This news release is available in German. Washington/Leipzig/Sydney. The pesticides, many of which are currently used in Europe and Australia, are responsible for reducing the regional diversity of invertebrates in streams and rivers by up to 42 percent, researchers report in the Proceedings of the US Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Mikhail A. Beketov and Matthias Liess from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) in Leipzig, together with Ben Kefford from the University of Technology, Sydney and Ralf B. Schäfer from the Institute for Environmental Sciences ...

A new drug called pyrvinium pamoate inhibits aggressive forms of prostate cancer that are resistant to standard drugs, according to a study conducted in an animal model. The results will be presented Monday at The Endocrine Society's 95th Annual Meeting in San Francisco. "Our novel prostate cancer drug works by a unique mechanism of action," said study lead author Jeremy Jones, PhD, assistant professor of molecular pharmacology at City of Hope, Beckman Research Institute, in Duarte, CA. "Thus, it has the potential to treat cancers resistant to currently approved therapies." Prostate ...

Low testosterone worsens the harmful effects of obesity in the nervous system, a new study in mice finds. The results will be presented Monday at The Endocrine Society's 95th Annual Meeting in San Francisco. "Low testosterone and obesity are common in aging men, and each is associated with type 2 diabetes and Alzheimer's disease," said the study's lead investigator, Anusha Jayaraman, PhD, of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. "Our new findings demonstrate that obesity and low testosterone combine to not only increase the risk of diabetes but also damage ...

A special type of in vitro fertilization, or IVF, may increase the risk for insulin resistance among children conceived in this way, according to a new study from Greece. The results will be presented Monday at The Endocrine Society's 95th Annual Meeting in San Francisco. During natural fertilization, as well as other IVF treatments, the egg is exposed to many sperm. In both of these cases, the strongest, healthiest sperm has the best chance of reaching and fertilizing the egg. In contrast, the type of assisted reproductive technology, or ART, examined in this study ...

A missing brain enzyme increases concentrations of a protein related to pain-killer addiction, according to an animal study. The results will be presented Monday at The Endocrine Society's 95th Annual Meeting in San Francisco. Opioids are pain-killing drugs, derived from the opium plant, which block signals of pain between nerves in the body. They are manufactured in prescription medications like morphine and codeine, and also are found in some illegal drugs, like heroin. Both legal and illegal opioids can be highly addictive. In addition to the synthetic opioids, natural ...

A new study shows that the predator-prey relationship can affect the flow of carbon through an ecosystem. This previously unmeasured influence on the environment may offer a new way of looking at biodiversity management and carbon storage for climate change. The study, conducted by researchers at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, comes out this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It looks at the relationship between grasshoppers and spiders—herbivores and predators in the study's food chain—and how it affects the movement of ...

CHICAGO --- Young women who have cancer treatment often lose their fertility because chemotherapy and radiation can damage or kill their immature ovarian eggs, called oocytes. Now, Northwestern Medicine® scientists have found the molecular pathway that can prevent the death of immature ovarian eggs due to chemotherapy, potentially preserving fertility and endocrine function. Scientists achieved this in female mice by adding a currently approved chemotherapy drug, imatinib mesylate, to another chemotherapy drug cisplatin. The results will be presented Monday, June 17, ...

BOSTON -- Many men with low-risk, localized prostate cancers can safely choose active surveillance or "watchful waiting" instead of undergoing immediate treatment and have better quality of life while reducing health care costs, according to a study by researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital. Writing in the June 18 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine, the authors said their statistical models showed that "observation is a reasonable and, in some situations, cost-saving alternative to initial treatment" for the estimated 70 percent ...

San Francisco, CA— Desiccated thyroid extract (DTE), derived from crushed preparations of animal thyroid glands, is a safe and effective alternative to standard T4 therapy in hypothyroid patients, a new study finds. The results will be presented Monday at The Endocrine Society's 95th Annual Meeting in San Francisco. In adults, untreated hypothyroidism leads to poor mental and physical performance. It also can cause high blood cholesterol levels that can lead to heart disease. The condition is treated with Levothyroxine, a synthetic (laboratory-made) form of T4 that is ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Mayo Clinic and other researchers have shown that a vaccine given to newborns is at least 60 percent effective against rotavirus in Ghana. Rotavirus causes fever, vomiting and diarrhea, which in infants can cause severe dehydration. In developed nations, the condition often results in an emergency room visit or an occasional hospitalization, but is rarely fatal. In developing countries, however, rotavirus-related illness causes approximately 500,000 deaths per year. The findings appear this week in the Journal of Infectious Diseases. Currently, there ...

ST. LOUIS -- In research published in Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications, Saint Louis University researchers describe a technology that can detect new, previously unknown viruses. The technique offers the potential to screen patients for viruses even when doctors have not identified a particular virus as the likely source of an infection. In the new approach, scientists use blood serum as a biological source to categorize and discover viruses. Taking advantage of the complete deciphering of the human genome, SLU researchers used a next-generation ...

An initiative that combines a multidisciplinary health care approach with a range of preventive measures could cut the rate of a common airway infection among children in intensive care by more than half, a new study suggests. The research, led by a team at Nationwide Children's Hospital, appears in the June issue of the journal Pediatric Critical Care Medicine. Ventilator-associated tracheobronchitis—VAT for short—is a lower respiratory infection caused by a buildup of bacteria in the airway. Ordinarily, these small organisms are easily cleared, but being on a ventilator ...

