Siesta is good for the heart A Greek study suggests a link between regular afternoon naps and a reduced risk of fatal heart disease. Researchers from the University of Athens calculated that countries where siestas are common have lower death rates from heart disease.
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Pictures are the best way to warn smokers of he alth risks Illustrated cues are more effective than text warnings at communicating the he alth risks of smoking to nicotine addicts. This was a comparison of the success of different types of he alth warnings required on cigarette packs in Canada, US, UK and Australia.
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Passive smoke at work is harmful to he alth Employees who are even passively exposed to cigarette smoke in offices, restaurants or other activities have a significantly increased risk of developing lung cancer. This is the conclusion of a meta-study by physicians led by Leslie Stayner from the University of Illinois at Chicago, which includes data from 22 investigations.
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Long-term danger from mobile phones cannot be ruled out Long-term cell phone users may be at slightly increased risk of developing brain tumors. At the same time, there is no evidence that people are at risk who have used their cell phones less often and for less than ten years.
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Mass expulsion also harms those who are not fired Male professionals who have had to experience a wave of layoffs in the company without losing their own job subsequently suffer from mental illnesses almost as often as their colleagues who have been made redundant.
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Pluripotent stem cells derived from amniotic fluid and placenta US researchers have obtained stem cells from the amniotic fluid of pregnant women, which can develop into different cell types. The amniotic fluid stem cells came from the respective fetus.
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Pets don't promote he alth The widespread belief that a pet is always good for your body and he alth turns out to be unfounded on closer inspection. On the contrary: Pet lovers are in poorer he alth than the rest of the population, warn two Finnish researchers.
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Available blindness overly common in South Sudan? Two studies on the incidence of trachoma and cataracts have found unusually high levels for the population of Mankien Payam District in South Sudan. The scientists attribute this to the poor medical care during the long civil war and call for the rapid implementation of the WHO strategy with operations, antibiotics, facial hygiene and improvement of living and environmental conditions (Safe:
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Nurses and doctor's death sentence upheld The Supreme Court in Tripoli has confirmed the death sentences against five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor in an appeal process. The defendants are accused of intentionally infecting more than 400 children with the HI virus.
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Pain-Suppressing Mutation Discovered The mutation of a certain gene can suppress all pain perception in humans. Scientists led by Geoffrey Woods from the British University of Cambridge were able to identify the change in six individuals from three related families from Pakistan who had never felt pain in their lives.
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New study relieves Bulgarian nurses The HIV and hepatitis C virus strains, which have now infected more than 400 Libyan children, had reached Al Fateh Hospital in Benghazi before March 1998. This is confirmed by a renewed analysis of gene sequences from patients treated in European hospitals.
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Mobile phones relieved as cancer risk? Researchers from Denmark have not been able to prove that using a mobile phone is associated with an increased risk of cancer. Joachim Schütz from the Cancer Society of Denmark and his colleagues evaluated the state-documented medical histories of 420,095 Danes with mobile phone contracts and thus determined their cancer risk.
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Neurotransmitters influence taste sensation The concentration of the neurotransmitters serotonin and norepinephrine in the brain affects the sense of taste. Serotonin increases the sensitivity to sweet and bitter, while noradrenaline has a positive effect on the perception of bitter and sour, scientists led by Lucy Donaldson from the University of Bristol.
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Doubts on Lancet publication on SIDS Jonathan Gornall, a freelance journalist in London, expresses in the British Medical Journal [1] considerable doubts about the methodology and conclusions of a study published in 2005 in The Lancet [
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Through the yellow balloon glasses Being sick and laughing doesn't seem to go together. Illness is not always fun, but happy moments can make it easier to bear. Hospital clowns give seriously ill people such great moments. "
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AIDS overtakes pulmonary death Only if everything goes well and greater growth makes us more prosperous will we be more likely to die from traffic accidents in 2030. So much for a finding from the most comprehensive statistical prognosis to date on the causes of death in the coming quarter century.
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Higher Cancer Risk in Stem Cell Donor Recipients Recipients of hematopoietic stem cells are almost twice as likely as the general population to develop cancer of the skin, lungs, oral cavity or colon. If the transplant recipient was older than forty or if the donor was a woman, the probability was even higher.
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Polonium The Russian ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko was probably poisoned in Great Britain. The perpetrators didn't use a "normal" poison, but a rare, radioactive substance: polonium. Polonium (Po) is the chemical element with atomic number 84.
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Many disc surgeries superfluous? Several intervertebral disc operations are not necessary and could just as well be treated with pain or movement therapy. What many experts in this country have been propagating for a long time is now being confirmed by the results of a randomized study in the USA.
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Necessary Suffering Adult-onset diabetes comes on quietly: By the time it is diagnosed, it has usually already caused irreparable damage. The disease, which is increasingly affecting young people, can in many cases be nipped in the bud with sufficient exercise and a he althy diet.
