Young HIV positive women are more likely to practice safer sex if they have an equitable perception of gender roles, according to new research involving the University of Southampton. The new study shows that South African women under 26 years old were more likely to have used a condom in their last sexual encounter if they held more gender equal views, while those who had a more male dominant perspective were less likely to have done so. However, the gender norms of women who were 26 years or older and men of all ages did not appear to have an impact on condom use. "Gender ...

By 2030, life expectancy in England and Wales is expected to reach 85·7 years for men and 87·6 years for women--closing the gap between male and female life expectancy from 6·0 years in 1981 to just 1·9 years by 2030, according to a new study published in The Lancet. Between 1981 and 2012, national life expectancy in England and Wales increased by 8·2 years in men (to 79·5 years) and 6·0 years in women (to 83·3 years). However, national progress has come at the cost of rising inequalities, and the gap between the ...

A survey of nearly 7000 people has revealed that 98 per cent want to be informed if researchers using their genetic data stumble upon indicators of a serious preventable or treatable disease. The study, which comes after the Government's announcement that Genomics England will sequence 100,000 genomes by 2017, begins an important and on-going conversation about how our genomic data is used. The results show that genomic data has a perceived value to participants even if it is not currently clear what the information means for health outcomes. However, in general, the ...

BALTIMORE, April 29, 2015 - Traumatic life events such as the death of a loved one or life-threatening illness increased the chances of a heart attack by more than 65 percent among middle-aged and older women regardless of heart disease risk factors or socioeconomic status, according to new research presented at the Quality of Care and Outcomes Research 2015 Scientific Sessions. Psychological stress is known to contribute to the risk of heart disease and heart attack, but in this study researchers looked at what types of stress had significant impact on heart health in ...

MINNEAPOLIS -- Professionals whose jobs require more speaking, developing strategies, conflict resolution and managerial tasks may experience better protection against memory and thinking decline in old age than their co-workers, according to a new study published in the April 29, 2015, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. "Our study is important because it suggests that the type of work you do throughout your career may have even more significance on your brain health than your education does," said study author Francisca ...

MISSOULA -- When temperatures rise and less water falls, forests respond. Forest canopies can buffer juvenile trees from drought and heat by providing shade for the younger trees below the leaf and needle cover. Adult trees have deep roots and can handle hot and dry conditions better than juveniles of the same species. However, current models of how forests will respond to climate change don't account for this difference between adult and juvenile trees. Recent research by Solomon Dobrowski, a University of Montana professor of forest landscape ecology, finds that climatic ...

Children born to mothers experiencing economic hardship, who were also exposed during pregnancy to high levels of PAH (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons), scored significantly lower on IQ tests at age 5 compared with children born to mothers with greater economic security and less exposure to the pollutants. The findings by researchers at the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health (CCCEH) at the Mailman School of Public Health appear in the journal Neurotoxicology and Teratology. PAH are ubiquitous in the environment from emissions from motor vehicles, oil, ...

The human body is a cross between a factory and a construction zone -- at least on the cellular level. Certain proteins act as project managers, which direct a wide variety of processes and determine the fate of the cell as a whole. One group of proteins called the WD-repeat (WDR) family helps a cell choose which of the thousands of possible gene products it should manufacture. These WDR proteins fold into a three-dimensional structure resembling a doughnut -- an unusual shape that allows WDR proteins to act as stable platforms on which large protein complexes can assemble ...

Offering a potential early intervention for Alzheimer's disease (AD), researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Cenna Biosciences, Inc. have identified compounds that block the production of beta amyloid peptides in mice. The study is reported April 29 in PLOS ONE. If the results ultimately translate to human treatment, the most promising compound - a peptide dubbed P8 - could be administered to individuals at high risk of developing the disease, long before the tell-tale signs of dementia occur and perhaps with few side effects, due to ...

Understanding extinct species diets may require a greater understanding of the relationship between skull biomechanics and the animals' ancestry than previously thought, according to a new study published April 29, 2015 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Zhijie Jack Tseng and John Flynn from the American Museum of Natural History. The diet of long-extinct animals may be inferred by using modern animals with similar skull shapes and tooth patterns as models, but scientists aren't sure if diet is the main factor influencing skull shape and biomechanics. To understand ...

April 24, 2015. Almost since the time of Melville's epic hunt, scientists have been fascinated by the remarkable attributes of the sperm whale and its kin, the smaller pigmy and dwarf whales. Capable of diving to great depths and gifted with an acute sense of echolocation, these animals have remained inseparable from maritime lore. An international team of scientists, led by the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County's Curator of Marine Mammals Dr. Jorge Velez-Juarbe, has discovered a new species of an extinct pigmy sperm whale from Panama that clarifies key aspects ...

(Philadelphia, PA) - For more than 100 years, exposing students to basic and clinical research has been an essential component of a medical school education in the United States. However, today, new models of medical education in which research plays a minimal role are likely to create a two-tiered system of education, decrease the physician-scientist pipeline and diminish the application of scientific advances to patient care. Those are the concerns outlined in "American Medical Education at a Crossroads" - a position paper published April 29 by Science Translational ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Kaiba was just a newborn when he turned blue because his little lungs weren't getting the oxygen they needed. Garrett spent the first year of his life in hospital beds tethered to a ventilator, being fed through his veins because his body was too sick to absorb food. Baby Ian's heart stopped before he was even six months old. Three babies all had the same life-threatening condition: a terminal form of tracheobronchomalacia, which causes the windpipe to periodically collapse and prevents normal breathing. There was no cure and life-expectancies were ...

