Washington, Apr 8 : A new study from Baylor College of Medicine, Houston has found that cognitive behaviour therapy can significantly improve mental health in older adults with generalised anxiety disorder.

Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is common in late life and helps predict increased physical disability, memory difficulties and decreased quality of life.

In the new study, Dr Melinda A. Stanley recruited 134 older adults with an average age of 67 years in two primary care settings, with treatment provided for 3 months.

Washington, April 8 : Fractions are often considered a major stumbling block in math education, but the adult brain encodes them automatically without conscious thought, says a new study.

The study, conducted by researchers Simon Jacob, MD, and Andreas Nieder, PhD, at the University of Tübingen in Germany, has shown that cells in the intraparietal sulcus (IPS) and the prefrontal cortex - brain regions important for processing whole numbers - are tuned to respond to particular fractions.

Washington, April 8 : Use of oral contraceptives is associated with an increased risk of autoimmune disease systemic lupus erythematosus, a new study has shown.

The study found that the risk was mostly limited to current users, those who had just started using contraception, and those using older first- and second-generation oral contraceptives instead of third-generation ones.

Led by Dr. Samy Suissa of the Centre for Clinical Epidemiology at Jewish General Hospital of McGill University in Montreal, researchers obtained data on more than 1.7 million women ages 18-45 from the U. K. General Practice Research Database, which contains more than 6 million people.

Washington, April 8: An experimental drug for metastatic prostate cancer has shown considerable promise in early clinical trials by reducing signs of the disease in patients with drug-resistant cancer.

Of 30 men who received low doses of one the drugs in a multisite phase I/II trial designed to evaluate safety, 22 showed a sustained decline in the level of prostate specific antigen (PSA) in their blood.

Washington, April 8 : A research team, including an Indian-origin boffin, has shed light on why people with diabetes have high blood glucose levels.

Researchers at Joslin Diabetes Center have shown for the first time that insulin plays a significant role in suppressing levels of glucagon, a hormone involved in carbohydrate metabolism and regulating blood glucose levels.

According to researchers, the new findings could lead to development of a drug aimed at targeting glucagon levels.

Washington, Apr 8 : An inflammatory factor-already implicated in causing several diseases, like pulmonary disease, lung cancer, and arthritis- may also have a role to play in insulin resistance linked with obesity, according to a study.

The researchers behind the study say that an inflammatory protein, known as CXCL5, rises and falls with obesity and subsequent weight loss in humans.

They say that they experiments on mice have provided further evidence linking the inflammatory factor, which is produced and secreted at high levels by fat tissue, to insulin resistance.

The researchers have also shown that treatments designed to block its action improve the animals'' sensitivity to insulin.