Vitamin D insufficiency was associated with faster decline in cognitive functions among a group of ethnically diverse older adults, according to an article published online by JAMA Neurology. In addition to promoting calcium absorption and bone health, vitamin D may influence all organ systems. Both the vitamin D receptor and the enzyme that converts 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25-OHD) to the active form of the vitamin are expressed in all human organs, including the brain. Thus, research has increasingly examined the association between vitamin D status and a variety of health ...

To encourage hospitals to improve quality of care, Medicare penalizes those with higher than expected rates of readmission within 30 days of discharge. The logic behind the penalties is that if patients receive high quality care, including proper discharge planning, they should be less likely to end up back in the hospital. This seems straightforward, but it turns out that the social and clinical characteristics of a hospital's patient population that are not included in Medicare's calculation explain nearly half of the difference in readmission rates between the best- ...

Black children were less likely to receive any pain medication for moderate pain and less likely to receive opioids for severe pain than white children in a study of racial disparities in the pain management of children with appendicitis in emergency departments, according to an article published online by JAMA Pediatrics. Racial and ethnic differences in the emergency department (ED) management of pain have been described, with lower rates of opioid prescription for black and Hispanic patients than for white patients. However, there are fewer studies in children. Appendicitis ...

The largest population genome sequencing effort to date is published today in Nature. A series of papers describing resources and application of the data is published at the same time in Nature, Nature Genetics, Bioinformatics and Nature Communications. Rare genetic variants are changes in DNA that are carried only by relatively few people in a population. The UK10K study was designed to explore the contribution of these rare genetic variants to human disease and its risk factors. "The project has made important new contributions towards describing the role of rare ...

This news release is available in Spanish. Final OS and subgroup analysis of the pivotal study SAR-3007 First interim results of the Y-IMAGE prospective study showing real-world data for trabectedin in advanced soft tissue sarcoma (STS) Clinical data of trabectedin in translocated-related sarcomas, and in advanced leiomyosarcomas and liposarcomas Early clinical studies of PM1183 in combination with paclitaxel or cisplatin show a synergistic activity Madrid, September 14, 2015: PharmaMar announces that it will show new data from clinical pivotal ...

This news release is available in French. We have known for some years that Alzheimer's disease is characterised by two types of lesions, amyloid plaques and degenerated tau protein. Cholesterol plays an important role in the physiopathology of this disease. Two French research teams (Inserm/CEA/University of Lille/University of Paris-Sud ) have just shown, in a rodent model, that overexpressing an enzyme that can eliminate excess cholesterol from the brain may have a beneficial action on the tau component of the disease, and completely correct it. This is the first ...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 14, 2015 -- It's a condition that turns the lives of millions of Americans upside-down: addiction. Whether it's alcohol, drugs, food or gambling, it can ruin lives. In support of National Recovery Month, which calls attention to substance abuse issues and treatment services, Reactions takes a look at the chemistry behind addiction. Check it out here: https://youtu.be/C6I3CHhBGeQ. Subscribe to the series at http://bit.ly/ACSReactions, and follow us on Twitter @ACSreactions to be the first to see our latest videos. INFORMATION:The American Chemical ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Protected areas not only keep significant swaths of Indonesia's shrinking mangrove habitats intact, but also prevent emissions of carbon dioxide that would have been released had these mangroves been cleared, according to a study in the journal Ecological Economics. Published online, the analysis examined the success of protected areas between 2000 and 2010, finding that their use has avoided the loss of 14,000 hectares of mangrove habitat. "This is not a small number," said Daniela Miteva, a postdoctoral researcher at The Nature Conservancy and a Duke ...

Whether you have taken a side or a backseat in the discussion, the "food versus fuel" debate affects us all. Some say growing more biofuel crops today will decrease greenhouse gas emissions, but will make it harder to produce food tomorrow, which has prevented the U.S. from maximizing the potential of environmentally beneficial biofuels. In a recent article, published by the National Academy of Engineering, University of Illinois' Gutgsell Endowed Chair of Plant Biology and Crop Sciences Steve Long and University of California's Philomathia Professor of Alternative Energy ...

University of Queensland scientists have found a genetic basis for height and body mass differences between European populations. Queensland Brain Institute researcher Dr Matthew Robinson said the findings could explain why people from northern European countries tended on average to be taller and slimmer than other Europeans. He said the genes that resulted in greater height correlated strongly with genes that reduced body mass index. "Our findings give a genetic basis to the stereotype of Scandinavians as being tall and lean," Dr Robinson said. The study paves ...

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University have found molecular evidence of how a biochemical process controls the lengths of protective chromosome tips, a potentially significant step in ultimately understanding cancer growth and aging. In a paper recently published as the cover story in the online journal eLife, biologist David C. Zappulla and graduate student Evan P. Hass show how in baker's yeast cells, two proteins work together to usher a key enzyme to the chromosome tip, the telomere, to restore its length, which diminishes with each round of cell division. That ...

A new study from researchers at Uppsala University shows that variation in genome size may be much more important than previously believed. It is clear that, at least sometimes, a large genome is a good genome. 'Our study shows that females with larger genome lay more eggs and males with larger genome fertilize more eggs', says research leader Göran Arnqvist, Professor of Animal Ecology at Uppsala University. The study of seed beetles is published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. The amount of nuclear DNA per cell, or the ...

Philadelphia, PA, September 14, 2015 - One in four middle-aged adults who survive to age 85 will develop heart failure, according to current estimates. Intervention programs to improve lifestyles are widely advocated, but do they actually work? Investigators in the U.S. and Taiwan independently examined programs that may reduce cardiovascular risk and concluded that both programs will reduce lifetime risk of heart failure. Results are reported in The American Journal of Medicine. A group of American investigators estimated whether greater adherence to the American Heart ...

