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Studies about medications published in the most influential medical journals are frequently designed in a way that yields misleading or confusing results, new research suggests. Investigators from the medical schools at UCLA and Harvard analyzed all the randomized medication trials published in the six highest-impact general medicine journals between June 1, 2008, and Sept.

Commercially available serological tests fail to accurately diagnose active tuberculosis (TB) and they are not as cost effective as other recommended TB tests, according to two papers published Aug. 9 in the Public Library of Science (PLoS) Medicine. The researchers note that these tests often provide misleading results that may harm patients.

A team from the Cicely Saunders Institute at King's College London, partnered with South West Public Health Observatory and Whole Systems Partnership, has made a major contribution to the Palliative Care Funding Review for England, published today (1 July). The review has recommended to Government the introduction of the first ever per-patient funding structure for palliative care in England which could save the NHS up to £180 million a year.

Women refugees are not being processed fairly according to a University of Melbourne led study. The study suggests Australia can do better in how it processes women refugees applying for asylum. Researchers say gender-based persecution issues such as rape, trafficking, female genital mutilation, denial of education, domestic abuse and imprisonment need to be taken into account in the processing of women refugees.

A major study reveals for the first time the number of children being brought up by a relative instead of their mother or father. 'Spotlight on Kinship Care' is the first study to quantify the number of children being looked after by family members in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and is based on data from the 2001 Census.

PA 184/11 Offering Multiple Sclerosis sufferers emotional support through group therapy sessions could improve their quality of life and save the NHS almost £500 per patient, a study at The University of Nottingham has discovered. Researchers are now planning a larger multi-centre study into the issue to establish whether psychological therapy should be incorporated into the MS services currently provided by the NHS.

An experiment has demonstrated the role played by micro-organisms in the degradation - without oxygen - of a very common pollutant: vinyl chloride. The traces of human industrial activity persist deep inside the ground. And sometimes for a long time! In Switzerland alone, the Federal Office for the Environment records no less than 50,000 polluted sites, including 4000 that have been declared "contaminated" and require clean-up operations.

A cell therapy that could prevent transplanted organs being rejected, and remove the need for prolonged use of immunosuppressant drugs, has shown promise in early-stage studies in mice. The approach would involve transplant patients being re-injected with their own immune cells after the cells have been isolated from a blood sample.

AUSTIN, Texas — Drinking alcohol primes certain areas of our brain to learn and remember better, says a new study from the Waggoner Center for Alcohol and Addiction Research at The University of Texas at Austin. The common view that drinking is bad for learning and memory isn't wrong, says neurobiologist Hitoshi Morikawa , but it highlights only one side of what ethanol consumption does to the brain.

[NEWS, 7 April 2011] Patients treated in childhood for tumours of the central nervous system (CNS) have persistent and unmet health care needs even in adulthood, according to a comprehensive study from Karolinska Institutet which investigated an entire cohort of patients in Sweden. The findings are presented in an upcoming issue of the American scientific journal Cancer.

Nurses are the front-line caregivers to hospital patients, coordinating and providing direct care and delivering it safely and reliably. The goal for any hospital is to ensure that each of its patient-care units has an adequate number of nurses during every shift. Ideally, the proper number of hours nurses work — known as the "target level" — should be adjusted each shift, depending on the ebb and flow of patients and their need for care.

A new study from Utrecht and Cambridge Universities has for the first time found that an administration of testosterone under the tongue in volunteers negatively affects a person's ability to 'mind read', an indication of empathy. In addition, the effects of testosterone administration are predicted by a fetal marker of prenatal testosterone, the 2D:4D ratio.

University Park, Pa. The real estate department at the Penn State Smeal College of Business is ranked seventh in the world in research productivity and a Smeal faculty member ranks sixth, according to an academic study forthcoming in The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics. Jang C. Jin of the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Eden S. H.

BERKELEY — Graphene, a sheet of pure carbon heralded as a possible replacement for silicon-based semiconductors, has been found to have a unique and amazing property that could make it even more suitable for future electronic devices. Physicists at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) have found that when graphene is stretched in a specific way it sprouts nanobubbles in which electrons behave in a bizarre way, as if they are moving in a strong magnetic field.

Competition among hospitals saves patients? lives and decreases their overall length of stay in hospital, according to a new study involving researchers from the University of Bristol, who found there was no corresponding increase in overall expenditure. English NHS hospitals located in areas where patients have more choice had lower death rates and shorter patient stays than hospitals in less competitive areas.

AUSTIN, Texas — White women are becoming more optimistic about menopause, with many seeing it as an opportunity to rethink their lives and redefine themselves, a new University of Texas at Austin national study shows. This is just one of the positive changes in the way women across different ethnic groups are experiencing the change of life, the School of Nursing research found.

Breakthrough Study Offers a Promising New Way for Women to Avoid Infection with HIV/AIDS Large-scale study shows that use of an anti-viral gel before and after sex greatly reduces the risk of HIV infection and infection with herpes virus Preventing the transmission of HIV/AIDS has been an elusive goal for researchers.

By Karen Shea A new study of breast cancer patients at the Moores UCSD Cancer Center and the Arizona Oncology Services shows that after almost two years, the radiation given with the Strut-Adjusted Volume Implant (SAVI ; ) controls the rate of cancer and may reduce the complications seen with alternate types of brachytherapy.

Cambridge, MA - When a star explodes as a supernova, it shines so brightly that it can be seen from millions of light-years away. One particular supernova variety - Type Ia - brightens and dims so predictably that astronomers use them to measure the universe's expansion. The resulting discovery of dark energy and the accelerating universe rewrote our understanding of the cosmos.

Researchers say higher than expected mortality rates may be linked to a decrease in the availability of senior hospital staff at the weekend - News Release For Immediate Release Friday 11 June 2010 People admitted to English hospitals in an emergency at the weekend have, on average, a seven percent higher mortality rate than people admitted between Monday and Friday, according to research published in the journal Quality & Safety in Health Care this week.