Advancing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) up the Tesla scale may sound good, but will it produce the results and patient safety radiologists actually desire? Faced with the question: ‘How many Tesla should it be?’, Professor Siegfried Trattnig MD, head of the Centre of Excellence in high-field MRI at the University Clinic for Radiodiagnostics, Medical University of Vienna, and Austria’s…
Detection of circulating and disseminated tumour cells in blood is a promising method to diagnose cancer dissemination, or to follow up cancer patients during therapy. Today’s methods and involve time-consuming (more than a day) sample processing and cell isolation steps -- all labour intensive and expensive. A lab-on-chip that could integrate those processing steps would enable faster,…
Small and with a life cycle of just two weeks, fruit flies are seen by many as pests and a problem all year round. However, for nearly a century, the humble insect, officially known as Drosophila melanogaster, which measures no more than 3mm, has performed a vital role in genetics and developmental biology. Fruit flies are genetically diverse and easy to use in research, helping scientists in a…
Precise regulation of tissue architecture is critical for organ function. Single cells build up a tissue by communicating with their environment and with other cells, thereby receiving instructions on whether to divide, change shape or migrate. An interdisciplinary group of researchers from several Max Planck Institutes have now identified a mechanism by which skin cells organize their interior…
MS experts, European policy-makers, professional and patients’ organisations at the European Health Forum Gastein (EHFG) today called for benchmark care provision across the EU and for governments and health services to provide improved access to specialized care for patients with multiple sclerosis. About 600 decision makers in the fields of health policy, research, science and from…
European patients are in many countries, in fact, limited in their individual choice of medically assisted reproduction (MAR) treatment, experts from the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) stressed today at the European Health Forum Gastein (EHFG). The EHFG is the most important conference on health care policy in the EU. This year it has attracted about 600…
In the light of global climate change, the relations between weather and health are of increasing interest. A drop in the average temperature outside is linked to a higher risk of people having heart attacks, according to a new study published on bmj.com today. UK researchers found that each 1°C reduction in temperature on a single day is associated with around 200 extra heart attacks.
Professor Claes-Göran Östenson, chair of the Local Organising Committee of the 46th European Association for the Study of Diabetes annual meeting, will welcome visitors in this the bicentenary year of the renowned Nobel-prize giving Karolinska Institute. Since its foundation in 1965, the EASD annual meeting has become the world’s largest international annual conference on diabetes research,…
Does diabetes further increase the risk of death in patients diagnosed with cancer? A team at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, has discovered something very sobering: Cancer patients are 51% to 85% more likely to die after surgical resection if they had pre-existing diabetes.
Researchers have identified 12 new genes associated with Type 2 diabetes (T2D) that look set to improve the understanding of the processes underpinning the condition. The findings could also offer new biological pathways that can be explored as targets for new therapies to tackle T2D.
Ten years ago, molecular biologist Dr Peter H J Riegman set up a unique bio-bank for medical research at the pathology department of Erasmus Medical Centre, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. The Erasmus MC Tissue Bank now holds 30,000 samples from about 15,000 patients. However, when Dr Riegman discusses his bio-bank with international colleagues they do not immediately associate it with a clinic or…
A study looking at breast cancer patients in England compared to those in Norway and Sweden has highlighted the importance of early detection. The three-country comparison reveals that every year almost 1,000 more lives could be saved in England alone.
Previous research has indicated that the emergency department might be well-placed to pick up patients vulnerable to suicide. However, according to a small, new study carried out by researchers at Manchester University, although people who frequently present themselves at hospital emergency departments may be at high risk of suicide, emergency care staff may fail to spot their vulnerability.
Computer stored data from German health insurers are still inadequate for health services research, according to a study* led by Prof. Wolfgang Greiner, Head of the Healthcare Management department at Bielefeld University, working with his research team in cooperation with the health insurance fund Techniker Krankenkasse.
Initiated in 1999, the Heinz Nixdorf Recall Study involved 4,814 European participants. The results proved, for the first time, the connection between coronary calcifications and the risk of heart attack, according to scientists at the University Hospital in Essen. The finding by no means exhausted the potential inherent in the surveys. Subsidised until 2013, researchers are examining coronary…
A team led by UK-based researchers has found that having diabetes doubles the risk of developing a wide range of blood vessel diseases, including heart attacks and different types of stroke. The consortium, headed by Dr Nadeem Sarwar and Professor John Danesh of the University of Cambridge, analysed data from the individual records on 700,000 people, each of whom was monitored for about a decade…
Trials for a new type of treatment for stroke that could help millions of people at risk of death or disability should commence in 2011. A research team in France has successfully completed laboratory tests of antibodies that protect the brain and reduce the side-effects of current therapy.
When we look at our hands, how do we know they are part of our body? This seems like a strange question because it is something most of us take for granted. Exciting new data from a research group at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden show that the brain uses a combination of sensory signals from our eyes and limbs to achieve a sense of ‘body ownership’.
The 3-year Translational Research On Combating Antimicrobial Resistance (TROCAR) project, a consortium of 14 European institutes, has completed its first year of molecular study of high-risk antibiotic-resistant bacteria. With expertise ranging from medical microbiology to computational analysis, this network of excellence is on track to identify and target the resistant and multi-resistant…
An increase in survival in metastatic melanoma – the cancer with the most rapidly increasing incidence across the EU – has been shown for the first time in a major international study by researchers from across Europe. The results showed that patients who received a novel monoclonal antibody called ipilimumab lived 34% longer than control patients given gp100 peptide vaccine.
A multiple sclerosis risk sharing scheme, set up by the Department of Health (DoH) in 2002 to ensure that disease-modifying drugs were available on the National Health Service (NHS), has been deemed ‘a costly failure’, according to researchers reporting on www.bmj.com in June. The scheme, they advise, should not be continued.
A new method to produce insulin cheaply has been developed by researchers at the Helmholtz-Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig, in a German-Indo collaboration. The group’s results are published in the open access online research magazine Microbial Cell Factories. The data is freely accessible by anyone and is not subject to patent law.
Type 2 diabetics run an elevated risk of developing cancer, according to the world’s largest study on the combined risk of diabetes and cancer, conducted by scientists at the German Cancer Research Centre (DKFZ). The study focused on 24 types of cancer. The effect is most evident for liver cancer and pancreatic cancer. However, by contrast, diabetics have a significantly lower rate of prostate…
SECARS microscopy, a procedure which is based on quantum effects, with which certain molecules can be monitored virtually in real time, turns out to be a highly sensitive tool for the non-invasive research of the most varied diseases and may supplement the medical diagnosis tools of CT and MRI in the future.
Segmental liver resections and ablative therapies require accurate and precise tumour localization. Because the peritoneal cavity is subject to deformations caused by respiration and topological changes in the surgical site during an intervention, the transfer of MRT and CT tumour data into an intra-operative setting remains a technical challenge.