Researchers have developed a simple clinical decision rule that may help doctors identify patients with headache in the emergency department who have subarachnoid hemorrhage (bleeding in a certain area of the brain), according to a study in the September 25 issue of JAMA. "Headache accounts for approximately 2 percent of all emergency department visits, and subarachnoid hemorrhage is one of the most serious diagnoses, accounting for only 1 percent to 3 percent of these headaches. Although the decision to evaluate patients with new neurologic deficits is relatively straightforward, ...

Recent studies have shown that older adults with chronic kidney disease (CKD; defined as an estimated glomerular filtration rate [GFR; a measure of kidney function] of less than 60 mL/min/1.73 m2) have a high prevalence of concurrent complications and increased risk for adverse outcomes including mortality, cardiovascular disease, and kidney failure. A prior study demonstrated an increase in CKD prevalence between 1988-1994 and 1999-2004 for the general U.S. population. However, trends in CKD prevalence have not been reported for the oldest old [defined as 80 years of age ...

Everything published by PLOS Medicine is open access: freely available for anyone to read, download, redistribute and otherwise use, as long as the authorship is properly attributed. Please mention PLOS Medicine in your report and use the links below to take your readers straight to the online articles: Acupuncture or counselling plus usual care may improve depression symptoms Vaccine against pneumococcal infections has led to widespread reduction in serious disease The importance of a medical journal being disruptive Improved strategies are needed to assess ...

Chevy Chase, MD—While calcium supplements noticeably improved bone health in postmenopausal women, vitamin D supplements did not reduce bone turnover, according to a recent study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM). Bone turnover is the body's natural process for breaking down old bone. In young people, the body forms enough new bone to replace what is lost. After age 30, however, bone mass in women begins to decline and the process speeds up after menopause. Osteoporosis develops when the body cannot ...

Chevy Chase, MD—Men who have low testosterone levels may have a slightly elevated risk of developing or dying from heart disease, according to a recent study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM). Testosterone is a key male sex hormone that helps maintain sex drive, sperm production and bone health. Over time, low testosterone may contribute to an increase in body fat, loss of body hair and muscle bulk. "When we reviewed the existing research into testosterone and cardiovascular disease, a growing ...

Chevy Chase, MD—A biological ability to compensate for the body's reduced response to insulin may explain why women typically develop heart disease 10 years later than men, according to a recent study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM). Insulin is a hormone that takes glucose from the bloodstream and carries it into cells, where it is used for energy. When the body doesn't use insulin properly, a condition known as insulin resistance, it raises the risk a person will develop diabetes and cardiovascular ...

It is estimated that over a third of the new cancer cases expected to occur in the U.S. in 2013 will be related to overweight or obesity, physical inactivity, and poor nutrition. Thanks to the work of one NYU Steinhardt researcher, we may better understand why. Nutritional epidemiologist Niyati Parekh's latest research study, which appears in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers, and Prevention, concludes that disturbances in body insulin and glucose levels, specifically exposures to longer periods, are associated with an increased risk of obesity-related cancers ...

Clinicians should be extra vigilant when prescribing antidepressants as they could pose a risk of type 2 diabetes, researchers at the University of Southampton have warned. A systematic review, carried out by the University, showed that people taking antidepressants are at a higher risk of type 2 diabetes; however it is not certain whether the medication is responsible. The use of antidepressant medication has risen sharply over recent years reaching 46.7 million prescriptions issued in the UK in 2011. A number of studies have been carried out to establish whether ...

The fossilised remains of a reptile closely related to lizards are the oldest yet to be discovered. Two new fossil jaws discovered in Vellberg, Germany provide the first direct evidence that the ancestors of lizards, snakes and tuatara (known collectively as lepidosaurs), were alive during the Middle Triassic period – around 240 million years ago. The new fossil finds predate all other lepidosaur records by 12 million years. The findings are published in BMC Evolutionary Biology. The international team of scientists who dated the fossil jaws have provided evidence ...

When individuals with psychopathy imagine others in pain, brain areas necessary for feeling empathy and concern for others fail to become active and be connected to other important regions involved in affective processing and decision-making, reports a study published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by a lack of empathy and remorse, shallow affect, glibness, manipulation and callousness. Previous research indicates that the rate of psychopathy in prisons is around 23%, greater than the average ...

Acupuncture or counselling, provided alongside usual care, could benefit patients with depression, according to a study by researchers at the University of York. The study, conducted by a team led by Dr Hugh MacPherson, of the Department of Health Sciences at York, found that in a primary care setting, combining acupuncture or counselling with usual care had some benefits after three months for patients with recurring depression. Published this week in PLOS Medicine, the study, which also involved researchers from the Centre for Health Economics at York and Hull York ...

MADISON, Wis. – In evolutionary terms, smell is among the oldest of the senses. In animals ranging from invertebrates to humans, olfaction exerts a primal influence as the brain continuously and subconsciously processes the steady stream of scent molecules that waft under our noses. And while odors – whether the aroma of stinky socks or the sweet smell of baking bread – are known to stir the emotions, how they exert their influence biologically on the emotional centers of the human brain, evoking passion or disgust, has been a black box. Now, however, researchers using ...

About 10,000 years ago, the Neolithic age ushered in one of the most dramatic periods of human cultural and technological transition, where independently, different world populations developed the domestication of plants and animals. The hunter-gatherers gave rise to herders and farmers. Changes to a more sedentary lifestyle and larger settlements are widely thought to have contributed to a worldwide human population explosion, from an estimated 4-6 million people to 60-70 million by 4,000 B.C. Now, researchers Aimé, et al., have challenged this assumption using a large ...