Having to pay for dental health care can put a considerable strain on household finances in many countries, according to an international study led by King's College London. The new study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, assessed the extent of household 'catastrophic dental health expenditure' (CDHE) in 41 low and middle income countries. Expenditure was defined as catastrophic if it was equal to or higher than 40% of the household's capacity to pay. Up to 7% of the households surveyed in these countries had incurred catastrophic dental health expenditure in ...

New Haven, Conn.--Improving access to public toilets in South African urban settlements may reduce both the incidence of sexual assaults by nearly 30% and the overall cost to society, a study by researchers at the Yale School of Public Health and Yale School of Management found. The research was published April 29 in PLOS ONE. Development and human rights organizations have pointed to inadequate local sanitation facilities as a key factor in a woman's risk for physical or sexual assault. Many women in South Africa must travel out of their homes to public toilets, ...

The Public Health Agency of Sweden has developed a method of typing that can allow laboratories to faster establish the presence of hospital outbreaks of the intestinal bacterium Clostridium difficile. The findings are now published in PLOS ONE. The Clostridium difficile bacteria exist in the intestines of 2-5 per cent of the healthy population, and is rather common among infants. In certain circumstances the bacteria can induce diarrhea in persons treated with antibiotics. The diarrhea is in some cases serious. The majority of the cases occur at hospitals. This is ...

HOUSTON - (April 29, 2015) - Researchers in the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston Methodist and the Texas Children's Hospital have expanded the use of virus-specific cell therapy in cord blood transplant patients to successfully prevent three of the most problematic post-transplant viruses affecting this group of patients that have yet to be addressed clinically - cytomegalovirus (CMV), Epstein-Barr virus (EBV), and adenovirus. The team published their results of a clinical trial that evaluated the safety and efficacy of the therapy ...

Scientists have identified chemical markers in urine associated with body mass, providing insights into how obesity causes disease. Being overweight or obese is associated with higher risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes and cancer, but the mechanisms connecting body fat and disease are not well understood. The new study, led by Imperial College London, shows that obesity has a 'metabolic signature' detectable in urine samples, pointing to processes that could be targeted to mitigate its effects on health. The findings are published in Science Translational Medicine. Urine ...

Locally-sourced antibiotics can be as effective as 'internationally quality-assured' (IQA) antibiotics for treating multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) in Pakistan, and may help avoid delays in starting treatment while programmes wait for drugs to arrive from overseas, according to new research published in PLOS ONE. The study is the first to compare outcomes of MDR-TB patients treated using IQA drugs with those treated using locally procured drugs in the same hospitals over the same period. It was a collaboration between researchers from the London School of ...

Government policies that support UK pharmaceutical science and enhance export income are costing the NHS millions and undermine the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. In an essay published today by the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, health economists Professor Alan Maynard and Professor Karen Bloor describe an inflationary regulatory system that lacks accountability, is not evidence-based and subverts the efficiency of the technology appraisal work carried out by NICE, a target of pharmaceutical industry hostility since it was established in 1999. Professors ...

If you want to know the secrets of healthier eating, think of the kitchen fruit bowl. A fruit bowl makes fruit more convenient, attractive, and normal to eat than if the same fruit were in the bottom of the refrigerator. A new Cornell study analyzed 112 studies that collected information about healthy eating behaviors and found that most healthy eaters did so because a restaurant, grocery store, school cafeteria, or spouse made foods like fruits and vegetables visible and easy to reach (convenient), enticingly displayed (attractive), and appear like an obvious choice ...

Having a child diagnosed with epilepsy can be a frightening and confusing time. Now, parents share their arduous and "circuitous" journey to get referrals for pediatric epilepsy surgery once their child's disease stops responding to anti-seizure medications. The UCLA study sheds light on the difficulties parents face obtaining specialty and sub-specialty care for their children during an already stressful time. The study points to the need to develop interventions that target and remediate these barriers to comprehensive epilepsy care for children, said study first ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Individuals with Type 2 Diabetes have difficulty regulating their glucose -- or blood sugar -- levels, particularly after meals. Now, University of Missouri researchers have found that Type 2 diabetics can eat more protein at breakfast to help reduce glucose spikes at both breakfast and lunch. "People often assume that their glucose response at one meal will be identical to their responses at other meals, but that really isn't the case," said Jill Kanaley, professor and associate chair in the MU Department of Nutrition and Exercise Physiology. "For instance, ...

Weill Cornell Medical College researchers have shown for the first time that a gene previously implicated in blood vessel formation during embryonic development and tumor growth also induces immune suppression during tumor development. This finding, published April 29 in Nature Communications, opens the door for new therapeutic approaches and vaccine development in treating patients with melanoma and other advanced-staged cancers. Two decades ago, researchers discovered that a gene called Inhibitor of Differentiation 1 (Id1), which is normally found in the embryo, was ...

Chemotherapy can be very effective against small prostate tumors. Larger prostate tumors, however, accumulate cells that suppress the body's immune response, allowing the cancer to grow despite treatment. Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine now find that blocking or removing these immune-suppressing cells allows a special type of chemotherapy -- and the immune cells it activates -- to destroy prostate tumors. This novel combination therapy, termed chemoimmunotherapy, achieved near complete remission in mouse models of advanced prostate ...