http://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on Health and Medicine. Legal limits for twenty illegal drugs and medicines with an abuse potential have been introduced by the Norwegian government. Norway is the first country to define both impairment-based legislative limits and limits for graded sanctions for drugs other than alcohol. The Norwegian Institute of Public Health participated to provide the scientific basis for the new limits. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-norway-legal-limits-traffic-drugs.html Medications Mon, 13 Feb 2012 11:05:35 EST news248353523 Drivers who consume cannabis within three hours of driving are nearly twice as likely to cause a vehicle collision as those who are not under the influence of drugs or alcohol claims a paper published today in the British Medical Journal. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-cannabis-chances-vehicle.html Health Thu, 09 Feb 2012 18:30:01 EST news248007972 Children of mothers screened and treated for reduced thyroid function during pregnancy show no signs of improved IQ compared to women who receive no treatment, new research has uncovered. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-antenatal-thyroid-screening-iq-year-olds.html Health Wed, 08 Feb 2012 17:26:13 EST news247944353 (Medical Xpress) -- Zinc is an essential nutrient, but until now, there has not been an effective way to measure it in our bodies, say University of Florida researchers. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-12-method-accurately-zinc-humans.html Medical research Fri, 16 Dec 2011 06:11:34 EST news243238256 Children who experience the stress of separation at birth from biological parents and are brought up in orphanages undergo biological consequences such as changes in their genome functioning, Yale School of Medicine researchers report in a new study. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-12-orphaned-children-genetic-require-nurturing.html Psychology & Psychiatry Mon, 05 Dec 2011 13:15:38 EST news242313328 A new research report appearing in the December issue of the FASEB Journal shows how scientists from the United Kingdom have developed a simple blood test to detect Parkinson's disease even at the earliest stages. The test is possible because scientists found a substance in the blood, called "phosphorylated alpha-synuclein," which is common in people with Parkinson's disease, and then developed a way to identify its presence in our blood. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-simple-blood-parkinson-disease-symptoms.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Wed, 30 Nov 2011 12:40:57 EST news241879178 Vaccinating children annually against influenza virus interferes with their development of cross-reactive killer T cells to flu viruses generally, according to a paper in the November Journal of Virology. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-annual-childhood-flu-vaccines-crossresistance.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Thu, 17 Nov 2011 09:50:02 EST news240741182 A new malaria vaccine could be the first to tackle different forms of the disease and help those most vulnerable to infection, a study suggests. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-10-multiple-malaria-vaccine-people.html Medical research Wed, 26 Oct 2011 17:40:20 EST news238869610 A simple blood test could someday quantify a smoker's lung toxicity and danger of heart disease, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-10-blood-smokers-higher-heart-disease.html Cardiology Tue, 25 Oct 2011 04:15:40 EST news238734900 African-Americans with two copies of the APOL1 gene have about a 4 percent lifetime risk of developing a form of kidney disease, according to scientists at the National Institutes of Health. The finding brings scientists closer to understanding why African-Americans are four times more likely to develop kidney failure than whites, as they reported in the Oct. 13 online edition of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-10-gene-variant-kidney-disease-african-americans.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Mon, 24 Oct 2011 10:51:42 EST news238672292 A University of Michigan Health System-led team of researchers has found a biomarker they believe can help rapidly identify one of the most serious complications in patients with leukemia, lymphoma and other blood disorders who have received a transplant of new, blood-forming cells. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-10-biomarker-graft-versus-host-disease-cancer-patients-bone.html Medical research Fri, 21 Oct 2011 10:06:15 EST news238410340 Exceptional cognitive and physical function in old age leaves a tell-tale immunologic fingerprint, say researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC. Likewise, older adults who have mild impairments bear a distinct immunologic pattern, too, according to findings published today in the PLoS One. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-10-exceptional-cognitive-physical-health-age.html Medical research Fri, 21 Oct 2011 09:28:47 EST news238408116 An international team of researchers has discovered the first DNA faults linked to melanoma - the deadliest skin cancer - that are not related to hair, skin or eye colour. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-10-gene-faults-melanoma-percent.html Genetics Sun, 09 Oct 2011 13:00:20 EST news237382889 The latest results from an expedition to Mount Everest that looked at the body's response to low oxygen levels suggest that drugs or procedures that promote the body's production of a chemical compound called nitric oxide (NO) could improve the recovery of critically ill patients in intensive care. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-10-everest-nitric-oxide-benefits-intensive.html Medical research Thu, 06 Oct 2011 07:19:07 EST news237104331 Huntington's disease, a devastating genetic disorder that causes degeneration of nerve cells in the brain, affects more than 15,000 Americans, and at least 150,000 are at risk of developing the disease. There is no known cure or treatment for the disease -- which starts with changes in mood, judgment, memory, and other cognitive functions and inevitably leads to increasing physical disability, dementia and death. In a new research paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences early edition online, researchers identify a transcriptional biomarker that may assist in the monitoring of disease activity and in the evaluation of new medications. