HEIDELBERG, 15 April 2015 - A genetic investigation of individuals in the Framingham Heart Study may prove useful to identify novel targets for the prevention or treatment of high blood pressure. The study, which takes a close look at networks of blood pressure-related genes, is published in the journal Molecular Systems Biology. More than one billion people worldwide suffer from high blood pressure and this contributes significantly to deaths from cardiovascular disease. It is hoped that advances in understanding the genetic basis of how blood pressure is regulated ...

Philadelphia, PA, April 16, 2015 - About 15% of patients with Lyme disease develop peripheral and central nervous system involvement, often accompanied by debilitating and painful symptoms. New research indicates that inflammation plays a causal role in the array of neurologic changes associated with Lyme disease, according to a study published in The American Journal of Pathology. The investigators at the Tulane National Primate Research Center and Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center also showed that the anti-inflammatory drug dexamethasone prevents many ...

New York, NY--While a large number of women quit or reduce smoking upon pregnancy recognition, many resume smoking postpartum. Previous research has estimated that approximately 70% of women who quit smoking during pregnancy relapse within the first year after childbirth, and of those who relapse, 67% resume smoking by three months, and up to 90% by six months. A new study out in the Nicotine & Tobacco Research indicates the only significant predictor in change in smoking behaviors for women who smoked during pregnancy was in those who breastfed their infant, finding ...

Children who are taught about preventing sexual abuse at school are more likely than others to tell an adult if they had, or were actually experiencing sexual abuse. This is according to the results of a new Cochrane review published in the Cochrane Library today. However, the review's authors say that more research is needed to establish whether school-based programmes intended to prevent sexual abuse actually reduce the incidence of abuse. It is estimated that, worldwide, at least 1 in 10 girls and 1 in 20 boys experience some form of sexual abuse in childhood. Those ...

Older adults with complex medical needs are occupying an increasing number of beds in acute care hospitals, and these patients are commonly cared for by hospitalists with limited formal geriatrics training. These clinicians are also hindered by a lack of research that addresses the needs of the older adult population. A new paper published today in the Journal of Hospital Medicine outlines a research agenda to address these issues. To help support hospitalists in providing acute inpatient geriatric care, the Society of Hospital Medicine has developed a research agenda ...

CHICAGO --- Walking at an easy pace for about three hours every week may be just enough physical activity to help prostate cancer survivors reduce damaging side effects of their treatment, according to a new Northwestern Medicine study. "Non-vigorous walking for three hours per week seems to improve the fatigue, depression and body weight issues that affect many men post-treatment," said Siobhan Phillips, lead author of the study. "If you walk even more briskly, for only 90 minutes a week, you could also see similar benefits in these areas." Phillips is a kinesiologist ...

Philadelphia, PA, April 16, 2015 - With the advent of targeted lymphoma therapies on the horizon, it becomes increasingly important to differentiate the two major subtypes of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL), which is the most common non-Hodgkin lymphoma. These are germinal center B-cell-like (GCB) and activated B-cell-like (ABC), which differ in management and outcomes. A report in The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics describes use of the reverse transcriptase?multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification (RT-MLPA) assay for differentiating DLBCL subtypes. RT-MLPA ...

Humans may be able to communicate positive emotions like happiness through the smell of our sweat, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The research indicates that we produce chemical compounds, or chemosignals, when we experience happiness that are detectable by others who smell our sweat. While previous research has shown that negative emotions related to fear and disgust are communicated via detectable regularities in the chemical composition of sweat, few studies have examined whether ...

Teachers are likely to interpret students' misbehavior differently depending on the student's race, according to new research findings published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Racial differences in school discipline are widely known, and black students across the United States are more than three times as likely as their white peers to be suspended or expelled, according to Stanford researchers. Yet the psychological processes that contribute to those differences have not been clear -- until now. "The fact that black ...

Vanderbilt University researchers have found a genetic mutation that causes pulmonary hypertension in cattle grazed at high altitude, and which leads to a life-threatening condition called brisket disease. Their findings, reported today in Nature Communications, may shed light on human lung disease, in particular, the mechanism behind non-familial pulmonary hypertension in patients with conditions such as emphysema and pulmonary fibrosis. "A genetic variant in cattle might tell us why some humans get into trouble at sea level and at altitude," said first author John ...

A new randomized clinical trial with Dartmouth investigators Kathleen Lyons, ScD, Tor Tosteson, ScD, Zhigang Li, PhD, and collaborators has noted significant improvement in several measures among those who began palliative care early. Their findings are described in, "Early Versus Delayed Initiation of Concurrent Palliative Care Oncology: Patient Outcomes in the ENABLE III Randomized Controlled Trial," published recently in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. "Survivorship and quality of life are of great interest in clinical cancer research, but can be difficult to evaluate ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. - Bisphenol A (BPA) is a chemical that is used in a variety of consumer products, such as food storage products and resins that line plastic food and beverage containers. Often, aquatic environments such as rivers and streams become reservoirs for BPA, and fish and turtle habitats are affected. Now, a collaboration of researchers from the University of Missouri, Westminster College, the U.S. Geological Survey and the Saint Louis Zoo have determined that BPA--which mimics estrogen--can alter a turtle's reproductive system and disrupts sexual differentiation. ...

Fairfax, Va., April 15, 2015 - The American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) applauds the House of Representatives, the Senate and the President for milestone passage last night of the "Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act" (H.R. 2) that permanently repeals the sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula, which has plagued the nation's health care infrastructure for more than a decade. The SGR, originally enacted as part of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, has been patched 17 times in the years since then, and a 21.2 percent rate reduction for all physicians ...

