Average Happiness Network: yellow is happy, blue sad, green in-between

Happy people spread their cheer to people around them and to through them to an even larger network of connections.  Being surrounded by many happy people makes it more likely that someone will be happy in the future.

Researchers studying emotional connections and happiness in a large group of people over twenty years discovered that happiness not just due to happy people tending to gather with each other, but was a true contagion spreading from one person to another.  Analysis found that the clusters of happiness and unhappiness were not due to chance, but truly driven by networks of people in close proximity to each other.  Read the rest of this entry »

Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) announced he will be stepping down from the Senate Judiciary Committee in the 111th Congress to focus on health care reform. “As chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, I expect to lead a very full agenda in the next Congress, including working with [President-elect] Obama to guarantee affordable health care, at long last, for every American,“Kennedy said. Read the rest of this entry »

Ginger root

Although ginger is often recommended as a simple remedy for chemotherapy nausea, ginger capsules don’t seem to work any better than a sugar pill to improve the effects of standard nausea drugs.

In a randomized study, 162 patients received either ginger capsules or a placebo for chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting. Neither the patients or their doctors knew which they were getting.  All patients were already receiving an 5-HT₃ inhibitor such as Zofran® or Kytril®.  Some were also being treated with Emend® (aprepitant).

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Infusional 5-FU or oral Xeloda® (capecitabine) are two different drugs that can be combined with Eloxatin® (oxaliplatin) to treat colorectal cancer that has spread.  Six different randomized clinical trials have compared the two approaches.

Researchers analyzed a pool of all six trials to find out if one approach is better than the other. While they found that there are different side effects, the time until cancer gets worse (progression-free survival) and overall survival time are the same.

The percentage of patients who got infusional 5-FU  and had their tumors shrink (response rate) was greater than those who had shrinkage with capecitabine .  However, this did not translate into better progression-free interval or longer survival time. Read the rest of this entry »

CT colonography (so-called virtual colonoscopy or CTC) can also detect osteoporosis during colorectal cancer screening. Using the same images obtained while looking for colorectal polyps, a different software program can examine the spine for bone mineral density.  Low bone mineral density  is a symptom of osteoporosis which increases risk for broken bones. Read the rest of this entry »