July 2008 - For patients receiving kidney transplants, treatment with cholesterol-lowering "statin" drugs may lead to longer survival, reports a study in the November 2008 Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN).

July 2008 - Drinking more sugar-sweetened beverages or eating fewer fruits and vegetables both may be associated with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes, whereas eating a low-fat diet does not appear to be associated with any change in diabetes risk, according to three reports in the July 28 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

July 2008 - Every aging baby boomer listens for the footsteps of Alzheimer's, and for good reason: It's estimated that 10 million American boomers will develop the disease. The need to develop preventative strategies, ideally long before Alzheimer's destructive, clinical symptoms appear, is critical.

July 2008 - One of the reasons people on low-carbohydrate diets may lose weight is that they reduce their intake of fructose, a type of sugar that can be made into body fat quickly, according to a researcher at UT Southwestern Medical Center.

Dr. Elizabeth Parks, associate professor of clinical nutrition and lead author of a study appearing in a current issue of the Journal of Nutrition, said her team's findings suggest that the right type of carbohydrates a person eats may be just as important in weight control as the number of calories a person eats.

July 2008 - The age of your neighborhood may influence your risk of obesity, according to a new study from the University of Utah.

The study, to be published in the September issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, linked the body mass index (BMI) of nearly a half million Salt Lake County residents to 2000 Census data. The study found that residents were at less risk of being obese or overweight if they lived in walkable neighborhoods�those that are more densely populated, designed to be more friendly to pedestrians and have a range of destinations for pedestrians.

July 2008 - For the first time, a consensus of diabetes and metabolic disorder experts have recommended a comprehensive treatment regimen for patients with pre-diabetes. The recommendations call for specific guidelines on both lifestyle, and pharmaceutical intervention where appropriate. The recommendations are made in a Consensus Statement released this morning by the American College of Endocrinology (ACE) and the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists (AACE).

July 2008 - A medication called cinacalcet, an important part of treatment to control high levels of parathyroid hormone (PTH) in patients receiving dialysis for end-stage renal disease (ESRD), works by resetting the balance between calcium and PTH levels, according to a study in the November Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN).

July 2008 - In a study using laboratory animals, researchers found that medications commonly prescribed for erectile dysfunction opened a mechanism called the blood-brain tumor barrier and increased delivery of cancer-fighting drugs to malignant brain tumors.

The experiments were conducted at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center's Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute and published in Brain Research.

July 2008 - Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and three collaborating institutions are using a new laboratory model of the membrane surrounding neurons in the brain to study how a protein long suspected of a role in early-stage Alzheimer's disease actually impairs a neuron's structure and function. The team's findings are reported in a new paper in the Biophysical Journal.*

July 2008 - People at high risk for dementia who took cholesterol-lowering statins are half as likely to develop dementia as those who do not take statins, a new study shows.

July 2008 - A recent study shows that popular fish oil supplements have an effect on the healing process of small, acute wounds in human skin. But whether that effect is detrimental, as researchers initially suspected, remains a mystery.

The omega-3 fatty acids found in fish oils are widely considered to benefit cardiovascular health and other diseases related to chronic inflammation because of their anti-inflammatory properties. But insufficient inflammation during the initial stage of wound healing may delay the advancement of later stages.

July 2008 - A new therapy developed at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center improves transplant rates and outcomes for patients awaiting living- and deceased-donor kidney transplantation, according to a study published in the July 17 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

The therapy may provide an option for many patients "sensitized" to transplant antigens (human leukocyte antigens, or HLA) who previously would not have been candidates for transplantation because of their intense immune response to these HLA targets.

Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have identified two new techniques to detect the progression of Alzheimer's disease earlier. By catching Alzheimer's disease before symptoms are apparent, physicians can prescribe treatments to slow down the disease progression. In one study, researchers identified abnormal structural changes in the brains of seemingly normal elderly that indicated mild cognitive impairment, a precursor to Alzheimer's disease.

Medical errors drive hospital costs up and while many seek ways to reduce these mistakes, not all fully understand their financial effects.

A new review suggests that current statistics on medical mistakes might not be comprehensive because they do not factor in all inpatient costs or include readmissions and patient care for the 90 days following surgery.