medical breakthrough news stories on Newser

An Aspirin a Day Cuts Cancer Risk

Evann Gastaldo — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 07:32:00 CDT

A daily low dose of aspirin has long been recommended as a way of lowering stroke and heart attack risk, but new studies published this week suggest it also greatly reduces cancer risk. The UK studies found that after taking 75mg to 300mg of aspirin per day for just three...

Study May Be Breakthrough for Transplants

John Johnson — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 13:44:05 CST

A new study has the potential to be what the Los Angeles Times calls a "game-changer" in organ transplants. The idea seems simple enough: Give organ recipients a second transplant—of stem cells from the donor. This not only makes it more likely their body won't reject the organ, it...

Your New Drug: Placebos

Matt Cantor — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 11:54:58 CST

Placebos aren't just for research: Studies increasingly show that treatments with no active ingredients can work as well as—or even better than—"real" therapies. In one such study, some hotel employees were told they were getting good exercise at work; they lost weight, while fellow workers who hadn't gotten...

Drug Combos Hailed as Big Breast Cancer Breakthrough

Rob Quinn — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 06:04:49 CST

Two new studies mark what could be the biggest breakthrough in treating breast cancer in more than a decade, researchers say. Both involve combining drug therapies that attack tumors in different ways, significantly delaying the time until women with advanced breast cancer became sicker, the AP reports. One treatment held...

Scientists Make Ebola Breakthrough

Kevin Spak — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 08:05:17 CST

Scientists have made a major breakthrough in the fight against Ebola, developing a new synthetic vaccine that successfully protected 80% of the mice into which it was injected. More importantly, the new vaccine can be dried down and frozen for storage, the BBC reports; past Ebola vaccines have used real...

Awareness Detected in 'Vegetative' Patients

Evann Gastaldo — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 07:03:58 CST

A new study could have a life-changing impact on patients thought to be in a “vegetative” state: Three such patients displayed signs of full consciousness in a simple test. “It sure looks as if there’s not just a little bit of consciousness but a lot” in these subjects, who had...

Scientists Find Trick to 'Disarm' HIV

Kevin Spak — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 09:42:07 CDT

A group of US and European scientists have discovered a way to prevent the HIV virus from harming the immune system, in a breakthrough that could lead to an entirely new approach to fighting AIDS. They discovered that by extracting cholesterol, they could render the virus a sitting duck for...

Ecstasy Can Treat Cancer: Study

Kevin Spak — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 15:27:05 CDT

Could ecstasy cure cancer? The idea suddenly doesn’t seem so farfetched. Researchers at Birmingham University have found a way to boost its cancer-suppressing powers 100-fold, making it a potentially viable treatment for leukemia, lymphoma, and myeloma, the Telegraph reports. Ecstasy was already known to fight many white blood cell cancers,...

Artificial Windpipe Saves Cancer Patient

John Johnson — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 17:06:38 CDT

They almost make it sound easy: Surgeons in Sweden removed a man's cancerous windpipe and replaced it with an artificial one they had whipped up in the lab, reports the BBC . No more diseased windpipe, no more cancer. "He was condemned to die," says one of surgeons of the 36-year-old...