All Stories by Damaris Christensen
- Health & Medicine
Shocking findings
Implanted defibrillators reduce the occurrence of sudden death by about a third among people who had previous heart attacks and continue to suffer impaired heart function.
- Health & Medicine
Mammograms on Trial
New controversy about old data has physicians, women, and policy analysts struggling to decide whether all women should be screened with mammography in order to reduce deaths due to breast cancer.
- Health & Medicine
Two steps forward, one step back
Just a few days after the National Institutes of Health announced it was canceling a large AIDS-vaccine trial, researchers reported preliminary results from a new vaccine that appears safe.
- Health & Medicine
New drugs help battle HIV
Three potential drugs in development rely on novel tactics for attacking the virus that causes AIDS.
- Health & Medicine
Genes predict allergies to drug
Genetic differences among people infected with HIV might help identify the 5 percent of patients who will suffer allergic reactions when given the antiretroviral drug abacavir.
- Health & Medicine
Is HAART hard on the heart?
Two studies came to opposite conclusions on whether multiple-drug regimens known as highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) for people with AIDS also contribute to heart trouble.
- Health & Medicine
Tracking Tumors
Researchers are trying to visualize molecular and cellular changes as a cancer responds to therapy in order to predict whether treatments are effective sooner than it's currently possible to determine.
- Health & Medicine
Compound mimics calorie restriction
A new compound, part of a family of proteins that regulate fat transport, lowers the risk of developing heart disease and diabetes in monkeys.
- Health & Medicine
A new way to lower cholesterol
New agents lower cholesterol in a slightly different way than do statins, the most widely used cholesterol-lowering drugs.
- Health & Medicine
The Persistent Problem of Cystic Fibrosis
Ten years after the discovery of the gene that, when mutated, causes cystic fibrosis, researchers are still struggling to understand why deadly lung infections are so common among people with the disease.
- Health & Medicine
Sometimes lying down is harder work
Squatting or standing might ease baby delivery by allowing the birth canal more room to expand.
- Health & Medicine
Ultrasound boosts drug delivery to tumors
A beam of ultrasound can make the blood vessels that infiltrate cancerous growths leakier than normal.
