TUESDAY, April 12, 2016 — Women are a majority of the 4.4 million Americans over age 40 who are visually impaired or blind, Prevent Blindness says. The national organization has declared April as Women’s Eye Health and Safety Awareness Month, and has outlined several things women need to know about ... Read More »
TUESDAY, April 12, 2016 — An over-the-counter antihistamine used to fight allergies may have an important new role: reversing the vision loss sometimes caused by multiple sclerosis. That’s the finding from preliminary research that found that clemastine fumarate partially reversed optic neuropathy in people with MS. Optic neuropathy is damage ... Read More »
TUESDAY, April 12, 2016 — Almost 14 percent of U.S. veterans surveyed during a two-year Veterans Affairs (VA) study reported having suicidal thoughts. More than 2,000 veterans were surveyed in 2011 and again in 2013. Each time they were asked whether they’d had suicidal thoughts in the past two weeks. ... Read More »
In order for clinical trials to be worth the time and money, researchers must enroll enough participants to fairly judge the effects of treatments. Nearly a quarter of trials for cancer drugs, however, fail to enroll enough people for reliability, representing a waste of what researchers in a new study ... Read More »
Smoking cigarettes and exposure to secondhand smoke are well known threats to health. Particles contained in cigarette smoke that settle on surfaces, known as thirdhand smoke, also pose a significant health danger. Although the number of smokers in the United States has reached an all-time low, researchers say a residual ... Read More »
Teenagers treated at the hospital for violent, drug- or alcohol-related, or self-inflicted injuries have a higher long-term risk of death, according to a study in England. Researchers at University College London said the three types of injuries have similar risk factors — nearly three-quarters of girls and one-third of boys ... Read More »
A memory drug developed by the National Institutes of Health and Tetra Discovery Partners that may help treat or prevent cognitive disorders has been moved into a small clinical trial, the agency announced in a press release. The drug, BPN14770, is aimed at improving a biochemical pathway responsible for memory ... Read More »
A contagious cancer, spread by biting, has decimated the population of Tasmanian devils since 1996. Researchers have now identified a second contagious cancer in eight devils, making them question how rare contagious cancer is, according to a new study. In addition to attempting to breed devils identified as immune to ... Read More »
In November, Chipotle temporarily closed 43 restaurants in Washington state and Oregon after dozens of diners reported falling ill, contributing to an outbreak that now spans nine states and hundreds of possible cases. From 1998 to 2014, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identified dine-in or drive-up fast-food ... Read More »
People with multiple sclerosis who took high-dose supplements of vitamin D had reduced levels of inflammation related to the disease, according to researchers in a new study. Low vitamin D is linked with an increased risk for MS, and previous studies have shown taking supplements can help treatment and prevention ... Read More »
A $1.68 million National Institutes of Health grant will fund research aiming to improve treatment for chronic pancreatitis, as well as further a potential cure for type 1 diabetes, the Medical University of South Carolina announced this week. Earlier studies by researchers at the university showed injecting Alpha 1 anti-trypsin, ... Read More »
WEDNESDAY, April 6, 2016 — Hydromorphone — an opioid painkiller — may be another treatment option for heroin addiction, a new Canadian study suggests. The research included more than 200 heroin addicts in Vancouver. They hadn’t responded to commonly used treatments such as methadone or suboxone. This was the first ... Read More »