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Delayed angioplasty no more effective than drugs If patients' blocked coronary arteries are not opened immediately with angioplasty and stents, but only after a few days, their risk of another heart attack is just as high as in people who are subsequently only treated with heart medication.
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No higher heart attack risk with "Atkins" diets The risk of developing coronary artery disease on low-carbohydrate diets like the Atkins diet is no greater than on traditional high-carbohydrate diets. This fear arose because giving up carbohydrates would result in an increased consumption of fats and proteins.
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Adult stem cells alleviate diabetes in mice Adult stem cells could possibly slow down diabetes in the future, researchers led by Darwin Prockop from Tulane University hope. They showed that stem cells from human bone marrow can stabilize affected pancreatic tissue in diabetic mice and reduce blood sugar levels in the medium term.
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Influenza vaccine success exaggerated? The financial expenditure for identifying, producing, distributing and using influenza vaccines may not make much sense, since their effect is much weaker than previously assumed and the positive consequences of this vaccination are therefore significantly lower.
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Acquittal Five nurses and a doctor face the death pen alty in Libya for allegedly having intentionally infected more than 400 children with HIV. Scientific reports proving her innocence were not recognized by the court. Tuesday is the last day of negotiations.
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Incorrectly synchronized Movements are controlled by a finely tuned interplay of nerve activity. In the case of shaking paralysis, this attunement apparently collapses and all nerves suddenly fire wildly. Parkinson's disease turns the simplest of movements into a desperate struggle:
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Thick Air Last spring, one city after the other broke the limits set by the EU - particulate matter became the number one environmental polluter. And next winter is just around the corner. On October 5, 2006 in Manila, the World He alth Organization (WHO) presented new guidelines for the global quality of breathing air.
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Radical Life and Death Radicals are always suspicious - even in normal and degenerated cells. Locking them away instead of using their radicalism could prove to be a mistake. Gray areas are everywhere, to the chagrin of simplifiers and stereotyped thinkers - and unfortunately also of all optimistic black-and-white painters in medicine and cell biology.
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Child mortality must be fought harder 10, 5 million children worldwide die before their fifth birthday each year. Most deaths could be prevented with simple means. Current analyzes show that the donor countries don't provide enough money for this and that local disease prevention is mostly inadequate.
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Painkillers endanger the cardiovascular system Some painkillers can endanger the heart and circulation. An Australian meta-study confirms the risk of the drug Vioxx, which was withdrawn from the market in 2004, but other active substances still prescribed today could also be dangerous.
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Brain activity in a coma patient after being spoken to An English research team led by Adrian Owen from the Medical Research Council in Cambridge discovered specific brain waves in a coma patient that indicate consciousness. Even with complex queries, their brain activity could not be distinguished from that of a control group.
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Progesterone affects hearing If postmenopausal women take progesterone as part of hormone replacement therapy, their hearing could deteriorate. This is the result of comparing the effects of estrogen alone with a combination of estrogen and progesterone.
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Anger worsens lung function in old age Negative emotions such as anger and hostility reduce lung function in older men more than usual with age, according to data from a long-term study of aging in the United States. Laura Kubzansky of Harvard University and her colleagues compared data from 670 men, ages 45 to 86, who reported on their emotional states in the 1986 Normative Aging Study.
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Genetically modified T-cells against skin cancer According to their own statements, US researchers have succeeded in curing skin cancer patients with genetically modified T cells. In the lab, they were able to turn normal immune cells into specialized cancer killers that eradicated even large tumors.
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The optical view of magnetic cores When doctors push their patients and chemists their samples into the tube, strong magnetic fields cause the atomic nuclei inside to dance. Knowing who rotates how reveals the structure of organs and molecules.
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Fibre: Protection from Injury? Mechanical damage to individual intestinal cells by fiber protects the intestine as a whole. At the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta, scientists found that indigestible fibers rupture cell membranes. However, this process is not harmful;
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New drug slows down Hunter's disease Elaprase, a new drug for Hunter Syndrome, has been successfully tested at the UNC School of Medicine in Chapel Hill. With it, a highly effective drug against this deadly hereditary disease could be available for the first time.
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Muscle compulsion endangers men Even men sometimes feel pressured to adapt their bodies to an ideal set by the media or their personal environment. Even science has a summer slump. More and more results then flood the media, which otherwise hardly find their way into reporting.
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Sugar for the immune system American researchers have solved one of the mysteries of the immune system: they discovered why, under certain circumstances, IgG antibodies can both trigger and weaken autoimmune diseases. In the body, these antibodies act as part of the immune response to identify and fight off invaders.
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Transgenic goat milk against diarrhea The milk from goats, which produce the human enzyme lysozyme through gene transfer, positively changes the intestinal flora of pigs. The antibacterial enzyme, also found in human breast milk, destroyed bacteria that can cause diarrhea and infections-but without harming beneficial microorganisms.
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