November 15th, 2011 by RyanDuBosar in Research
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Researchers found that while the vast majority of smokers want to stop, the vast majority who wanted to got little support from their health care providers. Not that they’d approached their provider, either.
68.8% of current cigarette smokers said they would like to completely stop smoking, and 52.4% had tried to quit smoking in the past year. However, 68.3% of the smokers who tried to quit did so without using evidence-based cessation counseling or medications, and only 48.3% of those who had visited a health-care provider in the past year reported receiving advice to quit smoking.
Little overall change has been observed in these measures in the past decade. However, Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
November 14th, 2011 by RyanDuBosar in News
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A 47-year-old Chicago man died after trying to remove his own pacemaker. He’s not the first to try self-surgery, as it turns out.
The Chicago Tribune described this most recent attempt at self-surgery:
“Chicago Fire Department paramedics were called after the man told a worker in the home that he was experiencing chest pains and asked them to call an ambulance.
“The man returned to his room, where he remained until paramedics arrived, police said. When they did, he complained to them about chest pains and was taken to the ambulance where he fell unconscious, police said.
“As paramedics were trying to revive him, they discovered Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
November 9th, 2011 by RyanDuBosar in Research
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Fear of the “freshman 15” weight gain is overrated, says one researcher who found that the average college student packs on only between about 2.5 and 3.5 pounds.
And it might not even be the college lifestyle that causes one’s backpack to become a little more snug. Rather, it’s part of the natural transition into adulthood. The typical freshman only gains about a half-pound more than a same-age person who didn’t go to college.
“Not only is there not a ‘freshman 15,’ there doesn’t appear to be even a ‘college 15’ for most students,” researchers said in a press release.
The researchers concluded that the myth of the freshman 15 may contribute to Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
November 7th, 2011 by RyanDuBosar in Research
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Human brains have a consistent molecular architecture despite all the other genetic differences across individuals and ethnicities, according to two studies that recorded when and where genes turn on and off in multiple brain regions throughout life.
Despite individual and ethnic genetic diversity, the human prefrontal cortex shows a consistent molecular architecture, as shown in this picture. The vertical span of color-coded areas is about the same, indicating that our brains all share the same tissue at a molecular level, despite distinct DNA differences on the horizontal axis. Each dot represents a comparison between two individuals.
The research appeared in the Journal Nature and was described by the National Institutes of Health in a press release.
The first study focused on Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
November 3rd, 2011 by RyanDuBosar in Research
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Investigators identified a specific, previously obscure human gene associated with susceptibility to herpes simplex labialis (HSL), the common cold sore.
Cold sores affect 70% of the U.S. population. This study follows previous ones identifying a region of chromosome 21 as a base for genes possibly linked to cold sore outbreaks.
To narrow in further on the chromosome, this study used Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
