Health – Page 22 – GOLLYGEE!

11.05.2012

bypass surgery may be better than stents

A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine finds evidence that bypass surgery might be better than stents for treating blockages in diabetic patients. From Science News:

To find the best treatment for these patients, Fuster and colleagues randomly assigned 1,900 people with diabetes who had blockages in more than one coronary branch to get either bypass surgery or stents. After five years, 26.6 percent of patients assigned to get stents had suffered a heart attack or a stroke, or had died. Only 18.7 percent of those getting bypass surgery met one of those fates. And although both groups also received the best medical care otherwise available, those getting stents were more than twice as likely to have to return to a hospital to fix repeat blockages, says Fuster, who presented the study results at a meeting of the American Heart Association on November 4. The report also appeared online the same day in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“I think the data are very convincing,” says Timothy Gardner, a heart surgeon at Christiana Hospital in Newark, Del., who wasn’t part of the study team. “Interventional cardiologists have been skeptical that the more invasive coronary artery bypass graft in patients — especially with the other morbidities such as diabetes — was worth it.”

10.30.2012

nanoparticle HIV test

A new HIV test uses gold nanoparticles to determine the presence of the HIV biomarker p24. In the presence of the biomarker the particles clump and turn blue. Otherwise, the particles produce a red color. The test is more sensitive and a lot cheaper than other tests. From Popular Science:

To detect the AIDS-causing virus using the new method, researchers add serum from a patient’s blood sample to a solution of gold nanoparticles. If the nanoparticles come into contact with an HIV biomarker called p24, they clump together into an irregular pattern that turns the mixture blue–indicating a positive test result. If p24 is absent, the gold nanoparticles separate into ball shapes, and the mixture turns red, signaling a negative result.
Lead investigator Molly Stevens said the test could be altered to detect other diseases, including malaria, sepsis, prostate cancer, tuberculosis, and leishmaniasis

Also check out the original publication in Nature Nanotechnology.

10.26.2012

lack of sleep can effect memory

A study of honeybees has shown that a lack of sleep impairs their ability to recall recent events. From Scientific American:

After characterizing how honeybees find their way home when released in a new location, the scientists captured and then released bees in unfamiliar territory some 600 meters from their hive. In addition to tracking how long the bees needed to return home, the researchers monitored bee sleep. Bees take brief naps throughout the day in addition to longer periods of nocturnal sleep. (Snoozing bees are easy to spot because their antennae droop.) The scientists made their observations both by watching bees in person and by tracking their activity via radio-frequency devices that they glued onto some of the insects.

The researchers verified first that finding a new route home did not alter other foraging behaviors, although it did lead to an increase in sleeping time in the first part of the night. Curious as to whether this change might reflect some learning or memory process, the team decided to see what happens when bee slumber is disturbed by selectively placing the insects in a box that was gently agitated for about eight hours, making it difficult for them to relax and get a good night’s sleep.

The next day the researchers found that sleepless bees and well-rested ones performed no differently when left to find their way home from a novel location. In other words, lack of sleep apparently did not inhibit the bees’ learning processes. “This suggests that there are forms of learning that seem to be totally independent of sleep,” Menzel says.

The scientists observed, however, a significant and obvious difference when bees were brought to the new spot for a second day. This time, bees that had slept well found their way home faster and fewer got lost along the way than on the previous day. That observation indicates that the well-rested bees had learned from their experience the day before. Drowsy bees, however, took about as long to return home on the second day as on the first, and were just as likely to get lost.

The study appears in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

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Category: Health (page 22 of 27)

bypass surgery may be better than stents

nanoparticle HIV test

lack of sleep can effect memory