Boston, MA — Women who experienced physical, emotional, or sexual abuse as children are more likely to have a child with autism than women who were not abused, according to a new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). Those who experienced the most serious abuse had the highest likelihood of having a child with autism — three-and-a-half times more than women who were not abused. "Our study identifies a completely new risk factor for autism," said lead author Andrea Roberts, research associate in the HSPH Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences. "Further ...

Scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego have found a layer of liquefied molten rock in Earth's mantle that may be acting as a lubricant for the sliding motions of the planet's massive tectonic plates. The discovery may carry far-reaching implications, from solving basic geological functions of the planet to a better understanding of volcanism and earthquakes. The scientists discovered the magma layer at the Middle America trench offshore Nicaragua. Using advanced seafloor electromagnetic imaging technology pioneered at Scripps, the scientists ...

STANFORD, Calif. — The promise of repairing damaged hearts through regenerative medicine — infusing stem cells into the heart in the hope that these cells will replace worn out or damaged tissue — has yet to meet with clinical success. But a highly sensitive visualization technique developed by Stanford University School of Medicine scientists may help speed that promise's realization. The technique is described in a study to be published March 20 in Science Translational Medicine. Testing the new imaging method in humans is probably three to five years off. Human and ...

Tampa, FL (March 20, 2013) -- University of South Florida researchers played a key role in an international multidisciplinary project that has yielded a promising new antimalarial drug with the potential to cure the mosquito-borne disease and block its transmission with low doses. Roman Manetsch, PhD, USF associate professor of chemistry, and Dennis Kyle, PhD, USF professor of global health, were co-leaders of the USF team, which helped to discover and develop a series of potent compounds to combat malaria known as the 4-(1H)-quinolone-3-diarylethers, or quinolones. The ...

The use of words with emotional content in books has steadily decreased throughout the last century, according to new research from the Universities of Bristol, Sheffield, and Durham. The study, published today in PLOS ONE, also found a divergence between American and British English, with the former being more 'emotional' than the latter. The researchers looked at how frequently 'mood' words were used through time in a database of more than five million digitised books provided by Google. The list of words was divided into six categories (anger, disgust, fear, joy, ...

Two leading ecologists say a rapid proliferation of roads across the planet is causing irreparable damage to nature, but properly planned roads could actually help the environment. "Loggers, miners and other road builders are putting roads almost everywhere, including places they simply shouldn't go, such as wilderness areas," said Professor Andrew Balmford of the University of Cambridge, UK. "Some of these roads are causing environmental disasters." "The current situation is largely chaos," said Professor William Laurance of James Cook University in Cairns, Australia. ...

Men who have children at older ages are more likely to have grandchildren with autism compared to younger grandfathers, according to new research. This is the first time that research has shown that risk factors for autism may accumulate over generations. The study led by King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry, Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and the Queensland Brain Institute in Australia is published today in JAMA Psychiatry. By using Swedish national registers, researchers identified 5,936 individuals with autism and 30,923 healthy controls born in Sweden ...

(Embargoed) CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – New research from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine for the first time explains exactly how two brain regions interact to promote emotionally motivated behaviors associated with anxiety and reward. The findings could lead to new mental health therapies for disorders such as addiction, anxiety, and depression. A report of the research was published online by the journal, Nature, on March 20, 2013. Located deep in the brain's temporal lobe are tightly packed clusters of brain cells in the almond shaped amygdala that are ...

(Boston) – Research from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) shows that improving vitamin D status by increasing its level in the blood could have a number of non-skeletal health benefits. The study, published online in PLOS ONE, reveals for the first time that improvement in the vitamin D status of healthy adults significantly impacts genes involved with a number of biologic pathways associated with cancer, cardiovascular disease (CVD), infectious diseases and autoimmune diseases. While previous studies have shown that vitamin D deficiency is associated with an ...

More than three quarters of new, emerging or re-emerging human diseases are caused by pathogens from animals, according to the World Health Organization. But a widely accepted theory of risk reduction for these pathogens – one of the most important ideas in disease ecology – is likely wrong, according to a new study co-authored by Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment Senior Fellow James Holland Jones and former Woods-affiliated ecologist Dan Salkeld. The dilution effect theorizes that disease risk for humans decreases as the variety of species in an area increases. ...

In the wake of last week's meetings at the UN on the definition of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a group of international scientists have published a call in the journal Nature today, arguing for a set of six SDGs that link poverty eradication to protection of Earth's life support. The researchers argue that in the face of increasing pressure on the planet's ability to support life, adherence to out-dated definitions of sustainable development threaten to reverse progress made in developing countries over past decades. Ending poverty and safeguarding Earth's ...

In the early 1950's, a 66-year-old woman, sick with colon cancer, received a blood transfusion. Then, unexpectedly, she suffered a severe rejection of the transfused blood. Reporting on her case, the French medical journal Revue D'Hématologie identified her as, simply, "Patient Vel." After a previous transfusion, it turns out, Mrs. Vel had developed a potent antibody against some unknown molecule found on the red blood cells of most people in the world—but not found on her own red blood cells. But what was this molecule? Nobody could find it. A blood mystery began, ...

