Health and Medicine

Whether 240 miles above in the International Space Station or firmly grounded on Earth, medical testing without needles wins everyone’s vote.

Refinements under way to current near infrared (NIR) spectroscopic techniques will expand the range of non-invasive blood and tissue chemistry measurements. These changes also will provide accurate readings unaffected by skin color or body fat.

“Once complete, this device will allow chemical analysis and diagnosis without removing samples f

Lasker recipient James E. Darnell contends drug developers should focus more on ’transcription factor’ proteins

Researchers may be looking for novel cancer drugs in the wrong places, says Rockefeller University Professor James E. Darnell, Jr., M.D., in an article in this month’s Nature Reviews Cancer.

Darnell, who received the 2002 Albert Lasker Award for Special Achievement in Medical Science, argues that drug development research should focus more on a speci

Chinese herbal medicine combined with standard therapy may be more effective than standard therapy alone for treatment of chronic hepatitis B, according to an analysis of randomized, controlled trials led by University of California, Berkeley, researchers.

Researchers analyzed 27 clinical trials in which chronic hepatitis B patients using Chinese herbal medicine alone, or with interferon alfa, were compared with a control group of patients that were taking only interferon alfa. The protein

‘Chronic pain causes permanent alterations in the human primary somatosensory (SI) and motor (M1) cortices,’ says docent Nina Forss. ‘These alterations can be used as objective indicators of pain that shapes the human brain,’ she continues. Nina Forss works at the Helsinki University of Technology Low Temperature Laboratory: the laboratory’s Brain Research Unit was appointed a Centre of Excellence in Research in 1995.

Each body part has its representation area in the somatosensory cortex

Regular use of inhaled steroids cuts hospital admissions for severe asthma by almost a third, reveals research in Thorax.

Most previous research has looked at the short-term effects of inhalers to prevent asthma attacks, but this Canadian study analysed data for asthma patients over a period of 22 years.

The study included all asthma patients aged 5 to 44 years of age between 1975 and 1991, who were part of the health insurance scheme provided for all residents in the province of Sa

New research shows that a synthetic antioxidant can reduce brain damage by more than 40 percent in an animal model of stroke when given seven and a half hours after the stroke begins. Researchers at National Jewish Medical and Research Center and Duke University Medical Center will report their findings in the October issue of the journal Free Radical Biology and Medicine.

“Because the onset of a stroke can be difficult to detect, many patients do not get treatment for several hours,” said