Attribution: Yale Rosen

Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology replicated conditions of a study presented at the Proceedings of the Second ACM SIGHIT International Health Informatics Symposium in order to determine whether communicating with young patients in this way was beneficial.

Investigators recruited 30 asthmatic ten to 17-year-olds who were attending a private pediatric pulmonology clinic and randomly assigned them into three different groups so that they could compare the effects of different experimental conditions.

One set of participants was sent a text message per day, which prompted them to consider their symptoms or provided them a piece of information concerning the respiratory illness. Another received this communication every other day.

The remaining subjects acted as a control group, and were not sent any messages. Researchers ensured that all children involved were able to understand the texts by checking that they had attained a certain reading level.

Investigators then analysed clinical outcomes of the youngsters by looking at healthcare records and gaining information from physicians, and cross-referenced outcomes of each group to determine whether there were any significant trends.

Findings revealed that sending one text message per day was associated with improved wellbeing. This might involve lower incidence of symptoms, such as coughing, wheezing, tightness in the chest or breathlessness.

Lead author of the study Rosa Arriaga said: "It appears that text messages acted as an implicit reminder for patients to take their medicine and by the end of the study, the kids were more in tune with their illness."

Findings were presented at the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2013, and could have implications in terms of treating other illnesses. Many patients could benefit from prompts which motivate them to take their medicine.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), half of people fail to take drugs correctly. This could be having a hugely detrimental impact on their quality of life.

Scientists from the University of Tromso analysed data concerning more than 600,000 19 to 67-year-olds which had been gathered by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. The data spanned 14 years, giving analysts opportunity to look for long-term trends.

They analysed colon cancer rates in the group, and cross-referenced incidence to smoking habits in order to determine whether there were any significant trends. They then calculated the risk applicable to each gender.

Findings revealed that women increased their chance of developing the disease by 19 per cent if they took up the unhealthy habit, although smoking upped men's likelihood of colon cancer by eight per cent.

The length of time a woman had been smoking correlated to the risk, with those who had retained the habit for 40 years or more having a 50 per cent higher chance of developing the potentially fatal condition.

This could also be linked to age, since the NHS claims that more than seven-in-ten patients are 65 or older. Approximately 40,000 people in the UK are affected by this condition every year – it is the third most common form of cancer.

However, the investigators did not take confounding factors such as diet and alcohol consumption into consideration with their calculations, meaning that smoking may not be the sole factor behind women's increased likelihood of developing colon cancer.

Diet, exercise levels, alcohol consumption and genes may all play a role in causing this condition, and women may be more prone to engaging in these risk activities, especially if they are smokers.

Dr Stephanie Bernik, chief of surgical oncology at Lenox Hill Hospital, told HealthDay: "Usually, smoking goes along with other bad health habits. However, this adds to the growing data that cigarette smoking contributes to the increased risk of colon cancer."