Health and Medicine

The use of hip protectors in nursing homes can reduce hip fractures by about 40%, yet acceptance of hip protectors is poor, according to a study in this week’s BMJ.
Researchers in Germany identified 42 nursing homes in Hamburg. Homes were allocated either to usual care (control group) or an intervention programme consisting of structured education of staff, who then taught residents, and provision of free hip protectors (intervention group).

Over a period of 14 months, there were 21 hip

Discovery could explain why light keeps us awake and may lead to new treatments for disorders such as jet-lag and SAD.

Researchers from Imperial College London, Johns Hopkins University, USA and Brown University, USA have discovered that melanopsin, a recently identified protein, plays a key role in a completely new light detection system in the eye.

Professor Russell Foster, from Imperial College London at the Charing Cross Hospital comments: “It had long been assumed that

Further underscoring the limitations of cholesterol screening in assessing a patient’s risk for heart disease, a new study by UC Davis physicians is the first to conclusively link C-reactive proteins (CRP) to formation of blood clots, a major cause of heart attacks, strokes and other vascular disease. Until now, CRP had been recognized mainly as a risk marker of heart disease. The study appears in the Jan. 25 print edition of the journal Circulation, a publication of the American Heart Association,

In an unusual disease known as Bloom syndrome, patients exhibit an extremely high incidence of cancers in many tissues. In fact, some experts consider Bloom syndrome to be among the most cancer-prone hereditary diseases known.

Although the illness is rare, it fascinates scientists since it can teach them more about how cancers arise and how the body normally suppresses them. Information gleaned from studies of the syndrome should provide insights into other forms of cancer, they say.

Incidents of heart attack and stroke, some fatal, in a small number of men taking the drug Viagra have remained a puzzle. After all, Viagra, commonly prescribed for erectile dysfunction, was originally developed to prevent these conditions — not only by dilating blood vessels but also by stopping platelets in the blood from clumping.

In fact, the drug does just the opposite, according to researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine. They found that Viagra, by el

A potent clot-busting substance originally extracted from the saliva of vampire bats may be used up to three times longer than the current stroke treatment window – without increasing the risk for additional brain damage, according to research reported in today’s rapid access issue of Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association.

The vampire bat saliva-derived clot buster is called Desmodus rotundus salivary plasminogen activator (DSPA) or desmoteplase. DSPA targets and destroys fi