The evidence continues to mount on the health benefits of adequate sleep. A recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association finds that sleeping less than seven and a half hours a day may be associated with a greater risk for heart disease, particularly for those whose blood pressure spikes overnight.
The following is a list of the top 10 medical breakthroughs from 2009.
Scientists probably know more about HIV than any other pathogen, but despite that fact, they have had frustratingly little success in applying their knowledge toward a vaccine against the virus.
Modern science already offers ways to enhance your mood, sex drive, athletic performance, concentration levels, and overall health. But is such medically driven self-improvement always a good idea?
Is the AIDS-vaccine syringe half full — or virtually empty? That's the question researchers continue to contemplate following the release of the full trial data of a vaccine tested against HIV infection in Thailand.
Stem-cell science is a fast-moving field. Just three years since a Japanese researcher first reprogrammed ordinary skin cells into stem cells without the use of embryos, scientists at a Massachusetts biotech company have repeated the feat, only this time with a new method that creates the first stem cells safe enough for human use. The achievement brings the potentially lifesaving technology one step closer to real treatments for disease.
It was nearly a decade in the making, but the first human trial using embryonic stem cells will begin later this year.
Researchers announced the early trial results of a new vaccine to fight cocaine addiction — a compound that, by vaccine standards, was only mildly effective but served as an important proof of concept that vaccination against addiction could work.
Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and the University of Pittsburgh have developed the first screening tool that can help predict whether elderly patients are at low, moderate or high risk of developing dementia. The new test takes into account characteristic risk factors for dementia, including advanced age and the presence of genes associated with Alzheimer's, but also relies on lesser-known contributors such as patients' body weight and alcohol-drinking habits.
(WASHINGTON) — Call it a genetic patch job for worn lungs: Canadian researchers took donated lungs deemed too damaged to transplant and repaired them with outside-the-body gene therapy.