news 2012

In older adults, antipsychotic drugs are commonly prescribed off-label for a number of disorders outside of their Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved indications - schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The largest number of antipsychotic prescriptions in older adults is for behavioral disturbances associated with dementia, some of which carry FDA warnings on prescription information for these drugs.

Several drugs companies have ineffectively tried to produce antibodies that bind to the IGF-1 receptor on the cell surface, which has a critical part to play in the development of cancer. Scientists at Karolinska Institutet have now ascertained how these antibodies work, and can explain why only some cancer patients are helped by IGF-1 blockers during clinical tests.

The charity Arthritis Research UK today launches the world's first research centre dedicated to understanding how and why arthritis affects teenagers. Researchers at the £2.5 million Centre, which is a collaboration between UCL, University College Hospital and Great Ormond Street Hospital, aim to understand why rheumatic diseases such as juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) or juvenile systemic lupus erythematosus (JSLE) can be more severe in teenagers and why specific types of arthritis are more likely to occur in this age group.

New MRI technique could help doctors track how patients respond to treatment. A new imaging technique developed at MIT offers the first glimpse of the degeneration of two brain structures affected by Parkinson's disease. The technique, which combines several types of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), could allow doctors to better monitor patients' progression and track the effectiveness of potential new treatments, says Suzanne Corkin, MIT professor emerita of neuroscience and leader of the research team.

Researchers at the University of Liverpool have developed a computer-based test that could help heavy drinkers reduce their alcohol consumption. Regular heavy drinking can lead to serious health conditions such as liver and heart disease, costing the NHS millions of pounds every year. Methods of restraint Research at Liverpool has shown that the habit of consuming alcohol can be interrupted when people practice methods of restraint whenever they see images of alcoholic drinks.

New research suggests that the molecular mechanism leading to schizophrenia may be different in patients who fail to respond to anti-psychotic medication compared to patients who do respond. The research, from King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry may help explain why up to one third of patients with schizophrenia do not respond to traditional anti-psychotic medication.

A research team from Plymouth University Peninsula Schools of Medicine and Dentistry has received grants amounting to over £400,000 from the Medical Research Council and Cancer Research UK to investigate why the mechanisms that suppress the growth and multiplication of tumours in the brain and nervous system do not work in some people, and to show how a new drug could be used as an alternative treatment to surgery.

Stroke patients who have difficulty paying attention to part of their visual field may perform better when offered a reward, a study by Imperial College London and Brunel University researchers has found. Between a third and half of stroke patients suffer from spatial neglect - a disorder of visual attention that means they do not notice objects on one side of their field of view.

A pioneering study that aims to investigate if a key protein, which is thought to be responsible for regulating the structure and function of the cells that cause contraction of the heart, can be manipulated to inhibit or reverse the effects of aging and heart failure will begin shortly thanks to funding of £875,000 from the British Heart Foundation (BHF) .

Researchers from The University of Manchester and Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) say their findings - published in the British Journal of Dermatology - could be of benefit to patients with skin conditions like eczema. The team tested whether visual cues could generate feelings of itch and provoke a scratch response.

Scientists at the University of Warwick and consumer goods manufacturer Unilever are joining forces to identify whether the nutrients in everyday fruit and vegetables could help to improve people's cardiovascular health and protect them from Type-2 diabetes. The research collaboration has been set up to better understand if the nutrients and bioactives in fruits like grapes, strawberries and olives - in the right combination - could have a greater impact on people's heart and vascular health.

A team of researchers at McGill University have discovered a molecular basis for the potential cancer preventive effects of vitamin D. The team, led by McGill professors John White and David Goltzman, of the Faculty of Medicine's Department of Physiology, discovered that the active form of vitamin D acts by several mechanisms to inhibit both the production and function of the protein cMYC.

Scientists may have discovered a new way to prevent strokes in high risk patients, according to a new research. The group, from the University of Warwick and University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire (UHCW), is using ultrasound scanning to look at patients with carotid artery disease, one of the major causes of stroke.

Criminal behaviour in people with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) dropped sharply during periods when they were on medication, according to a new extensive registry study conducted at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. The study that contained of over 25,000 individuals is published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).

Criminal behaviour is lower in people with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) when they are on medication for the condition, a Swedish study has found. Oxford University psychiatrist and Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow Seena Fazel, a coauthor on the study, says: 'Our findings suggest a consistent, reasonably strong effect on criminality.

Physical activity rather than food has the biggest impact on children's weight according to new data from the Lifestyle of our Kids (LOOK) longitudinal study. Lead researcher Richard Telford from the ANU College of Medicine, Biology and Environment and the Clinical Trials Unit at The Canberra Hospital said the new aspect of the LOOK study provides some of the strongest evidence to date in the important debate around how best to tackle childhood obesity.

We know that unborn babies hiccup, swallow and stretch in the womb but new observational research concludes that they also yawn. The 4D scans of 15 healthy fetuses, by Durham and Lancaster Universities, also suggest that yawning is a developmental process which could potentially give doctors another index of a fetus' health.

New drugs derived from components of a specific diet used by children with severe, drug-resistant epilepsy could offer a new treatment, according to research published today in the journal Neuropharmacology. Scientists from UCL and Royal Holloway have identified specific fatty acids that have potent antiepileptic effects, which could help control seizures in children and adults.

Animals, including humans, actively select the gut microbes that are the best partners and nurture them with nutritious secretions, a new Oxford University study suggests. The Oxford team created an evolutionary computer model of interactions between gut microbes and the lining (the host epithelial cell layer) of the animal gut.

Older people who embrace positive stereotypes about aging are more likely than those who hold negative stereotypes to recover after suffering from disability, a new study by the Yale School of Public Health has found. The study appears in The Journal of the American Medical Association. Lead researcher Becca R. Levy and Yale colleagues showed that, of two groups with differing views of aging, the individuals in the positive age stereotype group were 44 percent more likely to recover from a severe disability.