Philadelphia, PA, September 14, 2015 - The latest issue of Biological Psychiatry presents the results of three studies implicating metabotropic glutamate receptor 2 (mGluR2) as a new molecular target for the treatment of addiction. Group II metabotropic glutamate receptors, which include the subtypes mGluR2 and mGluR3, have been known targets for addiction treatment. Unfortunately, mGluR2/3 agonists studied to date have shown important limitations, including development of tolerance and decreasing food intake along with drug intake. Thus, scientists have been working ...

This news release is available in German. FRANKFURT. Optogenetics is a quickly expanding field of research which has revolutionized neurobiological and cellbiological research around the world. It uses natural or tailored light-sensitive proteins in order to switch nerve cells on and off without electrodes with unprecedented accuracy in respect to time and location. The discovery of the light-gated ion channel channelrhodopsin in algae in 2002 was a key finding for this field. In 2005, Frankfurt scientists working with Prof. Alexander Gottschalk succeeded in transferring ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio--The next time someone accuses you of making an irrational decision, just explain that you're obeying the laws of quantum physics. A new trend taking shape in psychological science not only uses quantum physics to explain humans' (sometimes) paradoxical thinking, but may also help researchers resolve certain contradictions among the results of previous psychological studies. According to Zheng Joyce Wang and others who try to model our decision-making processes mathematically, the equations and axioms that most closely match human behavior may be ones ...

An international study led by a University of Queensland researcher has revealed more than half the world's sea turtles have ingested plastic or other human rubbish. The study, led by Dr Qamar Schuyler from UQ's School of Biological Sciences, found the east coasts of Australia and North America, Southeast Asia, southern Africa, and Hawaii were particularly dangerous for turtles due to a combination of debris loads and high species diversity. "The results indicate that approximately 52 per cent of turtles world-wide have eaten debris," Dr Schuyler said. The study ...

Melbourne summer temperatures have been steadily climbing over the past 25 years, but even more so during the two weeks of the Australian Open in late January, new data analysis reveals. The average afternoon temperature in January has risen by 0.8 degrees Celsius per decade since 1987. But in the two weeks of the Australian Open - usually held in mid-late January - temperatures have increased by 1.25 degrees per decade. Ben Hague, a third-year Atmosphere and Ocean Sciences student at the University of Melbourne, said extreme summer temperatures have also become more ...

MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, Mass. (Sept. 14, 2015)--A new study finds that the characteristics of one's community may be as important as individual factors on the decision to become an organ donor. The study, published in The Milbank Quarterly, shows an association between sociodemographic/social capital measures and organ donor registrations across 4,466 Massachusetts neighborhoods. In order to increase organ donation registrations, the research suggests that future health policies adopt a community-level focus. The shortage of organs for transplantation has reached unprecedented ...

The globe's forests have shrunk by three per cent since 1990 - an area equivalent to the size of South Africa - despite significant improvements in conservation over the past decade. The UN's Global Forest Resources Assessment (GFRA) 2015 was released this week, revealing that while the pace of forest loss has slowed, the damage over the past 25 years has been considerable. Total forest area has declined by three per cent between 1990 and 2015 from 4,128 million hectares to 3,999 million hectares - a loss of 129 million hectares. Significantly, loss of natural forested ...

Alzheimer's-disease-related proteases, BACE1 and APH1B-y-secretase, control axonal guidance by regulating growth cone dynamics BACE1 is the major drug target for Alzheimer's disease, but we know surprisingly little about its normal function in the CNS. Soraia Barão and Bart De Strooper (VIB/KU Leuven) now show that this protease is critically involved in axonal guidance processes in thalamic and hippocampal neurons. An active membrane bound proteolytic CHL1 fragment is generated by BACE1 upon Sema3A binding. This fragment relays the Sema3A signal to the neuronal ...

Persons sleeping less than 6 hours or more than 10 hours suffer from low-grade inflammation more often than persons sleeping 7-8 hours per night. This was observed in a University of Eastern Finland study focusing on the health and lifestyle habits among middle-aged men. "Earlier studies have found a relation between reduced sleep and low-grade inflammation," says Maria Luojus, MHSc, one of the study researchers. Furthermore, low-grade inflammation occurs in overweight, depression and diabetes. The study is the first to analyse the association between sleep duration ...

Results of a 20-year follow-up of the academic EORTC 22881-10882 boost no-boost trial presented as a "Best Abstract" at the European Cancer Congress 2015 in Vienna show that young age, high-grade invasive tumor, and the presence of associated ductal carcinoma in situ were all factors increasing the local recurrence rate. An earlier analysis had already shown that young age and high-grade invasive carcinoma were the most important risk factors for local relapse in this trial conducted from 1989 to 1996. Dr. Conny Vrieling of the Clinique des Grangettes in Geneva, Switzerland, ...

A new study has confirmed that regular smokers have a significantly increased risk of tooth loss. Male smokers are up to 3.6 times more likely to lose their teeth than non-smokers, whereas female smokers were found to be 2.5 times more likely. The research, published in the Journal of Dental Research, is the output of a long-term longitudinal study of the EPIC Potsdam cohort in Germany carried out by researchers at the University of Birmingham and the German Institute of Human Nutrition. Tooth loss remains a major public health problem worldwide. In the UK, 15% of ...

Malnutrition is a known complication of weight loss surgery, but findings from a small study by researchers at Johns Hopkins show many obese people may be malnourished before they undergo the procedure. "Our results highlight the often-overlooked paradox that abundance of food and good nutrition are not one and the same," says senior investigator Kimberley Steele, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "Overweight and obese people can suffer from nutritional deficiencies, and those who care for them should be aware ...