing the brain’s wiring……..
Progestins are used in hormone replacement therapies to counteract the negative effects of estrogen on the uterus and reduce the risk of uterine cancer. However, evidence in recent studies and clinical trials has demonstrated that progestins increase the risk of breast cancer. Now, University of Missouri scientists have compared four types of progestins used in hormone replacement therapies and found significantly different outcomes on the progression of breast cancer in an animal model depending on the type of progestins used……..