BiotechMashup

(Nationwide Children's Hospital) Jennifer Dyer, M.D., M.P.H., an endocrinologist at Nationwide Children's Hospital, has developed and completed a pilot study that uses weekly, customized text messages to remind adolescent diabetes patients about their personal treatment activities. At the conclusion of the study, Dr. Dyer found an increase in overall treatment adherence and improved blood glucose levels.

(University of California - San Francisco) One study will look at using mobile phone text messages linked to a web-based personal health record to help HIV patients' adherence to pill-taking regimens. The other study will test the feasibility and acceptability of a Web-based strategy that seeks to reduce drug and alcohol use and accompanying HIV risk behaviors and improve antiretroviral medication adherence by HIV positive patients.

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, have been called the defining moment of our time. Thousands of people died and the attacks had huge individual and collective consequences. But less is known about the immediate emotional reactions to the attacks. For a new study, researchers analyzed text messages sent on September 11, 2001 for emotional words. They found spiking anxiety and steadily increasing anger through that fateful day.

(University of Montreal) A Universite de Montreal researcher has a special request for Canadian texters: "Everyone young and old, students and workers, artists and business people, no matter who you are, send me your text messages," says Patrick Drouin, a linguistics professor at the Universite de Montreal who is overseeing the North-American leg of the international research project called Texto4Science.

(FECYT - Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology) Most school text books contain messages about health, but 24.6 percent of these are not based on any scientific evidence, according to a study by the Knowledge Management Unit at Baza Hospital (Granada), published in the journal BMC Public Health.

Most school text books contain messages about health, but 24.6 percent of these are not based on any scientific evidence, according to a study by researchers in Spain.

In patients with recent onset type-2 diabetes, treatment with insulin or the diabetes drug metformin did not reduce inflammatory biomarkers, such as high-sensitivity C-reactive protein, although the treatment did improve glucose control, according to a new study.

(SAGE Publications) Self-monitoring of blood glucose enables those with diabetes to modify their behavior, adjust their medicine and understand their disease to better manage it, according to a recent study, published by SAGE in The Diabetes Educator. The research looked at "paired testing," a self-monitored testing both before and after specific events, to evaluate whether it could assist the patient in making better health and food choice decisions over time.

Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB) is a commonly used surgical treatment for patients with morbid obesity. It significantly and persistently decreases the levels of blood glucose and glycosylated hemoglobin in 80-100 percent of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) patients. A study group from China found the possible mechanism of treating T2DM with RYGB surgery. This study has provided new basis for surgery to treat T2DM and explained why the post-surgical nesidioblastosis occurs in RYGB patients.