July 6, 2015 CHAPEL HILL, NC - Insulin resistance affects tens of millions of Americans and is a big risk factor for heart disease. Yet, some people with the condition never develop heart disease, while some experience moderate coronary blockages. Others, though, get severe atherosclerosis - multiple blockages and deterioration of coronary arteries characterized by thick, hard, plaque-ridden arterial walls. Researchers at the UNC School of Medicine created a first-of-its-kind animal model to pinpoint two biomarkers that are elevated in the most severe form of coronary disease. The ...

Researchers have found several key differences among people who receive hospice care--which maintains or improves the quality of life for someone whose condition is unlikely to be cured--in assisted-living facilities (ALFs) compared with people who receive hospice care at home. People receiving hospice care in ALFs were more likely to be older and female than people who received hospice care at home. Also, people living in ALFs enrolled in hospice care much earlier than patients living in home settings. This allowed them to receive more help from the hospice team before ...

Lyme disease is currently estimated to affect 300,000 people in the U.S. every year, and blacklegged ticks, the disease's main vector, have recently flourished in areas previously thought to be devoid of this arachnid. A new study finds that the newly detected tick populations likely arose mainly from southern populations that migrated to nearby northern locations. "The fine temporal and spatial scale of the samples analyzed allowed for precise estimates of the rate, timing, and direction of individual migratory events," said Dr. Camilo Khatchikian, lead author of the ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Looking around at a 20th high school reunion, you might notice something puzzling about your classmates. Although they were all born within months of each other, these 38-year-olds appear to be aging at different rates. Indeed they are, say the leaders of a large long-term human health study in New Zealand that has sought clues to the aging process in young adults. In a paper appearing the week of July 6 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team from the U.S., UK, Israel and New Zealand introduces a panel of 18 biological measures ...

Madison, Wis. -- In rhesus monkey families - just as in their human cousins - anxious parents are more likely to have anxious offspring. And a new study in an extended family of monkeys provides important insights into how the risk of developing anxiety and depression is passed from parents to children. The study from the Department of Psychiatry and the Health Emotions Research Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows how an over-active brain circuit involving three brain areas inherited from generation to generation may set the stage for developing ...

Across the entire world, women can expect to live longer than men. But why does this occur, and was this always the case? According to a new study led by University of Southern California Leonard Davis School of Gerontology researchers, significant differences in life expectancies between the sexes first emerged as recently as the turn of the 20th century. As infectious disease prevention, improved diets and other positive health behaviors were adopted by people born during the 1800s and early 1900s, death rates plummeted, but women began reaping the longevity benefits ...

PITTSBURGH, July 6, 2015 - University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI) scientists recently led a panel of experts in revising national guidelines for thyroid cancer testing to reflect newly available tests that better incorporate personalized medicine into diagnosing the condition. Their clinical explanation for when to use and how to interpret thyroid cancer tests is published in the July issue of the scientific journal Thyroid. The American Thyroid Association is revising its 2015 Guidelines for Thyroid Nodule and Thyroid Cancer Management to direct doctors to ...

Alexandria, VA - With the Internet, science and a little imagination, scientists are able to bring remote worlds to life. Dinologue.com brings the Mesozoic to life, and EARTH Magazine reviews it in the July 2015 issue. The website was created through a partnership between Parallax Film Productions and popular science writer, and amateur paleontologist, Brian Switek. The Dinologue portal is filled with captivating articles and adventurous videos to help bring science and paleontology to the masses. Get the geoscientist's perspective of Dinologue in EARTH Magazine: http://bit.ly/1JJDy7r. The ...

Researchers have provided a new roadmap for tackling future agricultural production issues by using solutions that involve crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM), a specialized type of photosynthesis that enhances the efficiency by which plants use water. Plants that use CAM, which include cacti and agave, are typically found in dry environments. Increasing agricultural production to accommodate society's growing population might be achieved by developing CAM crops as new sources for food, feed, fiber, and bioenergy or by engineering non-CAM crops to use CAM strategies to ...

Putnam Valley, N.Y. (July 6, 2015) - Peripheral nerve injuries often are caused by trauma or surgical complications and can result in considerable disabilities. Regeneration of peripheral nerves can be accomplished effectively using autologous (self-donated) nerve grafts, but that procedure may sacrifice a functional nerve and cause loss of sensation in another part of the patient's body. Searching for an alternative to autologous nerve grafts (autografts), researchers in Japan transplanted mobilized dental pulp stem cells (MDPSCs) into laboratory rats with sciatic nerve ...

By studying climate data in the British-Irish Isles over a 142-year period, researchers have confirmed the important role of cyclones. Seasonal precipitation totals were strongly related to cyclone frequency, especially during summer. The researchers found that relative to the 1961-1990 period, summers have become much wetter and more cyclonic. The move towards wetter summers in recent years is more of a re-establishment of conditions typical of the earlier half of the 20th Century rather than being unusual in the long term. Recent years have seen three of the stormiest ...

For the first time, researchers have used a simplified technique derived from a defense mechanism evolved by bacteria and other single-celled organisms to successfully insert a large DNA sequence into a predetermined genomic site in mammalian cells. The methods used may help investigators genetically engineer cells to produce high levels of certain proteins--for example by placing the DNA sequence of a particular protein at the site of a highly active gene. "The CRISPR-Cas system has been previously used to insert a foreign DNA sequence into a targeted genomic site ...