A study from the UK reveals that, in the population of Scotland, UK, life expectancy for people with type 1 diabetes has improved substantially, and this improvement should now be reflected in life insurance and other relevant policies for those with the condition. The research is by, Professor Helen Colhoun and Shona Livingstone, University of Dundee, UK, and colleagues on behalf of the Scottish Diabetes Research Network, and is presented at this year's annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) in Barcelona, Spain. "Historically those ...

Levels of social deprivation, as well as how well a patient controls their blood sugar, is an independent risk factor for mortality in people with type 1 diabetes. These are the findings of new research presented at this year's annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes in Barcelona, Spain. The research is by the Diabetes Clinical Academic Group at King's Healthcare Partners, UK, and presented by Dr Stephen Thomas, Dept of Diabetes and Endocrinology, Guy's and St Thomas' Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (GSTT), London. Despite advances in care ...

New research published at this week's annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) in Barcelona, Spain, shows that having children lowers mortality in people with type 1 diabetes, but for women more than men. The research is by Dr Lena Sjöberg, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland, and National Institute for Health and Welfare, Helsinki, Finland, and colleagues. Previous research has shown that type 1 diabetes is associated with increased mortality compared with the general population, from both acute and long-term diabetic complications. ...

A simple 'traffic light' test that detects hidden liver fibrosis and cirrhosis in high risk populations could reduce harmful drinking rates and potentially prevent hundreds of alcohol-related deaths a year. Devised by Dr Nick Sheron and colleagues at University of Southampton and Southampton General Hospital, the Southampton Traffic Light (STL) test, which costs about £50, could be used by GPs in the community. Published in the October 2013 issue of the British Journal of General Practice (BJGP), the STL appeared to help reduce drinking rates in people with the highest ...

Male fruit flies like to have a variety of sexual partners, whereas females prefer to stick with the same mate – or move on to his brothers. An Oxford University study of mating preferences in fruit flies (Drosophila) has found that males and females respond to the sexual familiarity of potential mates in fundamentally different ways. While male fruit flies preferred to court an unknown female over their previous mate or her sisters, female fruit flies displayed a predilection for their 'brothers-in-law'. These responses were significantly weaker in mutated flies ...

BOSTON – Repeating bone mineral density (BMD) tests after four years provides little clinical benefit when assessing bone fracture risk in seniors age 75 and older, according to a recent study led by researchers at the Harvard Medical School-affiliated Institute for Aging Research at Hebrew SeniorLife. The study appears in the Sept. 25 online issue of JAMA. BMD testing is an important tool in osteoporosis risk assessment and management, although there are no established guidelines for the appropriate time interval between tests. Medicare pays for BMD screening every two ...

New research from the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) quantifies the potential impacts of increasing wind and solar power generation on the operators of fossil-fueled power plants in the West. To accommodate higher amounts of wind and solar power on the electric grid, utilities must ramp down and ramp up or stop and start conventional generators more frequently to provide reliable power for their customers – a practice called cycling. The study finds that the carbon emissions induced by more frequent cycling are negligible ( END ...

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory and telescopes on the ground may have found the most crowded galaxy in our part of the universe. The ultra-compact dwarf galaxy, known as M60-UCD1, may be the densest galaxy near to Earth, packed with an extraordinary number of stars. This galaxy is providing astronomers with clues to its intriguing past and its role in the galactic evolutionary chain. M60-UCD1, estimated to be about 10 billion years old, is near the massive elliptical galaxy NGC 4649, also called M60, about 54 million light ...

Imagine the distance between the sun and the star nearest to it – a star called Alpha Centauri. That's a distance of about 4 light years. Now, imagine as many as 10,000 of our suns crammed into that relatively small space. That is about the density of a galaxy that was recently discovered by an international team of astronomers led by a Michigan State University faculty member. "This galaxy is more massive than any ultra-compact drawfs of comparable size," said Jay Strader, MSU assistant professor of physics and astronomy, "and is arguably the densest galaxy known in ...

PHILADELPHIA— At least 30 percent of patients in intensive care units (ICUs) suffer some form of mental dysfunction as reflected in anxiety, depression, and especially delirium. In mechanically-ventilated ICU patients, the incidence of delirium is particularly high, about 80 percent, and may be due in part to damage in the hippocampus, though how ventilation is increasing the risk of damage and mental impairment has remained elusive. Now, a new study published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine from researchers at the University of Oviedo ...

AMES, Iowa – Using a new and super-sensitive instrument, researchers have discovered where a protein binds to plant cell walls, a process that loosens the cell walls and makes it possible for plants to grow. Researchers say the discovery could one day lead to bigger harvests of biomass for renewable energy. Finding that binding target has been a major challenge for structural biologists. That's because there are only tiny amounts of the protein involved in cell growth and because cell walls are very complex, said Mei Hong, one of the project's lead researchers who's ...

Infection, pneumonia, blood clots and kidney failure are all possible complications after any major surgery. A new study shows that smoking boosts the risk of such complications following some of the most common colorectal procedures, including surgery for colon cancer, diverticulitis or inflammatory bowel disease. Lighting up also increases a patient's risk of death after surgery compared with patients who have never smoked. The study, published in the Annals of Surgery, is unique because it focuses on elective, or non-emergency, surgeries. "Elective surgeries are ...