The UK government plan to fund and to increase participation in rugby in schools has not been informed by injury data, warn experts in The BMJ this week. Professor Allyson Pollock and colleagues at Queen Mary University of London say the government "should ensure the safety and effectiveness of (school) sports" and call for injury surveillance and prevention programmes to be established to help reduce injury rates. The high rates of injury in rugby union and rugby league for professional and amateur players, including children, are well established and a cause for medical ...

As the deadline for the millennium development goals approaches, experts writing in The BMJ this week take stock of the successes, failures, and oversights, and look ahead to the next phase - the sustainable development goals. The millennium development goals are eight aspirational targets set by the United Nations (UN) in New York in September 2000, explain Dr Mark Beattie and colleagues. The progress made towards some of the goals has been remarkable, they write. For example, child mortality has effectively halved worldwide, from 90 per 1,000 births in 1990 to 46 ...

WASHINGTON -- Law should be viewed as a major determinant of health and safety and can be utilized as a powerful and innovative tool to address pressing global health concerns, says a newly formed, high-level commission announced today by the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University in partnership with The Lancet. In their "Comment" published online in The Lancet, the Commission's co-chairs Lawrence O. Gostin and John T. Monahan, along with the Commission's project coordinator, Mary C. DeBartolo, and Richard Horton, Editor-in-Chief ...

Alcohol and drug misuse are responsible for around a third of all deaths in former male prisoners and half in female ex-prisoners, a new study of almost 48000 ex-prisoners published in The Lancet Psychiatry journal has found. Moreover, the research shows that a substantial proportion of these deaths are from preventable causes, including accidents and suicide (42% in men and 70% in women). Several studies have reported high death rates after release from prison, but few have looked at potential risk factors for these high rates. Led by Seena Fazel, Professor of Forensic ...

The good relationship between humans and dogs was certainly influenced by domestication. For long, it was assumed that humans preferred particularly tolerant animals for breeding. Thus, cooperative and less aggressive dogs could develop. Recently, however, it was suggested that these qualities were not only specific for human-dog interactions, but characterize also dog-dog interactions. Friederike Range and Zsófia Virányi from the Messerli Research Institute investigated in their study if dogs are in fact less aggressive and more tolerant towards their conspecifics ...

A team of French clinicians has diagnosed the first case of rabies in that country since 2003. Only 20 cases of human rabies had been diagnosed in France between 1970 and 2003. Moreover, the patient was unaware of having been bitten. So it is not surprising that that diagnosis was not suggested until day 12 post admission to the intensive care unit. The case report appeared April 8 in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology, a publication of the American Society for Microbiology. "Rabies is nowadays extremely rare in the developed world," said Christian Brun-Buisson, head ...

DALLAS, April 21, 2014 -- Among black heart failure patients, moderate depression may increase the risk of heart failure patients being hospitalized or dying, according to research in the American Heart Association journal Circulation: Heart Failure. Comparing outcomes of 747 blacks to 1,420 whites with heart failure using a patient-reported scale of depressive symptoms, researchers found: Even moderate depressive symptoms may raise the risk of black heart failure patients being hospitalized or dying. Blacks with levels of depressive symptoms even below the levels ...

(MEMPHIS, Tenn. - April 21, 2015) Researchers have identified a protein that offers a new focus for developing targeted therapies to tame the severe inflammation associated with multiple sclerosis (MS), colitis and other autoimmune disorders. St. Jude Children's Research Hospital scientists led the study which appears today in the scientific journal Immunity. Investigators showed that the protein NLRP12 works in T cells to limit production of chemical messengers or cytokines that fuel inflammation. T cells are specialized white blood cells produced to eliminate specific ...

The Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has released an updated proposal that will establish an international quality standard for photovoltaic (PV) module manufacturing. The document is intended for immediate use by PV manufacturers when producing modules on an industrial scale so they can increase investor, utility, and consumer confidence in PV system performance. "Our recent research on 50,000 systems found that, during the time period we studied, just 0.1% of all PV systems were affected by damaged or underperforming modules and less than ...

A recent randomized trial that looked at the feasibility of 2013 guidelines issued by the American College of Surgeons Trauma Quality Improvement Project for trauma resuscitation found that delivering universal donor plasma to massively hemorrhaging patients can be accomplished consistently and rapidly and without excessive wastage in high volume trauma centers. The plasma is given in addition to red blood cell transfusions to optimize treatment. The 2013 guidelines recommend that universal donor products be immediately available on arrival of severely injured patients, ...

Researchers have unraveled the elusive process by which small, highly vascular clusters of sensory cells in the carotid arteries "taste the blood," as a 1926 essay put it--the initial step in regulating blood-oxygen levels. In the April 21 issue of the journal Science Signaling, a University of Chicago-based research team describes the precise mechanism that cells in the carotid bodies use to detect oxygen levels in the blood as it flows toward the brain. The cells translate that taste test into signals, sent through the carotid sinus nerve, a branch of the glossopharyngeal ...

MADISON - Scientists today demonstrated the potential for softwoods to process more easily into pulp and paper if engineered to incorporate a key feature of hardwoods. The finding, published in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could improve the economics of the pulp, paper and biofuels industries and reduce those industries' environmental impact. "What we've shown is that it's possible to pair some of the most economically desirable traits of each wood type," says John Ralph, the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center's (GLBRC) plants leader ...

