Doc Blog

Women with low levels of sexual desire, often as a result of menopause, are more likely to be depressed and to suffer physical symptoms such as back pain and memory problems than women who report higher levels of desire, according to a new study by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill [...]

Physicians say they are counseling their overweight type 2 diabetes patients to lose weight, but patients say that the message is not getting through, according to a new survey announced today by the Behavioral Diabetes Institute. Eight in 10 physicians surveyed said that they discuss weight issues with their patients every/almost every visit, yet half [...]

Doctors are not doing enough to pick up on problems with excessive weight loss, says a Saint Louis University physician who helped draft recent guidelines to diagnose the condition called “cachexia” (kuh-kex-ee-uh). “In sick people, weight loss is an important indicator of disease and potentially impending death,” said John Morley, M.D., an endocrinologist and director [...]

Giving pregnant mothers magnesium sulphate when they are at risk of very preterm birth can help protect their babies from cerebral palsy, according to an international review of research involving the University of Adelaide, Australia. The findings of this review - published today on the international research website The Cochrane Library - could help decrease [...]

Studies at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine on brain electrical signaling offer a fresh perspective on vertebrate evolution, provide additional evidence supporting Darwinian views of evolution, and may also lead to more effective treatment of epileptic seizures in infants. Researchers discovered how evolutionary changes produced a series of improvements in molecules generating electrical [...]

The Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (CeMM) announces the discovery of a new molecular sensor in human cells capable of recognizing infecting viruses and transmitting an alarm signal to the body. The study, directed by the center’s director Giulio Superti-Furga, appears today in the online advanced publication route of the [...]

After identifying an apparent population of cancer stem cells for neuroblastoma, researchers successfully used a reprogrammed herpes virus to block tumor formation in mice by targeting and killing the cells. Published online Jan. 21 by PLoS (Public Library of Science) One, the study led by Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center adds to a growing body [...]

A new study from Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry has found that a common treatment for wheezing in preschool children is no more effective than a placebo. The findings, reported in the January edition of The New England Journal of Medicine, call into question national guidelines for the treatment of viral-induced [...]

Measuring a child’s kidney function has traditionally been time-consuming, costly, and difficult to perform, but a new equation that uses parameters collected at routine office visits can effectively accomplish this, according to a study appearing in the March 2009 issue of the Journal of the American Society Nephrology ( JASN ). The formula could prove [...]

Migraine headaches can precede the onset of mental disorders, according to a growing body of knowledge that includes a new study in the January-February 2009 issue of General Hospital Psychiatry. “Together, migraine and mental disorders cause more impairment than alone,” said lead study author Gregory Ratcliffe. “Patients who have one condition should be assessed for [...]