Radon gas is a silent health threat, and Canada needs to align its guidelines for acceptable radon levels with World Health Organization (WHO) limits, argues an editorial in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). "We are left in an odd situation in Canada," writes Dr. Diane Kelsall, Deputy Editor, CMAJ. "Drivers and passengers are required to wear seat belts, which are estimated to save about 1000 lives per year. Smoke alarms are required in most jurisdictions, reducing the annual rate of fire-related deaths from 130 per million households by about two-thirds. Yet, ...

ROSEMONT, Ill.--Woman in general have a higher incidence of osteoporosis-related hip fractures yet, conversely, they have a lower rate of mortality than men with the same fracture, according to a study in the June 2015 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (JAAOS). In addition, doctors don't always recognize or treat osteoporosis in men as often as they do in women. "Male and Female Differences Matter in Musculoskeletal Disease" details the differences between how common musculoskeletal disorders manifest themselves in males versus females. ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Why are major surgical errors called "never events?" Because they shouldn't happen -- but do. Mayo Clinic researchers identified 69 never events among 1.5 million invasive procedures performed over five years and detailed why each occurred. Using a system created to investigate military plane crashes, they coded the human behaviors involved to identify any environmental, organizational, job and individual characteristics that led to the never events. Their discovery: 628 human factors contributed to the errors overall, roughly four to nine per event. ...

New research on kidney stone formation reveals that zinc levels may contribute to kidney stone formation, a common urinary condition that can cause excruciating pain. The research found that zinc may be the core by which stone formation starts. The study, led by UC San Francisco, opens a new perspective into the cause of urinary stones and related diseases and might ultimately lead to the identification of new preventive and therapeutic approaches. The article appears in the scientific journal PLOS ONE. "The ultimate goal of our research team is to prevent kidney ...

TORONTO, ON [1 June 2015] - By observing galaxies billions of light-years away, a team of astronomers has detected tube-like structures mere hundreds of kilometres above the Earth's surface. "For over 60 years, scientists believed these structures existed but by imaging them for the first time, we've provided visual evidence that they are really there," said Cleo Loi of the ARC Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO) at the University of Sydney and lead author of a paper published in Geophysical Research Letters last week. The astronomers--including ...

Breastfeeding for six months or longer was associated with a lower risk of childhood leukemia compared with children who were never breastfed or who were breastfed for a shorter time, according to an article published online by JAMA Pediatrics. Leukemia is the most common childhood cancer and accounts for about 30 percent of all childhood cancers. Still, little is known about its cause. Breast milk is meant to exclusively supply all the nutritional needs of infants and current recommendations include exclusively breastfeeding for the first six months of life to optimize ...

A study of patients in Denmark suggests that type 2 diabetes may be associated with a reduced risk for the fatal neurodegenerative disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), according to an article published online by JAMA Neurology. Recent reports have suggested a protective association between vascular risk factors, such as obesity or higher body mass index (BMI), higher cholesterol levels and hyperlipidemia with ALS incidence and survival. Patients with type 2 diabetes have, on average, higher BMI, elevated blood lipid levels and defective energy metabolism. However, ...

Policies passed by states to encourage organ donation have had virtually no effect on rates of organ donation and transplantation in the United States, according to an article published online by JAMA Internal Medicine. The shortage of solid organs for transplant is a critical public health challenge in the United States. Since the late 1980s, states have enacted numerous policies to increase the organ supply. Researcher Erika G. Martin, Ph.D., M.P.H., of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government and Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy, University ...

A three-year study of a 'medical home' intervention that paid bonuses to physician practices based on financial savings has shown significant improvements in quality and use of some medical services relative to comparison practices, according to a new RAND Corporation study. The study is the first published evaluation of a multipayer medical home intervention that featured shared savings for primary care practices. The results appear in the June 1 edition of JAMA Internal Medicine. By paying bonuses to participating practices based on reaching quality and spending benchmarks, ...

Cleveland: Cleveland Clinic researchers have discovered for the first time that a metabolite of an FDA-approved drug for metastatic prostate cancer, abiraterone (Abi), has more anti-cancer properties than its precursor. The research will be published online June 1st in Nature. Cleveland Clinic researcher Nima Sharifi, M.D., found that abiraterone, a steroid inhibitor, is converted into the more physiologically active D4A (Δ4-abiraterone) in both patients and animal models with prostate cancer who take the drug. Furthermore, they found that D4A is more effective ...

For more than a decade, scientists have had a working map of the human genome, a complete picture of the DNA sequence that encodes human life. But new pages are still being added to that atlas: maps of chemical markers called methyl groups that stud strands of DNA and influence which genes are repressed and when. Now, Salk scientists have constructed the most comprehensive maps yet of these chemical patterns--collectively called the epigenome--in more than a dozen different human organs from individual donors (including a woman, man and child). While the methylation ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- New compounds that specifically attack fungal infections without attacking human cells could transform treatment for such infections and point the way to targeted medicines that evade antibiotic resistance. Led by University of Illinois chemistry professor Martin D. Burke, a team of chemists, microbiologists and immunologists developed and tested several derivatives of the antifungal drug amphotericin B (pronounced am-foe-TARE-uh-sin B). They published their findings in the journal Nature Chemical Biology. Amphotericin B is doctors' last, best defense ...

WASHINGTON, DC, June 1, 2015 -- Non-heterosexual women who feel a disconnect between who they are attracted to and how they identify themselves may have a higher risk of alcohol abuse, according to a new study led by Amelia E. Talley, an assistant professor in Texas Tech University's Department of Psychological Sciences. The study, titled "Longitudinal Associations among Discordant Sexual Orientation Dimensions and Hazardous Drinking in a Cohort of Sexual Minority Women," appears in the June issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior. It delves into the reasons ...