It may be game over for critics who claim that video games are nothing more than a fun diversion. A team of researchers suggests that many games can be meaningful entertainment experiences for players. In a study of people's experiences with video games, players indicated that they not only enjoyed playing games, but that they also frequently appreciated them at a deeper, more meaningful level. These findings should be encouraging to video game developers who want to invest in producing games that examine more meaningful, poignant or contemplative topics. "Video games ...

New research from the University of Warwick and University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire (UHCW) NHS Trust could transform treatments and diagnosis for a common digestive condition which affects thousands of patients. The oesophagus or food pipe (gullet) is part of the digestive system. It is the tube that carries food from your mouth to your stomach. Barrett's Oesophagus (also known as BE) and low-grade dysplasia affects approximately 2% of the adult population, particularly those with heartburn, as acid reflux from the stomach can, over time, damage the lining ...

Frogs may flee from a ground predator and move towards an aerial predator, undercutting the flight path, according to a study using model predators published April 15, 2015 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Matthew Bulbert from Macquarie University, Australia and colleagues. Escape from a predator is often the last line of defense for an organism. The authors of this study evaluated the effectiveness of different escape strategies of the ground-dwelling túngara frog from two types of predators, one approaching from the air and one from the ground. Researchers ...

EDMONTON, AB (April 12, 2015) -- "Pull my finger," a phrase embraced by school-aged kids and embarrassing uncles the world over, is now being used to settle a decades-long debate about what happens when you crack your knuckles. In a new study published April 15 in PLOS ONE, an international team of researchers led by the University of Alberta used MRI video to determine what happens inside finger joints to cause the distinctive popping sounds heard when cracking knuckles. For the first time, they observed that the cause is a cavity forming rapidly inside the joint. "We ...

Faster increases in life expectancy do not necessarily produce faster population aging, according to new research published in the journal PLOS ONE. This counterintuitive finding was the result of applying new measures of aging developed at IIASA to future population projections for Europe up to the year 2050. "Age can be measured as the time already lived or it can be adjusted taking into account the time left to live. If you don't consider people old just because they reached age 65 but instead take into account how long they have left to live, then the faster the ...

The ability to make a Lower Paleolithic hand axe depends on complex cognitive control by the prefrontal cortex, including the "central executive" function of working memory, a new study finds. PLOS ONE published the results, which knock another chip off theories that Stone Age hand axes are simple tools that don't involve higher-order executive function of the brain. "For the first time, we've showed a relationship between the degree of prefrontal brain activity, the ability to make technological judgments, and success in actually making stone tools," says Dietrich ...

BALTIMORE, MD, April 15, 2015 - Personal Genome Diagnostics, Inc. (PGDx), a provider of advanced cancer genome analysis and testing services, today announced the publication of a landmark study showing that many of the genetic alterations identified using tumor-only sequencing are not actually associated with the cancer, but instead reflect inherited germline mutations already present in the normal cells of the individual. The study is in the April 15 edition of Science Translational Medicine1 and was conducted by PGDx scientists working in collaboration with company co-founders ...

A study by Johns Hopkins scientists strongly suggests that sequencing tumor genomes for clues to genetic changes might misdirect treatment in nearly half of all patients unless it is compared first to a genetic readout of their noncancerous tissue. The investigators at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center say their analysis of more than 800 cancer patients' sequencing data, which was generated by Personal Genome Diagnostics Inc., a company co-founded by the researchers, shows that without such comparisons, attempts to individualize cancer therapy may be inappropriate ...

How fast is online learning evolving? Are wind turbines a promising investment? And how long before a cheap hoverboard makes it to market? Attempting to answer such questions requires knowing something about the rate at which a technology is improving. Now engineers at MIT have devised a formula for estimating how fast a technology is advancing, based on information gleaned from relevant patents. The researchers determined the improvement rates of 28 different technologies, including solar photovoltaics, 3-D printing, fuel-cell technology, and genome sequencing. They ...

NEW YORK (April 15, 2015) -- Technological advances are enabling scientists to sequence the genomes of cancer tumors, revealing a detailed portrait of genetic mutations that drive these diseases. But genomic studies are only one piece of the puzzle that is precision medicine, a Weill Cornell Medical College researcher writes in Nature. In order to realize the promise of this field, there needs to be an increased focus on creating robust clinical databases that include medical histories from patients around the country, which physicians can then use along with genomic data ...

The long-forecasted El Niño event of 2014/15 did not meet expectations. On March 5, 2015, the National Weather Service finally declared a "weak" event arriving several months later than expected, formally dashing predictions that we would see a major event on par with the monster El Niño of 1997/98 that would bring much-needed rain to California and other western states. Now, a team of researchers believes that they know why this year's event--and others like it--didn't live up to the hype. A new study published online April 13, 2015, in the journal Nature ...

Neuroscientists at NYU Langone Medical Center have discovered how the powerful brain hormone oxytocin acts on individual brain cells to prompt specific social behaviors - findings that could lead to a better understanding of how oxytocin and other hormones could be used to treat behavioral problems resulting from disease or trauma to the brain. The findings are to be published in the journal Nature online April 15. Until now, researchers say oxytocin -- sometimes called the "pleasure hormone" -- has been better known for its role in inducing sexual attraction and orgasm, ...