Latest Sahlgrenska Stories

The US Secretary of Health recently supported a recommendation that all babies born in the US are to be screened for critical heart defects, before leaving hospital. Behind this decision is a study from the Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg, and the West Götaland Region's maternity units in Sweden which shows that a simple test can save the lives of newborns with these heart defects. Other countries too are set to make the test mandatory. One or two out of every thousand...

If either of your parents has a drink problem, there is a greater risk that you will consume more alcohol after stressful situations, reveals current research from the Sahlgrenska Academy, at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. It has long been known that alcoholics' children are 50% more likely to have a drink problem in the future, and new research from the Sahlgrenska Academy is shedding new light on this link. Carried out by researcher Anna Söderpalm Gordh, the study has been...

A major new international study involving researchers from the Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg and Sahlgrenska University Hospital has revealed that aspirin, statins, beta blockers and ACE inhibitors are prescribed far too infrequently. They are cheap, preventive medicines that could prevent a huge number of deaths from heart attacks and strokes. The result of a research collaboration between 17 countries, the study is being published in the highly revered medical...

Four patients now have new lungs thanks to a purpose-built machine used for the first time worldwide by Sahlgrenska University Hospital. Acquired for research at the Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, the new machine will contribute to more lung transplants in the long term.Built by a company in Lund, the machine is used to assess and treat the function of donors' lungs before transplantation. While the lungs of many donors are of good quality, some can swell on account of...

Physical exercise has a positive effect on the formation of cells in the intervertebral discs. This is shown by a study from the Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, presented at the annual meeting of the International Society for the Study of the Lumbar Spine (ISSLS), which is currently taking place in Gothenburg.The study from the Sahlgrenska Academy shows that physical activity has a positive effect on cells in the intervertebral discs. The result is based on rats undergoing...

Scientists at the Sahlgrenska Academy have discovered an explanation of how stroke patients can achieve better recovery. A hormone that is associated with the growth hormone system has proved to benefit recovery during the later phases of rehabilitation after a stroke.Insulin-like growth factor I, IGF-I, is a hormone that is found in the blood and contributes to, among other things, growth and bone mass. The levels of this hormone are higher in people who exercise regularly and those with...

Many of the substances in our most common medicines are manufactured in India. Some of these factories release huge quantities of drugs to the environment. Swedish scientists now show that bacteria in polluted rivers become resistant to a range of antibiotics. International experts fear that this may contribute to the development of untreatable infectious diseases world-wide.Using a novel method, based on large-scale DNA sequencing, the Swedish scientists show that bacteria residing in Indian...

Researchers from the University of Gothenburg and Sahlgrenska University Hospital are the first in the world to show that an operation can help patients with dementia caused by white matter changes and hydrocephalus.Presented in the American Journal of Neurosurgery, the results are based on the world's first study to demonstrate the effects of a shunt operation using a placebo control. 14 patients were followed for an average of three and a half years after the operation, with half being...

Active management of the third stage of labour means that women lose less blood than with a more expectant approach, reveals a thesis from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, in conjunction with Sahlgrenska University Hospital.A number of studies in the West have shown that heavy bleeding following childbirth has become more common in recent years. In her thesis, midwife and researcher Elisabeth Jangsten decided to look at how heavily women bleed after giving birth in Angola and Sweden...

The healthcare system faces a challenge in overcoming communication barriers when treating non-Swedish-speaking patients, reveals a thesis from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.The thesis showed that communication difficulties have meant that war-wounded refugees have found it hard to gain access to the disability support and rehabilitation help they are entitled to. Interpreters were sometimes assigned on the basis of a patient's nationality instead of ethnicity and mother tongue, which...