PHILADELPHIA -- A team of Mayo Clinic researchers has succeeded in identifying the source of cancer in patients' gastrointestinal tracts by analyzing DNA markers from tumors. The results open the possibility that doctors could one day be able to screen for cancer anywhere in the body with a noninvasive blood test or stool sample. Such tests, if they prove practical and feasible, could mean greater convenience for patients and saved lives through earlier diagnosis of cancer, especially rare and often lethal diseases such as pancreatic cancer or lung cancer. The researchers' ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- A new study by two researchers in the University at Buffalo School of Social Work has shown that parents who chronically neglect their children contribute to the likelihood that they will develop aggressive and delinquent tendencies later in adolescence, and the one factor that links neglect with those behaviors appears to be poor social skills. While child neglect can include many different aspects, the study examined two: failure to provide for a child's basic needs and a lack of adequate supervision. Failure to provide, which includes not meeting ...

TORONTO, April 21, 2015--The vast majority of surgeons continue to recommend that women 40 years old or older with an average risk for breast cancer be screened annually for the disease, despite a 2009 U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommendation that such women be screened biennially beginning at 50 years old and continuing through age 74. A team of researchers studying the efficacy of policy recommendations on practicing surgeons found that 88% of breast surgeons and 82% of general surgeons continue to recommend annual mammography for women with an ...

PHILADELPHIA - Liver cancer is often lethal in humans because it is diagnosed in late stages, but new work in animal models has identified a potential diagnostic biomarker of the disease and a potential way to reverse the damage done. The study will be presented at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2015 in Philadelphia. Ying Fu, PhD, of Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center explains this new work: "Hepatocellular carcinoma, the most common form of liver cancer, remains the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide ...

The body's immune system may be the keeper of a healthy gut microbiota, report University of Chicago scientists on April 21 in the journal Immunity. They found that a single binding protein on white blood cells could affect whether or not mice produced a balanced gut microbiota. Without the protein, harmful bacteria were more easily able to cause infection. Why this happens is unclear, but it may be that the immune system has a way to sense the presence of invading intestinal bacteria. "Our study reveals how our body's immune system shapes the gut microbiota to naturally ...

An immune cell protein, ID2, is critical for the maintenance of healthy gut microbiota and helps these good bacteria fight off harmful bacteria, report scientists from the University of Chicago. The study, published in Immunity on April 21, suggests that novel therapeutics or microbiota transplantation could be used to promote the development of good gut microbiota to indirectly kill harmful bacteria for patients with recurrent gut infection. "Our study reveals how our body's immune system shapes the gut microbiota to naturally limit infections," says senior author Yang-Xin ...

The immune system is designed to protect us from disease. But what if it was malfunctioning? Would it make a disease worse? That appears to be the case with Rett syndrome, a neurodevelopmental disorder, and possibly in other neurological disorders as well, new research from the University of Virginia School of Medicine has found. UVA's discovery suggests that immune cells bearing a mutation in the Rett gene, MeCP2, cannot perform their normal function and are instead amplifying the disease. By identifying a new role of the immune system in the disorder, through cells ...

In order to sing or speak, around one hundred different muscles in our chest, neck, jaw, tongue, and lips must work together to produce sound. Beckman researchers investigate how all these mechanisms effortlessly work together--and how they change over time. "The fact that we can produce all sorts of sounds and we can sing is just amazing to me," said Aaron Johnson, affiliate faculty member in the Bioimaging Science and Technology Group at the Beckman Institute and assistant professor in speech and hearing science at Illinois. "Sounds are produced by the vibrations of ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - It's estimated that six out of 1,000 children worldwide are affected by autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and 50 percent demonstrate serious and disruptive behavior, including tantrums, aggression, self-injury and noncompliance. For children with ASD, serious disruptive behavior interrupts daily functioning and social skills development, limits their ability to benefit from education and speech therapy, can increase social isolation and intensify caregiver stress. Luc Lecavalier and his team of researchers from The Ohio State University Wexner Medical ...

In a small study that included seven children and teens with Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome, a rare immunodeficiency disorder, use of gene therapy resulted in clinical improvement in infectious complications, severe eczema, and symptoms of autoimmunity, according to a study in the April 21 issue of JAMA, a theme issue on child health. Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome (WAS) is caused by loss-of-function mutations in the WAS gene. The condition is characterized by thrombocytopenia (low platelet count), eczema, and recurring infections. In the absence of definitive treatment, patients ...

In a study that included approximately 95,000 children with older siblings, receipt of the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine was not associated with an increased risk of autism spectrum disorders (ASD), regardless of whether older siblings had ASD, findings that indicate no harmful association between receipt of MMR vaccine and ASD even among children already at higher risk for ASD, according to a study in the April 21 issue of JAMA, a theme issue on child health. Although a substantial body of research over the last 15 years has found no link between the MMR vaccine ...

A 24 week parent training program, which provided specific techniques to manage disruptive behaviors of children with autism spectrum disorder, resulted in a greater reduction in disruptive and noncompliant behavior compared to parent education, according to a study in the April 21 issue of JAMA, a theme issue on child health. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) affects an estimated 6 per 1,000 children worldwide and is a major public health challenge. As many as 50 percent of children with ASD exhibit behavioral problems, including tantrums, noncompliance, aggression, and ...

In a pilot study that included children at high risk for type 1 diabetes, daily high-dose oral insulin, compared with placebo, resulted in an immune response to insulin without hypoglycemia, findings that support the need for a phase 3 trial to determine whether oral insulin can prevent islet autoimmunity and diabetes in high-risk children, according to a study in the April 21 issue of JAMA, a theme issue on child health. A few specific proteins are often the trigger for immune responses that cause autoimmune diseases. This has led to the experimental use of antigen­specific ...