Bringing the goal of personalized medicine a step closer, scientists who design anti-cancer treatments and clinical trials now have access to a huge cancer knowledge resource, thanks to a collaboration between industry and academia. A report in the 28 March online issue of Nature describes how the Cancer Cell Line Encyclopedia (CCLE) brings together genome data and predictors of drug response for 947 cancer cell lines. The ultimate cancer treatment is one that matches the right drug to the right target in the right patient. This is the goal of personalized medicine.

New plain-language reports compare the risks and benefits of therapies for gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), a digestive condition that affects millions of individuals in the U.S., and can be treated with medications or surgery. The reports are from the U.S.

Using a bronchoscope to visually examine the airways and collect fluid and tissue can help guide effective therapy for difficult-to-treat asthma patients, according to researchers at National Jewish Health.

A long-term Norwegian study reveals the number of people who experience acid reflux at least once a week has gone up by nearly 50% in the last 10 years, with women appearing to be more susceptible to the condition than men.

Madecins Sans Frontia res (MSF), the largest provider of HIV treatment in Myanmar, released a report today highlighting the urgency of treating HIV and multi-drug resistant Tuberculosis (MDR-TB) in their country – Myanmar used to be called Burma.

The Department of Health in England says that Viaspan, a manufactured fluid used to preserve some donor organs when they are moved, could have been contaminated with the bacterium, Bacillus cereus since last July. Viaspan is a sterile, cold solution that is widely used for storing and transporting abdominal organs such as the liver, pancreas and bowel. Bristol Myers-Squibb, the manufacturer of Viaspan, have issued a worldwide recall of their product because they found “potential contamination on the product line” at their Austrian factory, reports The Telegraph.

Given that almost 70% of young adults with Asperger syndrome have suffered from depression, it is vital that psychiatric care staff are aware of this so that patients are given the right treatment, reveals research from the Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

In the U.S., in 2007, the prescription medication Vyvanse was introduced for the treatment of ADHD in children aged 6 to 12 years old by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The following year the medication was approved to treat ADHD in adults, and approved in 2010 to treat adolescents aged 13 to 17 with ADHD.

Children showing difficulty carrying out routine actions, such as getting dressed, playing with particular types of games, drawing, copying from the board in school and even typing at the computer, could be suffering from developmental coordination disorder (DCD), and not necessarily from ADHD or other more familiar disorders, points out Prof.

If you are looking for a particular object – say a yellow pencil – on a cluttered desk, how does your brain work to visually locate it? For the first time, a team led by Carnegie Mellon University neuroscientists has identified how different neural regions communicate to determine what to visually pay attention to and what to ignore.

Indulging during the holidays means more acid reflux, but prolonged reflux can lead to Barrett’s disease and esophageal cancer. The incidence of esophageal adenocarcinoma has increased by 350 percent over the last decade, making it the most rapidly increasing malignancy among white males.

A new study is providing clues that may answer a decades-old question about the cells that give rise to a particularly lethal form of esophageal cancer. The research, published by Cell Press in the January 17th issue of the journal Cancer Cell, links inflammation and bile acid reflux with migration of cancer-causing stomach cells into the esophagus and may help guide future strategies for early therapeutic intervention.

In the developing world, allocating limited health care resources as effectively and equitably as possible is a top priority. To address that need, systems engineers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are using computer models to help resource-poor nations improve supply chain decisions related to the distribution of breast milk and non-pharmaceutical interventions for malaria.

Patients who complain of upper gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms often face a diagnosis of either gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) or functional dyspepsia. Because the two conditions often overlap, it can be difficult to distinguish between them and diagnose them properly.

Not surprisingly, victims of a natural disaster can experience stress and anxiety, but a new study indicates that it might also cause them to make more errors – some serious- in their daily lives. In their upcoming Human Factors article, “Earthquakes on the Mind: Implications of Disasters for Human Performance,” researchers William S.

Adam Levine, M.D., an emergency medicine physician with Rhode Island Hospital and a volunteer physician with International Medical Corps, was deployed to a field hospital near Misurata, Libya, during the conflict there. He and his colleagues cared for over 1,300 patients from both sides of the conflict between June and August 2011.