Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is the most effective treatment for menopausal symptoms, in particular for younger women at the onset of the menopause, suggests a new review published today (19 December) in The Obstetrician & Gynaecologist (TOG). The review highlights that menopausal symptoms, including hot flushes and night sweats are common, affecting around 70% of women for an average of 5 years but may continue for many years in about 10% of women. Every woman experiences the menopause differently; some experience one or two symptoms mildly while others have ...

Less than half of UK prescriptions for antipsychotic drugs are being issued to treat the serious mental illnesses for which they are mainly licensed, reveals research published in the online journal BMJ Open. Instead, they may often be prescribed 'off label' to older people with other conditions, such as anxiety and dementia, despite the greater risk of potentially serious side effects in this age group, the findings indicate. The researchers analysed family doctors' prescribing patterns for first and second generation antipsychotic drugs across the UK between 2007 ...

Almost half of teen drivers killed on US roads in the past few years were driving vehicles that were 11 or more years old, and often lacking key safety features, reveals research published online in Injury Prevention. Parents, who are usually the ones stumping up for a car, could be putting their children's lives at risk by focusing on cost, warn the researchers. The prevalence of fatal road traffic collisions among US teens has fallen sharply since 1996. Yet per mile driven, rates of police-reported and fatal crashes involving teens are around three times those for ...

A study of more than 80,000 women has uncovered different risks of developing type 2 diabetes associated with different blood groups, with the biggest difference a 35% increased risk of type 2 diabetes found in those with group B, Rhesus factor positive (R+) blood compared with the universal donor group O, Rhesus factor negative (R-). The study is published in Diabetologia (the journal of The European Association for the Study of Diabetes) and is by Dr Guy Fagherazzi, and Dr Françoise Clavel-Chapelon, Center for Research in Epidemiology and Population Health, INSERM, ...

A Ugandan doctor, who contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone, survived after being flown to Germany for aggressive treatment involving a new drug under clinical development for vascular leakage [1]. Dr Timo Wolf and colleagues, from University Hospital Frankfurt in Germany, detail the successful intensive-care treatment the doctor received under biosafety level 4 conditions in an Article published in The Lancet. On 28 September, 2014, the 38-year old doctor, who was in charge of an Ebola virus treatment unit in Lakka, Sierra Leone, developed a fever and diarrhoea. He tested ...

Prostaglandin analogue eye drops, the most commonly prescribed treatment for glaucoma, can greatly reduce risk of vision loss in people with open angle glaucoma (OAG), one of the leading causes of blindness, according to the first placebo-controlled trial to assess their vision-preserving effect published in The Lancet. "Medication to lower raised eye pressure has been used for decades as the main treatment for OAG to delay progressive vision loss. But, until now, the extent to which the most frequently prescribed class of pressure-lowering drugs (prostaglandin analogues) ...

Highlight Kidney donors with hypertension had slightly fewer nephrons (the kidney's filtering units) at the time of donation than similarly aged donors with normal blood pressure; however, 6 months following their surgery, hypertensive and non-hypertensive donors both maintained excellent blood pressure control and had similarly robust compensatory kidney responses. Nearly 6,000 people donate a kidney in the United States each year. Washington, DC (December 18, 2014) -- With proper monitoring, kidney donation may be safe for individuals with high blood pressure, according ...

Struggling to balance on one leg for 20 seconds or longer was linked to an increased risk for small blood vessel damage in the brain and reduced cognitive function in otherwise healthy people with no clinical symptoms, according to new research in the American Heart Association's journal Stroke. "Our study found that the ability to balance on one leg is an important test for brain health," said Yasuharu Tabara, Ph.D., lead study author and associate professor at the Center for Genomic Medicine at Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine in Kyoto, Japan. "Individuals ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - Dec. 18, 2014 - State and local enforcement of federal immigration laws can have an adverse impact on the use of health care services by immigrant Hispanics, according to a North Carolina-based study by Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center researchers. The study, published in the Dec. 18 issue of the American Journal of Public Health, analyzed both birth records and information collected in focus groups and individual interviews. "Our findings suggest that immigration enforcement policies negatively affect the health of immigrant Hispanics, including ...

An investigation into factors related to disparities of depression in young adults has found that higher parental education - which has a protective effect for white youth - can also increase the risk of depression for black youth. The MassGeneral Hospital for Children (MGHfC) study published online in the Journal of Pediatrics also found that, among high-socioeconomic-status black youth, greater perceptions of being discriminated against cancelled out the protective effects of parental education. "High socioeconomic status (SES) - particularly higher parent education ...

Before Charlotte the spider spelled the word "humble" in her web to describe Wilbur the pig, she told Templeton the rat that the word meant "not proud." That's probably what most people say if you put them on the spot. But if you give them time to think about it deeply, like a new study just did, other themes emerge that have a lot to do with learning. And these intellectual dimensions of humility describe the spider as well or better than the pig. "Wilbur has many of the dimensions of humility in general: regard for others, not thinking too highly of himself - but ...

Auroras are the most visible manifestation of the sun's effect on Earth, but many aspects of these spectacular displays are still poorly understood. Thanks to the joint European Space Agency and NASA's Cluster mission combined with data from a past NASA mission called the Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration, or IMAGE, a particular type of very high-latitude aurora has now been explained. Known as a theta aurora -- because seen from above it looks like the Greek letter theta, an oval with a line crossing through the center -- this type of aurora sometimes ...

ITHACA, N.Y. - To encode data, today's computer memory technology uses electric currents - a major limiting factor for reliability and shrinkability, and the source of significant power consumption. If data could instead be encoded without current - for example, by an electric field applied across an insulator - it would require much less energy, and make things like low-power, instant-on computing a ubiquitous reality. A team at Cornell University led by postdoctoral associate John Heron, who works jointly with Darrell Schlom, professor of Industrial Chemistry in the ...

