Clinical Research

Out of the estimated 1 million people in the U.S. who suffer from chronic, severe angina -- chest pain due to blocked arteries -- about 300,000 cannot be helped by any traditional medical treatment such as angioplasty, bypass surgery or stents.

Recently, a nationwide study demonstrated that transplanting a potent form of adult stem cells into the heart muscle of patients with severe angina results in less pain and an improved ability to walk. The transplant patients also experienced fewer deaths than those who didn't receive stem cells. The findings of the study were presented at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions 2009.

Despite widespread educational efforts aimed at helping the public make healthy choices, it's understood among experts that people often fail to comply with the advice offered by their doctors and others in the health community.

To correct this deficiency in compliance, some researchers are now proposing that text messaging be used to send out health tips to consumers. Given it's popularity and low expense, they say,  regular text messaging may be just the thing to prompt people to make behavioral changes for the sake of health

People associate all kinds of physical features with good health; a slim waistline, full head of hair, and chiseled abs are all typical examples. Now researchers are suggesting that another feature may tell an awful lot about a person's health--their skin color.

With the publication of a new study in the International Journal of Primatology, a team of scientists say that the color of a person's skin affects how healthy and therefore attractive they appear, and have found that diet may be crucial to achieving the most desirable complexion.

Contrary to conservative wisdom, exercising up to the end of pregnancy has no harmful effect on the health of the mother or child, and may even be beneficial for both, indicates a study published in the International Journal of Obesity.

160 healthy women between the ages of 25 and 35 took part in the study, all of whom had sedentary habits and no risk of premature birth. Of this group of women, half followed an exercise regime under the supervision of experts in Physical Activity and Sports Science in collaboration with the Gynaecology and Obstetrics Unit of Hospital Severo Ochoa in Madrid.

A team of researchers said this week that they may have identified the genes responsible for bipolar disorder in children. Their study, published in BMC Psychiatry, implicates malfunctioning circadian clock genes, four alterations of the RORB gene to be specific, in the development of the disorder.

Scientists studied the RORA and RORB genes of 152 children with Bipolar and 140 control children. They found four alterations to the RORB gene that were positively associated with being bipolar. "Our findings suggest that clock genes in general and RORB in particular may be important candidates for further investigation in the search for the molecular basis of bipolar disorder," explained co-author Alexander Niculescu.

Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) had been used to treat menopausal estrogen deficiency  for decades but the 2002 publication of a major study, the Women's Health Initiative (WHI), indicated increased risk for certain outcomes in older women, without increasing longevity.

This sparked debate regarding potential benefits and harm of HRT.

A new article published in The American Journal of Medicine conducted a meta-analysis of the available data using Bayesian methods and concluded that HRT almost certainly decreases mortality in younger postmenopausal women. 

Exercise makes cigarettes less attractive, says a new study from the University of Exeter.

Exercise can lessen the power of cigarettes and smoking-related images to grab the attention of smokers, the authors write in the journal Addiction.   They did a study involving 20 moderately heavy smokers who had abstained from cigarettes for 15 hours before the trial. During two visits to the laboratory participants began by being shown smoking-related and neutral images, and then spent either 15 minutes sitting or exercising on a stationary bike at a moderate intensity. Afterwards, they were again shown the images. 

The Skeptic Zone is an Australian skeptical podcast. It is generally entertaining and usually concludes with a segment of drinking and conversation in the pub. They are the only podcast I know that specifically accepts donations to pay for rounds of drinks.

There are myriad reasons why pharmaceutical treatments are ineffective in certain people, but the first suspect is typically not the patient him- or herself.

An article published in the November 1 issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine suggests that difficult-to-treat asthma often may have more to do with patients who do not take their medication as instructed than ineffective medication.

"[A] significant proportion of patients with difficult asthma are poorly adherent to inhaled and oral corticosteroid therapy," said PI Dr. Liam Heaney.

Last week, the ingenious NCBI ROFL posted the following abstract from 2000:

'Blue balls' is a widely used colloquialism describing scrotal pain after high, sustained sexual arousal unrelieved because of lack of orgasm and ejaculation.