Kidney Disease Missed in Women

Women are at particular risk of missed diagnosis of chronic kidney disease (CKD).
To measure kidney function, primary care doctors typically order a blood test called creatinine, but Dr. Maya Rao, M.D., of Columbia University, was quoted as saying that this alone is not a particularly accurate measure of kidney function. The serum creatinine should also be plugged into a formula that gives an estimated kidney filtration rate, called glomerular filtration rate, or eGFR, which is a much more accurate estimate of kidney function.

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Stem cells: the first human trial

People suffering from a form of incurable blindness could soon become the first patients in the world to benefit from a new and controversial transplant operation using stem cells derived from spare human embryos left over from IVF treatment.

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Brain's Ability to Reorganize Demonstrated

When people go blind, they lose one of the most important senses an individual can have. Single-handedly, sight accounts for the usage of massive amounts of processing power inside the brain. When the sense vanishes, the brain is left with a lot of “computing hours” to spare, and scientists at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) have recently shown that the cortex is able to reorganize itself, by heightening other senses, e! Science News reports.

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IBM researchers predict simulation of human brain by supercomputer in ten years

Researchers at IBM working on a project to simulate the internal wiring of the human brain have announced that the current simulation has surpassed the level of a cat's cortex, and now contains the equivalent of one billion neurons and ten trillion synapses.

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Cigarettes are widely contaminated with bacteria, reveals study

Cigarettes are "widely contaminated" with bacteria, including some known to cause disease in people, concludes a new international study conducted by a University of Maryland environmental health researcher and microbial ecologists at the Ecole Centrale de Lyon in France.

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Mutant genes 'key to long life

There is a clear link between living to 100 and inheriting a hyperactive version of an enzyme that prevents cells from ageing, researchers say.

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Drug therapy more cost-effective than angioplasty for diabetic patients with heart disease

STANFORD, Calif. — Many patients with diabetes should forego angioplasties for heart disease and just take medicine instead, according to a new National Institutes of Health study led by Stanford University School of Medicine researcher Mark Hlatky, MD.

Previous research had shown that patients with type-2 diabetes and mild-to-moderate heart disease have no reduction in risk for heart attacks, strokes or death if they have an angioplasty compared with simply taking the right medications. The new study shows that there's substantial cost savings in sticking with drug treatment, with an average savings of $11,000 per patient over four years.

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