Studies and Analyses

Consumers are bombarded with choices. Consider a trip to the pharmacy for razors or toilet tissue. Should you buy the 5-pack, the 10-pack, or the 15-pack? Generic versus name brand? What about the two-for-one option? Wait, what about the old reliable?!
Ultimately, these choices are informed by past experience as well as whether we’re thinking about the purchase when we’re in the store says a study published in the December 2004 issue of the Journal of Consumer Research.

The

Results from a new study show that lifetime lead exposure may increase the risk of developing cataracts. Researchers found that men with high levels of lead in the tibia, the larger of the two leg bones below the knee, had a 2.5-fold increased risk for cataract, the leading cause of blindness and visual impairment.

“These results suggest that reducing exposure of the public to lead and lead compounds could lead to a significant decrease in the overall incidence of cataract,” said

UCSF scientists have found that the brains of rats can be trained to learn an alternate way of processing changes in the loudness of sound. The discovery, they say, has potential for the treatment of hearing loss, autism, and other sensory disabilities in humans. It also gives clues, they say, about the process of learning and the way we perceive the world.

“We addressed a very fundamental question,” says Daniel B. Polley, PhD, lead author of the study. “When we notice a sound

For the first time scientists have demonstrated a model that may explain how alcohol stimulates tumor growth. Their study, published in the January 15, 2005 issue of CANCER,says alcohol fuels the production of a growth factor that stimulates blood vessel development in tumors, and that chronic ethanol increased tumor size and levels of the angiogenic factor and levels of the angiogenic factor and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in an experimental model.

For almost a hun

Research from 19 European countries in this week’s issue of THE LANCET documents how childhood cancer, while still rare, has been slowly increasing over the past 3 decades.

Cancer is rare before age 20 years. Eva Steliarova-Foucher (International Agency for Research on Cancer, Lyon, France) and colleagues used the large European database of childhood and adolescent cancer cases to estimate patterns and trends of incidence and survival within Europe.

The investigators

Levodopa is the most powerful drug available to treat the symptoms of Parkinson disease, and almost all patients with the disease will eventually need to take it. But there has long been controversy about when it should be started, in part because of concern that the medicine itself might cause further damage to the brain cells that are impaired in this disease. To resolve the controversy, a Columbia University scientist led a team of experts from the Parkinson Study Group to study levodopa’s