A compound that mops up debris of damaged cells from the bloodstream may be the first in a new class of drugs designed to address one of medicine's most difficult challenges - stopping the formation of blood clots without triggering equally threatening bleeding.

Patients' non-adherence to prescribed medication costs the U.S. health care system an estimated $290 billion annually and can lead to poor clinical outcomes, increased hospitalizations and higher mortality.

A drug designed to shield the heart from injury during bypass surgery failed to reduce deaths, strokes and other serious events among patients at high risk of complications, according to a large, prospective study lead by researchers at Duke University Medical Center.

Many patients seem to ignore prescription drug warning labels with instructions that are critical for safe and effective use, according to a study by a Kansas State University researcher working with scientists at Michigan State University.

Researchers have taken a step toward personalized medicine for Parkinson's disease, by investigating signs of the disease in patient-derived cells and testing how the cells respond to drug treatments. The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

A new approach to testing medical treatment options could ensure that more patients get the most beneficial treatment for them - but still yield valuable research results that stand up to scientific scrutiny.

Research suggests that patients with leukemia sometimes relapse because standard chemotherapy fails to kill the self-renewing leukemia initiating cells, often referred to as cancer stem cells. In such cancers, the cells lie dormant for a time, only to later begin cloning, resulting in a return and metastasis of the disease.