news 2012

One of Europe's most prominent historical figures advised a friend on where to go to treat his venereal disease, letters discovered by an Oxford University academic show. Katrin Kohl of Oxford University's Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages came across some unknown letters by Frederick II of Prussia (known as 'Frederick the Great') in the Bodleian Library.

A "significant” fall in mortality rates for certain conditions emerged in a study into the use of incentives at hospitals in the North West of England. Economists and health experts from the Universities of Manchester, Nottingham, Birmingham and Cambridge examined how the introduction of a scheme that paid bonuses to hospitals based on measures of quality affected the delivery of care.

PA 309/12 New research into controversial pay-for-performance schemes has suggested they may help to save the lives of NHS patients. A 'significant' fall in mortality rates for certain conditions emerged in a study by health experts and economists from the Universities of Nottingham, Manchester, Cambridge and Birmingham into the use of incentives at hospitals in the North West of England.

British women's obsession for thin bodies could potentially be changed if advertising showed more plus size models, suggests a new preliminary study. The Durham University researchers, who studied over 100 women, provide evidence to back calls for models in adverts to be more representative of the actual population.

Scientists at the Universities of Liverpool and Glasgow have uncovered a possible new method of enhancing nerve repair in the treatment of spinal cord injuries. It is known that scar tissue, which forms following spinal cord injury, creates an impenetrable barrier to nerve regeneration, leading to the irreversible paralysis associated with spinal injuries.

A technique for monitoring high levels of a protein found in many pre-cancerous cell types - including breast, lung and skin cancer - could be used to detect cancer early, say Oxford University scientists who are presenting their research at the National Cancer Research Institute (NCRI) conference in Liverpool today.

Scientists at the Universities of Liverpool and Glasgow have uncovered a possible new method of enhancing nerve repair in the treatment of spinal cord injuries. It is known that scar tissue, which forms following spinal cord injury, creates an impenetrable barrier to nerve regeneration, leading to the irreversible paralysis associated with spinal injuries.

Our research shows the transformative effect that alemtuzumab can have for people with MS." —Professor Alastair Compston from the University of Cambridge, principal investigator on both studies and Chair of the Steering Committee which oversaw these and earlier clinical trials A drug which 'reboots' a person's immune system has been shown to be an effective treatment for multiple sclerosis (MS) patients who have already failed to respond to the first drug with which they were treated (a 'first-line' therapy), as well as affected individuals who were previously untreated.

A landmark project that has sequenced 1,092 human genomes from individuals around the world will help researchers to interpret the genetic changes in people with disease. The first study to break the '1000 genomes barrier' will enable scientists to begin to examine genetic variations at the scale of the populations of individual countries, as well as guiding them in their search for the rare genetic variations related to many diseases.

Tamoxifen – used alongside traditional chemotherapy and radiotherapy – blocks the female hormone oestrogen that, in certain breast cancers, is required by the tumour to grow; it has been shown to improve cancer survival rates by up to one third. However, about one third of patients with the appropriate type of breast cancer – known as oestrogen receptor positive breast cancer – do not respond to tamoxifen or develop resistance to the drug.

University Home Obese dogs at risk of same health condition experienced by humans Veterinary scientists at the University of Liverpool have found that, like humans, obese dogs can experience metabolic syndrome, a condition that describes multiple health issues that occur in the body at the same time.

Diet foods that offer thicker, creamier textures increase expectations that the food will be satisfying and suppress hunger, reveals new research by Sussex academics published today (31 October 2012) in the BioMed Central open access journal Flavour reveals. Low-calorie foods may help people lose weight, but there is often a problem that people using them do not feel full.

Medications used to treat hypertension, diabetes and skin conditions could be doubling as treatments for Alzheimer's within 10 years according to researchers. A groundbreaking new study funded by Alzheimer's Society and led by King's College London identifies four existing drugs and one drug class which could reduce risk or slow down symptoms of the disease.

PA 298/12 High birth weight, rapid weight gain and having an overweight mother who smokes can all increase the risk of a baby becoming obese later in childhood, research by experts at The University of Nottingham has found. The study, published in the latest edition of the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood , also discovered that children who were breastfed and were introduced to solid food later had a slightly reduced chance of becoming overweight.

Scientists have developed a prototype ultra-sensitive sensor that would enable doctors to detect the early stages of diseases and viruses with the naked eye, according to research published today Nanotechnology. The team, from Imperial College London, report that their visual sensor technology is ten times more sensitive than the current gold standard methods for measuring biomarkers.

Exercising before breakfast is better for you than exercising afterwards according to new research by scientists at the University of Glasgow. Jason Gill and Nor Farah of the Institute of Cardiovascular and Medical Sciences conducted a study to compare the effects of exercise performed before and after breakfast on fat loss and metabolic health.

29 Oct 2012 Cancer of the prostate – the most common male cancer in the UK – presents in two distinct ways: a low-risk type, which may never cause any symptoms, and a high-risk form that needs treatment to prevent it spreading to other parts of the body. Knowing which type of prostate cancer each patient has – some 40,000 British men per year – is therefore essential to ensuring they receive the correct treatment.

The largest-ever study of smoking among women in the UK has shown that female smokers lose at least 10 years of life on average. But stopping before the age of 40 - and preferably well before the age of 40 - avoids more than 90% of the increased risk of dying caused by continuing to smoke. The Oxford University-led study, published in the medical journal The Lancet , is timed to mark the centenary of the birth of Sir Richard Doll, one of the first people to identify the link between lung cancer and smoking.

An evaluation of the scientific evidence on the effects of global health initiatives on the health systems of developing countries concludes that the harmful effects have been exaggerated. The systematic review found that much of the research literature did not fulfil the requirements of rigorous scientific evidence.

Better ways to tackle birth defects will be championed at the official launch of the Newlife Birth Defects Research Centre (BDRC) on Thursday 25 October 2012. The centrepiece of the BDRC, based at the UCL Institute of Child Health (ICH), is a newly built £6.5 million laboratory and office space dedicated to researching the causes of birth defects, advancing their diagnosis and treatment and preventing such conditions in the future.