Contrary to recent studies, proper use of a drug called aprotinin to reduce bleeding during heart surgery does not increase the risk of heart attack or stroke, according to a study in the June issue of The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery. [click link for full article]

New research suggests that if parents want to keep alcohol away from their middle school children, the best place to start is at home. The study, reported in the June issue of Preventive Medicine, shows that of 11-14 year olds who choose to drink, only a small fraction (2.4% in the 6th grade, rising to 5.6% at the end of the 8th grade) obtain alcohol from commercial venues. [click link for full article]

New early data showed that an investigational device that specifically targets rapidly growing cancer cells with intermediate frequency electrical fields — called Tumor-Treating Fields (TTFields) — more than doubled the median overall survival rates in patients with recurrent glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), the most common and aggressive type of malignant brain tumor. These survival rates observed in the data were compared to historical data. [click link for full article]

Continuing medical education, newsletters and resource guides were only partially successful in changing the way that pediatricians handled behavioral health problems, according to a follow-up study at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.But external factors, especially “black box warnings” from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration “exerted a powerful effect on prescribing practices,” said Jane Williams, Ph.D. [click link for full article]

A noninvasive ultrasound procedure effectively shrinks uterine fibroids and significantly relieves fibroid-related symptoms in women, according to the results of a multicenter clinical trial reported in the June issue of the journal Radiology. Magnetic resonance-guided, focused ultrasound surgery (MRgFUS) allows radiologists to precisely target fibroids without harming healthy surrounding tissue. [click link for full article]

Researchers exploring the notion that certain nutrients might protect against pancreatic cancer found that lean individuals who got most of these nutrients from food were protected against developing cancer. The study also suggests this protective effect does not hold true if the nutrients come from vitamin supplements. [click link for full article]

Mary Tyler Moore, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation’s International Chairman, and her husband S. Robert Levine, M.D., will present the fifth annual Excellence In Clinical Research Award to a group of pioneering researchers for their work in regenerating beta cells — which are destroyed in type 1 diabetes — as a way to delay the onset of type 1 diabetes. The award will be presented at JDRF’s annual conference in St. Louis.The award recipients are Stephen J. Brand, M.D. [click link for full article]

The effectiveness of the “Energy Up” program developed by lifestyle and fitness leader Kathie Dolgin known to her students as High Voltage, has recently been evaluated in an article published in the May issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health (http://www.adolescenthealth.org/journal.htm). [click link for full article]

“Dramatic” losses of a key biochemical substance in heart muscle tissue occur in the very earliest stages of diabetes induced in laboratory mice, scientists in Missouri are reporting ACS’ Biochemistry, a weekly journal. Xianlin Han and colleagues did the study as part of a broader medical effort to understand diabetic cardiomyopathy. [click link for full article]

The bone-targeting radioisotope radium-223 has delivered promising results in a randomised trial to test its efficacy in treatment of hormone-refractory prostate cancer (HRPC). The findings are reported early Online - timed to coincide with presentation of the research at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in Chicago - and in the July edition of The Lancet Oncology. [click link for full article]