A new study links a commonly used household pesticide with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children and young teens. The study found an association between pyrethroid pesticide exposure and ADHD, particularly in terms of hyperactivity and impulsivity, rather than inattentiveness. The association was stronger in boys than in girls. The study, led by researchers at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, is published online in the journal Environmental Health. "Given the growing use of pyrethroid pesticides and the perception that they may ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - In northwestern Greenland, glaciers flow from the main ice sheet to the ocean in see-sawing seasonal patterns. The ice generally flows faster in the summer than in winter, and the ends of glaciers, jutting out into the ocean, also advance and retreat with the seasons. Now, a new analysis shows some important connections between these seasonal patterns, sea ice cover and longer-term trends. Glaciologists hope the findings, accepted for publication in the June issue of the American Geophysical Union's Journal of Geophysical Research-Earth Surface and ...

Washington, DC, June 1, 2015 - Tweets regarding the Ebola outbreak in West Africa last summer reached more than 60 million people in the three days prior to official outbreak announcements, according to a study published in the June issue of the American Journal of Infection Control, the official publication of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC). Researchers from the Columbia University School of Nursing in New York analyzed over 42,000 Ebola-related tweets posted to the social networking site Twitter, from July 24 - August ...

In the last 40 years, fructose, a simple carbohydrate derived from fruit and vegetables, has been on the increase in American diets. Because of the addition of high-fructose corn syrup to many soft drinks and processed baked goods, fructose currently accounts for 10 percent of caloric intake for U.S. citizens. Male adolescents are the top fructose consumers, deriving between 15 to 23 percent of their calories from fructose--three to four times more than the maximum levels recommended by the American Heart Association. A recent study at the Beckman Institute for Advanced ...

Biology isn't the only reason women eat less as they near ovulation, a time when they are at their peak fertility. Three new independent studies found that another part of the equation is a woman's desire to maintain her body's attractiveness, says social psychologist and assistant professor Andrea L. Meltzer, Southern Methodist University, Dallas. Women nearing ovulation who also reported an increase in their motivation to manage their body attractiveness reported eating fewer calories out of a desire to lose weight, said Meltzer, lead researcher on the study. When ...

Bethesda, MD (June 1, 2015) -- The antiviral drug telbivudine prevents perinatal transmission of hepatitis B virus (HBV), according to a study1 in the June issue of Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, the official clinical practice journal of the American Gastroenterological Association. "If we are to decrease the global burden of hepatitis B, we need to start by addressing mother-to-infant transmission, which is the primary pathway of HBV infection," said study author Yuming Wang from Institute for Infectious Diseases, Southwest Hospital, Chongqing, China. "We ...

The following research will be presented at the American Physical Society's 2015 Division of Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics (DAMOP) meeting that will take place June 8-12, 2015 at the Hyatt Regency Columbus and the Greater Columbus Convention Center in Columbus, Ohio. FINDING VENUS AND SEARCHING FOR EXOPLANETS Thursday, June 11, 8:48 AM, Room: Franklin CD Telescopes aren't the only way to detect the presence of Venus passing by. It's also now possible to measure the relative motion of the Earth and Sun so precisely that physicists can use the measurement to ...

Policy makers need to budget more than 288 million pounds over the next 40 years to adequately provide health care to all British soldiers who suffered amputations because of the Afghan war. This is the prediction of Major DS Edwards of the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine in the UK, in a new article appearing in the journal Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research, published by Springer. He led a study into the scale and long-term economic cost of military amputees following Britain's involvement in Afghanistan between 2003 and 2014. The authors describe the traumatic ...

HOUSTON - (June 1, 2015) - The remains of tiny creatures found deep inside a mountaintop glacier in Peru are clues to the local landscape more than a millennium ago, according to a new study by Rice University, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Ohio State University. The unexpected discovery of diatoms, a type of algae, in ice cores pulled from the Quelccaya Summit Dome Glacier demonstrate that freshwater lakes or wetlands that currently exist at high elevations on or near the mountain were also there in earlier times. The abundant organisms would likely have been ...

Researchers from the University of Liverpool have found that approximately half of patients who have an eye removed because of a form of eye cancer experience `phantom eye syndrome.' Patients with the condition experience "seeing" and pain in the eye that is no longer there. Researchers assessed 179 patients whose eye had been removed as a result of a cancer, called intraocular melanoma. They found that more than a third of the patients experienced phantom eye symptoms every day. In most patients, the symptoms ceased spontaneously, but some patients reported that they ...

Understanding the volcanic activity on Earth is not only important in order to limit the impact of natural disasters, volcanic eruptions also have a large impact on the climate and evolution of life on our planet. However, many details in the history of volcanic activity are still unknown. Scientists from the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, together with colleagues from the USA, Taiwan, Australia and Switzerland, now have been able to track the development of the Galapagos volcanoes in the time frame between eight and 16 million years ago. In the process ...

Insulin degludec (trade name: Tresiba) has been approved since January 2015 for adolescents and children from the age of one year with type 1 or type 2 diabetes mellitus. In an early benefit assessment pursuant to the Act on the Reform of the Market for Medicinal Products (AMNOG), the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) has now examined whether this new drug, alone or in combination with other blood-glucose lowering drugs, offers an added benefit over the appropriate comparator therapy. No added benefit of insulin degludec for adolescents ...