Since Ebola was first described in 1976, there have been several outbreaks, but all have been self-limiting. In a new Journal of Internal Medicine review, Dr. Ali Mirazimi of the Karolinska Institutet considers why the latest outbreak occurred and discusses the factors that contributed to making it the largest, most sustained, and most widespread outbreak of Ebola. He also notes that several potential treatments are now undergoing clinical trials and have shown initial promising results. "Emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases will continue to challenge both human ...

Researchers have developed a non-invasive technique that allows clinicians to accurately detect various forms of skin cancer. The current clinical "gold standard" non-invasive technique, called dermoscopy, is a highly subjective method. But by using what's called Raman spectroscopy, investigators found that malignant melanoma could be detected with an accuracy of 91% and non-melanoma skin cancers could be detected with accuracy between 73% and 85%. "The non-invasive and label-free nature of Raman spectroscopy enables the application in various medical fields. The method ...

Differences in the number of oil-secreting glands in the skin may help explain why wrinkles are shallower in the forehead than in the outer eye area, suggests new research conducted on cadavers. Investigators suspect that the presence of oil-secreting glands and a thinner inner layer of skin, or dermis, may let the skin deform more easily and might be a cause for the development of wrinkles. The findings are published in Clinical Anatomy. INFORMATION: ...

Long QT syndrome (LQTS), a rare hereditary heart condition, can lead to life-threatening arrhythmias, or fast heartbeat irregularities. New research indicates that children with LQTS who take medications for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are at increased risk of experiencing heart-related problems--especially syncope, or the loss of consciousness. "In light of these findings, special attention is needed when prescribing ADHD medications for LQTS patients, starting with the lowest effective dose and planning close follow-up," said Dr. Valentina Kutyifa, ...

WASHINGTON (July 6, 2015) - The prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors like hypertension, high cholesterol, and diabetes have been decreasing in the United States and Europe, however they appear to be on the rise in Asia, particularly Japan, according to a guest editor page published today in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Using data from epidemiological studies and examining a health program launched by the Japanese government, guest editor Masafumi Kitakaze, M.D., Ph.D., found many risk factors in the Japanese population remain unchanged or even ...

WASHINGTON (July 6, 2015) -- Adults who walked briskly, were moderately active in their leisure time, drank moderately, didn't smoke and avoided obesity had half the risk of heart failure as adults who did not optimize these modifiable risk factors, according to a study that followed nearly 4,500 adults for two decades. The study was published today in JACC: Heart Failure. Heart failure, a condition where the heart fails to pump as much blood as the body needs, is increasing in frequency in the United States and is a leading cause of hospitalization for people over age ...

Common extra heartbeats known as premature ventricular contractions (PVCs) may be a modifiable risk factor for congestive heart failure (CHF) and death, according to researchers at UC San Francisco. The study, which is in the July 14 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC), is based on more than a decade of research of 1,139 participants from the national Cardiovascular Health Study. PVCs are extra, abnormal heartbeats that occur in the ventricles. They disrupt the heart's regular rhythm but usually are no reason for concern or require treatment. ...

(Philadelphia, PA) - Lupus, multiple sclerosis, and type-1 diabetes are among more than a score of diseases in which the immune system attacks the body it was designed to defend. But just why the immune system begins its misdirected assault has remained a mystery. Now, researchers at Temple University School of Medicine (TUSM) have shown that bacterial communities known as biofilm play a role in the development of the autoimmune disease systemic lupus erythematosus -- a discovery that may provide important clues about several autoimmune ailments. A team led by TUSM ...

Adolescents who saw advertising for medical marijuana were more likely to either report using marijuana or say they planned to use the substance in the future, according to a new RAND Corporation study. Studying more than 8,000 Southern California middle school students, researchers found that youth who reported seeing any ads for medical marijuana were twice as likely as peers who reported never seeing an ad to have used marijuana or report higher intentions to use the drug in the future. The study was published online by the journal Psychology of Addictive Behaviors. Researchers ...

Converting large tracts of the Midwest's marginal farming land to perennial biofuel crops carries with it some key unknowns, including how it could affect the balance of water between rainfall, evaporation and movement of soil water to groundwater. In humid climates such as the U.S. Midwest, evaporation returns more than half of the annual precipitation to the atmosphere, with the remainder available to recharge groundwater and maintain stream flow and lake levels. A recent study from the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center and published in Environmental Research ...

Worcester, Mass. - A study by a multidisciplinary research team, co-directed by Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), offers new insights into how virulent fungi adapt through genetic modifications to fight back against the effects of medication designed to block their spread, and how that battle leaves them temporarily weakened. These insights may provide clues to new ways to treat notoriously difficult-to-cure fungal infections like thrush and vaginitis. The team studied patients infected with the fungus Candida albicans (C. albicans), which causes common yeast infections ...

WASHINGTON (July 6, 2015) -- The investigation of a simple protein has uncovered its uniquely complicated role in the spread of the childhood cancer, osteosarcoma. It turns out the protein, called ezrin, acts like an air traffic controller, coordinating multiple functions within a cancer cell and allowing it to endure stress conditions encountered during metastasis. It's been known that ezrin is a key regulator of osteosarcoma's spread to the lungs, but its mechanism was not known. Osteosarcoma is a tumor of bone that afflicts children, adolescents and young adults. In ...

Mohamed Boutjdir, PhD, professor of medicine, cell biology, and physiology and pharmacology at SUNY Downstate Medical Center, has led a study with international collaborators identifying the mechanism by which patients with various autoimmune and connective tissue disorders may be at risk for life-threatening cardiac events if they take certain anti-histamine or anti-depressant medications. Dr. Boutjdir is also director of the Cardiac Research Program at VA New York Harbor Healthcare System. The researchers published their findings in the online edition of the American ...