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-10-transcriptional-biomarker-huntington-disease.html Medical research Mon, 03 Oct 2011 15:00:25 EST news236860983 (Medical Xpress) -- Researchers at Johns Hopkins have modified HIV in a way that makes it no longer able to suppress the immune system. Their work, they say in a report published online September 19 in the journal Blood, could remove a major hurdle in HIV vaccine development and lead to new treatments. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-09-hide-and-seek-hiv-evade-immune.html HIV & AIDS Wed, 28 Sep 2011 10:39:40 EST news236425160 A study supported by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services could not validate or confirm previous research findings that suggested the presence of one of several viruses in blood samples of people living with chronic fatigue syndrome. The new study also could not find the viruses in blood samples of healthy donors who were previously known to not have the viruses. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-09-virus-chronic-fatigue.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Thu, 22 Sep 2011 15:56:16 EST news235925752 Equations that estimate a patient's kidney function work as well as direct, invasive measurements, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society Nephrology (JASN). This means that many patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) do not need to undergo the painful and cumbersome procedures that are performed to monitor kidneys' health. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-09-common-invasive-kidney-disease-patients.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Thu, 15 Sep 2011 17:37:39 EST news235326491 Phytoestrogens are plant compounds which, in the human body, can attach to the receptors for the female sexual hormone estrogen and which are taken in with our daily diet. A number of findings have attributed a cancer protective effect to these plant hormones. At DKFZ (Germany), a team headed by Prof. Dr. Jenny Chang-Claude summarized the results of several studies in a meta-analysis last year and showed that a diet rich in phytoestrogens lowers the risk of developing breast cancer after menopause. Now the Heidelberg researchers wanted to find out whether phytoestrogens also have an influence on the course of breast cancer. Prior investigations on this topic had provided contradictory results. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-09-compound-breast-cancer-mortality.html Cancer Tue, 13 Sep 2011 13:27:54 EST news235139226 Researchers funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) have discovered a new mechanism controlling ageing in white blood cells. The research, published in the September issue of the Journal of Immunology, opens up the possibility of temporarily reversing the effects of ageing on immunity and could, in the future, allow for the short-term boosting of the immune systems of older people. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-08-possibility-temporarily-reversing-aging-immune.html Medical research Tue, 16 Aug 2011 09:22:25 EST news232705333 A new study of the DNA of people living in Glasgow suggests that earning less than the average wage and eating an unhealthy diet could accelerate the ageing process. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-07-income-poor-diet-linked-aging.html Health Thu, 28 Jul 2011 09:54:07 EST news231065635 Measuring hemoglobin A 1c (HbA 1c ) levels in patients with diabetes is associated with improvement in models for predicting risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD), according to a report published Online First today by Archives of Internal Medicine. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-07-blood-glucose-cvd-events-patients.html Cardiology Mon, 25 Jul 2011 16:52:20 EST news230831515 Scientists are closing in on a long-sought goal: A blood test to screen people for Alzheimer's disease. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-07-blood-alzheimer.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Wed, 20 Jul 2011 04:01:27 EST news230353254 Cancer cells circulating in the blood carry newly identified proteins that could be screened to improve prognostic tests and suggest targets for therapies, report scientists at the Duke Cancer Institute. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-06-clues-cancer.html Cancer Mon, 27 Jun 2011 10:39:17 EST news228389874 PredictAD is an EU-funded research project that develops objective and efficient methods for enabling earlier diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. Diagnosis requires a holistic view of the patient combining information from several sources, such as, clinical tests, imaging and blood samples. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-06-methods-early-diagnosis-alzheimer-disease.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Wed, 15 Jun 2011 05:10:02 EST news227330809 The swine flu outbreak of winter 2009-2010 was much more widespread than was previously realised, research suggests. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-06-swine-flu-wider-thought-scientists.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Wed, 08 Jun 2011 17:28:59 EST news226772905 Two years ago, a widely publicized scientific report plucked an old mouse virus out of obscurity and held it up as a possible cause of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. According to a new study published today by a group of researchers in California, Wisconsin and Illinois, that report was wrong. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-05-mouse-virus-erroneously-linked-chronic.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Tue, 31 May 2011 10:16:06 EST news226055726 Although some evidence suggests that prevention of vitamin A deficiency among women in developing countries may improve maternal and infant survival, pregnant women in rural Bangladesh who received vitamin A or beta carotene supplementation in a randomized trial did not have a lower rate of all-cause maternal, fetal, or infant death, compared to women who received placebo, according to a study in the May 18 issue of JAMA. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-05-vitamin-beta-carotene-pregnancy-supplements.html Health Tue, 17 May 2011 16:56:51 EST news224870178 A new study published in the journal Respirology reveals that adult patients admitted to the hospital with pneumonia are more likely to die if they have Vitamin D deficiency. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-05-vitamin-d-deficiency-pneumonia-patients.html Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes Tue, 10 May 2011 10:07:13 EST news224240792