NEW YORK (June 17, 2013)—Obese adolescents are more likely than their normal-weight counterparts to have hearing loss, according to results of a new study. Findings showed that obese adolescents had increased hearing loss across all frequencies and were almost twice as likely to have unilateral (one-sided) low-frequency hearing loss. The study was recently e-published by The Laryngoscope, a journal published by the American Laryngological, Rhinological and Otological Society. "This is the first paper to show that obesity is associated with hearing loss in adolescents," ...

When it comes to confronting childhood obesity, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health conclude that community-based approaches are important. A systematic review of childhood obesity prevention programs found that community-based intervention programs that incorporate schools and focus on both diet and physical activity are more effective at preventing obesity in children. The results of the study appear online in Pediatrics. "In measuring the effectiveness of community-based programs that impact childhood obesity – more comprehensive interventions ...

NEW YORK, NY (June 17, 2013) – A team from the New York Stem Cell Foundation (NYSCF) Research Institute and the Naomi Berrie Diabetes Center of Columbia University has generated patient-specific beta cells, or insulin-producing cells, that accurately reflect the features of maturity-onset diabetes of the young (MODY). The researchers used skin cells of MODY patients to produce induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, from which they then made beta cells. Transplanted into a mouse, the stem cell-derived beta cells secreted insulin in a manner similar to that of the beta ...

LA JOLLA, CA – June 17, 2013 – An international team led by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI), the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University has identified a highly promising new anti-tuberculosis compound that attacks the tuberculosis (TB) bacterium in two different ways. "These findings represent an effort to help solve one of the major global health crises of our time—the resurgence of TB and its dangerous drug-resistant strains," said Peter G. Schultz, the Scripps Family Chair Professor of Chemistry ...

DALLAS – June 17, 2013 – The quality of wakefulness affects how quickly a mammal falls asleep, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers report in a study that identifies two proteins never before linked to alertness and sleep-wake balance. "This study supports the idea that subjective sleepiness is influenced by the quality of experiences right before bedtime. Are you reluctantly awake or excited to be awake?" said Dr. Masashi Yanagisawa, professor of molecular genetics and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at UT Southwestern. He is principal author of ...

TORONTO, June 17, 2013—How kids eat their food may turn out to be just as important as what they eat, according to a new study out of St. Michael's Hospital. The study, led by Dr. Nav Persaud, a family physician, found a significant association between poor eating habits in kids ages three to five and their levels of non-HDL – or "bad" – cholesterol, putting them at risk for cardiovascular disease later in life. The paper appeared online in the Canadian Medical Association Journal today. "We know that eating behaviours are an important determinant of health in ...

Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researchers have identified in the most aggressive forms of cancer a gene known to regulate embryonic stem cell self-renewal, beginning a creative search for a drug that can block its activity. The gene, SALL4, gives stem cells their ability to continue dividing as stem cells rather than becoming mature cells. Typically, cells only express SALL4 during embryonic development, but the gene is re-expressed in nearly all cases of acute myeloid leukemia and 10 to 30 percent of liver, lung, gastric, ovarian, endometrial, and breast cancers, ...

Researchers have found that antibodies against the human papillomavirus (HPV) may help identify individuals who are at greatly increased risk of HPV-related cancer of the oropharynx, which is a portion of the throat that contains the tonsils. In their study, at least 1 in 3 individuals with oropharyngeal cancer had antibodies to HPV, compared to fewer than 1 in 100 individuals without cancer. When present, these antibodies were detectable many years before the onset of disease. These findings raise the possibility that a blood test might one day be used to identify ...

System 91W appears ripe to become Tropical Depression 4 in the next couple of days as it continues moving north and parallels the east coast of the Philippines. NASA's Aqua satellite captured a visible image of the developing low pressure area as it passed overhead in space on June 17. On June 16 at 2200 UTC (6 p.m. EDT) System 91W was located near 13.5N and 126.9E, about 355 miles east-southeast of Manila, Philippines. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over System 91W on June 17 at 05:08 UTC (1:08 a.m. EDT) and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) ...

On June 12, 2013, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Aqua satellite captured this image of the Silver fire burning east of Silver City, New Mexico. In addition to producing gray smoke plumes, the fire spawned a pyrocumulus cloud—a tall, cauliflower-shaped cloud that billowed up above the smoke. Pyrocumulus clouds are similar to cumulus clouds, but the heat that forces the air to rise (which leads to cooling and condensation of water vapor) comes from fire instead of sun-warmed ground. In satellite images, pyrocumulus cloud appear as opaque ...

Tropical Depression 2 formed in the western Caribbean Sea during the early afternoon hours (Eastern Daylight Time) on June 17. NOAA's GOES-13 satellite captured an image of the storm as it consolidated enough to become a tropical depression while approaching the coast of Belize. NOAA's GOES-13 satellite sits in a fixed orbit and monitors the weather in the eastern half of the continental United States and the Atlantic Ocean. NASA's GOES Project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland uses the data from GOES-13 and creates imagery. NASA's GOES Project ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – In a study of more than 2,000 adults, researchers found that two MRI measurements of the abdominal aorta — the amount of plaque in the vessel and the thickness of its wall — are associated with future cardiovascular events, such as a heart attack or stroke. Results of the study are published online in the journal Radiology. "This is an important study, because it demonstrates that atherosclerosis in an artery outside the heart is an independent predictor of adverse cardiovascular events," said the study's lead author, Christopher D. Maroules, M.D., a ...

WASHINGTON — When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) imposes new graphic warning labels for tobacco products, they can survive a First Amendment challenge if they depict health consequences and their effectiveness is supported by adequate scientific evidence, says a Georgetown University Medical Center public health expert and attorney. Graphic tobacco warning labels—which combine images with health warnings—are a widely used tool for reducing tobacco use in other countries, but the tobacco industry argues they are unconstitutional in the United States. In ...