News stories about mass shootings involving a shooter with mental illness heighten readers' negative attitudes toward persons with serious mental illness, according to a new report by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The researchers also examined how such news stories impact support for policies to reduce gun violence. Compared to study respondents who did not read a story about a mass shooting, reading a news article describing a mass shooting raised readers' support for both gun restrictions for persons with serious mental illness, and for a ban on ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – An obesity intervention taught by teen mentors in Appalachian elementary schools resulted in weight loss, lower blood pressure and healthy lifestyle changes among the younger students learning the curriculum, according to a new study. In contrast, children taught the same lessons by adults in a traditional classroom saw no changes in their health outcomes. The results of the eight-week clinical trial conducted by Ohio State University researchers suggest that school systems could consider using teen mentors to instruct younger children in select health-related ...

Visits to the ER are not always for true medical emergencies – and some policymakers have been fighting the problem by denying or limiting payments if the patient's diagnosis upon discharge is for "nonemergency" conditions. Now a new UC San Francisco study challenges that framework by showing that criteria used as a basis to determine the appropriateness of an emergency room visit and to deny payment is inherently flawed. The study analyzed nearly 35,000 visits to hospital emergency departments around the country. The research is published online today in JAMA (Journal ...

A group of researchers from 16 institutions around the world has identified a new class of anti-malarial compounds that target multiple stages of the malaria parasite's life cycle (http://www.niaid.nih.gov/topics/malaria/pages/lifecycle.aspx). These compounds could potentially be developed into drugs that treat and prevent malaria infection. Known as 4-(1H)-quinolone-3-diarylethers, the candidate anti-malarials are derived from a compound called endochin that effectively treats malaria in birds. When tested in the laboratory and in mice, the compounds demonstrated strong ...

Scientists at UC San Francisco have discovered how memory recall is linked to decision-making in rats, showing that measurable activity in one part of the brain occurs when rats in a maze are playing out memories that help them decide which way to turn. The more they play out these memories, the more likely they are to find their way correctly to the end of the maze. In their study, reported this week in the journal Neuron, the UCSF researchers implanted electrodes directly on a region of the rat brain known as the hippocampus, which is already known to play a key role ...

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have shown that a new imaging dye, designed and developed at UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center, is an effective agent in detecting and mapping cancers that have reached the lymph nodes. The radioactive dye called Technetium Tc-99m tilmanocept, successfully identified cancerous lymph nodes and did a better job of marking cancers than the current standard dye. Results of the Phase III clinical trial published online today in the Annals of Surgical Oncology. "Tilmanocept is a novel engineered radiopharmaceutical ...

Monsoon rainfall in the Northern Hemisphere impacts about 60% of the World population in Southeast Asia, West Africa and North America. Given the possible impacts of global warming, solid predictions of monsoon rainfall for the next decades are important for infrastructure planning and sustainable economic development. Such predictions, however, are very complex because they require not only pinning down how manmade greenhouse gas emissions will impact the monsoons and monsoon rainfall, but also a knowledge of natural long-term climate swings, about which little is known ...

"Aiden, look!" piped NAO, a two-foot tall humanoid robot, as it pointed to a flat-panel display on a far wall. As the cartoon dog Scooby Doo flashed on the screen, Aiden, a young boy with an unruly thatch of straw-colored hair, looked in the direction the robot was pointing. Aiden, who is three-and-a-half years old, has been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). NAO (pronounced "now") is the diminutive "front man" for an elaborate system of cameras, sensors and computers designed specifically to help children like Aiden learn how to coordinate their attention ...

(CHICAGO) – Infections, as the news has shown time and again, can be deadly. Periprothesthetic joint infection (PJI) is the infection of grave concern to the orthopedic community, especially in its growingly common antibiotic-resistant form. This all-too-common infection can be found deep inside the joint prosthesis following joint replacement surgery. Javad Parvizi, MD, and colleagues at the Rothman Institute at Jefferson have worked for years to find a solution to this sometimes deadly infection. Their most recent work has attempted to determine the optimal thresholds ...

(CHICAGO) – Platelet rich plasma (PRP) therapy has been used to manage pain associated with torn tendons, muscles and ligaments, mostly in athletes, at all levels. Though it has anecdotally been successful, the evidence to support its efficaciousness is weak. Researchers at the Rothman Institute at Jefferson participated in a multi-center randomized prospective study to evaluate the clinical value of PRP versus an active control group to determine its effectiveness in managing the pain and tenderness associated with tennis elbow. The results will be presented on Thursday, ...

CHICAGO – Eighty-four percent of patients suffering from chronic tennis elbow (lateral epicondylar tendinopathy) reported significantly less pain and elbow tenderness at six months following platelet rich plasma (PRP) treatment, according to results from the largest, multi-center study, to date, on PRP and tennis elbow, presented today at the 2013 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS). Tennis elbow is a common, painful condition affecting approximately 1 to 2 percent of the population. In this study, 230 patients suffering from chronic ...

CHICAGO — A new study, presented today at the 2013 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS), identifies predictors of complications and mortality following a hip fracture, including dialysis, cardiac disease, diabetes, and a longer time before surgery – the only modifiable risk factor when patients are hospitalized. Each year, more than 340,000 Americans are hospitalized for hip fractures. According to AAOS data, 69 percent of hip fracture patients are female and 46 percent are between the ages of 65 and 84. Many hip fracture patients suffer ...

A new study has found that Spanish nurses trained specifically to resolve acute health problems of low complexity provide care of comparable quality to that of general practitioners. Published early online in the Journal of Advanced Nursing, the findings suggest that nurses may be able to take on some of the care generally provided by physicians. Mireia Fàbregas, MD, of the Institut Català de la Salut, in Barcelona, Spain, and her colleagues randomized 1461 adult patients who requested same day appointments to see either nurses trained to respond to problems with low ...