A project that studies chronic systemic inflammation receives EU funding
Erwin Wagner, Director of the Cancer Cell Biology Programme at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), has been awarded an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) to study Chronic Systemic Inflammation, a major health problem that causes morbidity and mortality associated with pathologies of the immune system and cancer.
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Fasting blood sugar and fasting insulin identified as new biomarkers for weight loss
Researchers from the Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports at the University of Copenhagen today announced the findings from a weight loss biomarker study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (AJCN). The study, "Pretreatment fasting plasma glucose and insulin modify dietary weight loss success: results from 3 randomized clinical trials," found that fasting blood sugar and/or fasting insulin can be used to select the optimal diet and to predict weight loss, particularly for people with prediabetes or diabetes.
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The most efficient option for treating unexplained infertility
An inexpensive fertility drug, which has been available for more than 50 years and can be taken orally, has proved as effective as other more costly hormones when used for ovarian stimulation before intrauterine stimulation (IUI). Investigator Dr Noor Danhof from the AMC Centre for Reproductive Medicine in Amsterdam says the results of the study, a large randomised trial performed in the Netherlands, now make this "least expensive and least invasive stimulation agent" the drug of choice in IUI.
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Scientists move closer to defeating 'superbugs' with simplified forms of teixobactin
Scientists have produced new, effective and simplified forms of teixobactin - a new generation antibiotic which defeats multi-drug resistant infections such as MRSA - as part of a pioneering research effort to tackle antimicrobial resistance. The team, led by Dr Ishwar Singh at the University of Lincoln, UK, has pinpointed exactly which amino acid in the newly discovered teixobactin antibiotic makes it so successful at killing off harmful MRSA bacteria, which are resistant to many other antibiotics.
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Confusion over symptoms may be affecting whether women take tamoxifen for breast cancer
Women who are at high risk of developing breast cancer may be failing to take the preventive anti-cancer drug tamoxifen because they are confusing naturally-occurring symptoms with side effects from the medicine, according to a study of nearly 4,000 women led by Queen Mary University of London (QMUL). The researchers say that their findings have important implications about how to communicate with women,
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Amber warning for the UK's access to new medicines post Brexit
In an editorial to be published on Tuesday 27th June 2017 in the journal ecancermedicalscience, Anthony Hatswell of BresMed (an independent health economics consultancy) and University College London, explores the consequences of a British exit from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) as a result of Brexit, and what this will mean for pharmaceutical regulation and future access to medicines for UK citizens.
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Diabetes patients still produce insulin
Some insulin is still produced in almost half of the patients that have had type 1 diabetes for more than ten years. The study conducted by researchers at Uppsala University in Sweden has been published online by the medical journal Diabetes Care. Type 1 diabetes, a chronic disease mainly debuting during childhood or adolescence, has previously been considered to result in full loss of the patients' insulin production.
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