Scientists from WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society), the Universidad Austral de Chile, the Blue Whale Center, the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), NOAA, and other organizations are examining molecular clues to answer a big question: how many types of blue whales exist in the waters of the southeastern Pacific? The answer seems to be two distinct populations, according to a genetic study comparing the blue whales off the southern coast of Chile with those swimming in the waters of Antarctica and other nearby regions. One of the populations could be made up of ...

By 2050, a majority of U.S. coastal areas are likely to be threatened by 30 or more days of flooding each year due to dramatically accelerating impacts from sea level rise, according to a new NOAA study, published today in the American Geophysical Union's online peer-reviewed journal Earth's Future. The findings appear in the paper From the Extreme to the Mean: Acceleration and Tipping Points for Coastal Inundation due to Sea Level Rise, and follows the earlier study, Sea Level Rise and Nuisance Flood Frequency Changes around the United States, by the report's co-author, ...

MANHATTAN, KANSAS -- A Kansas State University engineering team has discovered some of graphene oxide's important properties that can improve sodium- and lithium-ion flexible batteries. Gurpreet Singh, assistant professor of mechanical and nuclear engineering, and Lamuel David, doctoral student in mechanical engineering, India, published their findings in the Journal of Physical Chemistry in the article "Reduced graphene oxide paper electrode: Opposing effect of thermal annealing on Li and Na cyclability." Graphene oxide is an insulating and defective version of graphene ...

Many genetic mutations in visual pigments, spread over millions of years, were required for humans to evolve from a primitive mammal with a dim, shadowy view of the world into a greater ape able to see all the colors in a rainbow. Now, after more than two decades of painstaking research, scientists have finished a detailed and complete picture of the evolution of human color vision. PLOS Genetics is publishing the final pieces of this picture: The process for how humans switched from ultraviolet (UV) vision to violet vision, or the ability to see blue light. "We ...

Ibuprofen, a common over-the-counter drug used to relieve pain and fever, could hold the keys to a longer healthier life, according to a study by researchers at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. Publishing in PLoS Genetics on December 18th, scientists showed that regular doses of ibuprofen extended the lifespan of yeast, worms and fruit flies. "There is a lot to be excited about," said Brian Kennedy, PhD, CEO of the Buck Institute, who said treatments, given at doses comparable to those used in humans, extended lifespan an average of 15 percent in the model ...

Many animals may have a previously under-appreciated ability to make up for lost time with more effort, according to new research publishing this week in PLOS Computational Biology. This capability could help scientists better understand how animals make efficient decisions in changing environments -- and ultimately help ensure the survival of a species. Researchers from Princeton University challenge the conventional view that animals face a simple trade-off between the speed and the accuracy of their decisions. Adrian de Froment, Daniel Rubenstein and Simon Levin ...

Most vaccines work by inducing an immune response characterized by neutralizing antibodies against the respective pathogen. An effective HIV vaccine has remained elusive so far, but researchers have continued to make progress, often employing innovative methods. A study published on December 18th in PLOS Pathogens reports that a combination of antibodies from llamas can neutralize (destroy) a wide range of circulating HIV viruses. After initial disappointment that HIV vaccine candidates were unable to elicit neutralizing antibodies, researchers found that some HIV-infected ...

COLLEGE STATION -- A common over-the-counter drug that tackles pain and fever may also hold keys to a longer, healthier life, according to a Texas A&M AgriLife Research scientist. Regular doses of ibuprofen extended the lifespan of multiple species, according to research published in the journal Public Library of Science-Genetics. "We first used baker's yeast, which is an established aging model, and noticed that the yeast treated with ibuprofen lived longer," said Dr. Michael Polymenis, an AgriLife Research biochemist in College Station. "Then we tried the same process ...

This news release is available in Japanese, French, Spanish and Chinese on EurekAlert! Chinese. The Rosetta spacecraft caught up with the comet known as 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko beyond Mars this August, and its preliminary results--along with the studies it will allow in the near-future--top this year's list of the most important scientific breakthroughs, according to the editors of Science. This annual list of groundbreaking scientific achievements, selected by Science and its international nonprofit publisher, AAAS, also includes groundbreaking advances in medicine, ...

Research led by the Teichmann group on the Wellcome Genome Campus has identified a fundamental mechanism for controlling protein function. Published in the journal Science, the discovery has wide-ranging implications for biotechnology and medicine. The shape of a protein determines its function, for example whether it is able to interact with another protein or with a drug. But a protein's shape is not constant - it may change in response to different conditions, or simply as a matter of course. Understanding how this process works is key to figuring out how to manipulate ...

In the decade since the genome was sequenced in 2003, scientists and doctors have struggled to answer an all-consuming question: Which DNA mutations cause disease? A new computational technique developed at the University of Toronto may now be able to tell us. A Canadian research team led by professor Brendan Frey has developed the first method for 'ranking' genetic mutations based on how living cells 'read' DNA, revealing how likely any given alteration is to cause disease. They used their method to discover unexpected genetic determinants of autism, hereditary cancers ...

The majority of RNA expression differences between individuals have no connection to the abundance of a corresponding protein, report scientists from the University of Chicago and Stanford University in Science on Dec. 18. The findings point to a yet-unidentified cellular mechanism that regulates gene expression and suggest studies that rely only on RNA measurements to characterize gene function require further analysis. "The chief assumption for studies of RNA differences is that they ultimately reflect differences in an end product, which is protein," said senior study ...