NEW YORK (May 23, 2013) -- Little is known about why asthma develops, how it constricts the airway or why response to treatments varies between patients. Now, a team of researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College, Columbia University Medical Center and SUNY Downstate Medical Center has revealed the roots of a common type of childhood asthma, showing that it is very different from other asthma cases. Their report, in Science Translational Medicine, reveals that an over-active gene linked in 20 to 30 percent of patients with childhood asthma interrupts the synthesis of ...

A new study determined that children and adolescents with seizures involving the temporal lobe are likely to have clinically significant behavioral problems and psychiatric illness, especially depression. Findings published in Epilepsia, a journal published by Wiley on behalf of the International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE), highlight the importance of routine psychiatric evaluation for pediatric epilepsy patients—particularly for those who do not respond to anti-seizure medications and require epilepsy surgery. Current medical evidence indicates that mental illness ...

ATS 2013, PHILADELPHIA ─ A new study from researchers in Japan indicates that obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is independently associated with visceral (abdominal) fat accumulation only in men, perhaps explaining gender differences in the impact of OSA on cardiovascular disease and mortality. "Visceral fat accumulation, which is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, is also associated with OSA, and gender differences in mortality related to sleep apnea have been reported in some studies. Accordingly, we examined if the relationship between OSA and visceral fat ...

MINNEAPOLIS – Older people with a history of migraines and depression may have smaller brain tissue volumes than people with only one or neither of the conditions, according to a new study in the May 22, 2013, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. "Studies show that people with migraine have double the risk of depression compared to people without migraine," said study author Larus S. Gudmundsson, PhD, with the National Institute on Aging and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, in Bethesda, Md. Gudmundsson ...

An insect-eating pitcher plant teams up with ants to prevent mosquito larvae from stealing its nutrients, according to research published May 22 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Mathias Scharmann and colleagues from the University of Cambridge and the University Brunei Darussalam. The unusual relationship between insect-eating pitcher plants and ants that live exclusively on them has long puzzled scientists. The Camponotus schmitzi ants live only on one species of Bornean pitcher plants (Nepenthes bicalcarata), where they walk across slippery pitcher traps, swim ...

Endangered brush-tail rock wallabies raised in captive breeding programs carry antibiotic resistance genes in their gut bacteria and may be able to transmit these genes into wild populations, according to research published May 22 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Michelle Power and colleagues from Macquarie University in New South Wales, Australia. Brush-tail rock wallabies are currently being raised in species recovery programs and restored to the wild to bolster populations of this endangered species. Here, researchers found that nearly half of fecal samples ...

Two new species of cave-dwelling short-tailed whipscorpions have been discovered in northeastern Brazil, and are described in research published May 22 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Adalberto Santos, from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (Brazil) and colleagues. The reddish-brown short-tailed whipscorpions inhabit cool, humid limestone caves in an otherwise arid region. Both new species, Rowlandius ubajara and Rowlandius potiguara, were found deep within the limestone caves, which are also home to bats. Bat guano and seed deposits harbor springtails and ...

Ann Arbor, Mich. – Every day, their baby stopped breathing, his collapsed bronchus blocking the crucial flow of air to his lungs. April and Bryan Gionfriddo watched helplessly, just praying that somehow the dire predictions weren't true. "Quite a few doctors said he had a good chance of not leaving the hospital alive," says April Gionfriddo, about her now 20-month-old son, Kaiba. "At that point, we were desperate. Anything that would work, we would take it and run with it." They found hope at the University of Michigan, where a new, bioresorbable device that could help ...

New research from North Carolina State University and the University of Colorado shows that households with dogs are home to more types of bacteria – including bacteria that are rarely found in households that do not have dogs. The finding is part of a larger study to improve our understanding of the microscopic life forms that live in our homes. "We wanted to know what variables influence the microbial ecosystems in our homes, and the biggest difference we've found so far is whether you own a dog," says Dr. Rob Dunn, an associate professor of biology at NC State and ...

A new study published online today (Thursday) in the Journal of Public Health has found that of young people who visited fast food or chain restaurants in the U.S. in 2010, girls and youth who were obese were more likely to use calorie information given in the restaurants to inform their food choices. It also found that young people eating at fast food or chain restaurants twice a week or more were half as likely to use calorie information as those eating there once a week or less. Childhood obesity has tripled in recent decades. One potential contributing factor is fast ...

In a series of lab experiments designed to unravel the workings of a key enzyme widely considered a possible trigger of rheumatoid arthritis, researchers at Johns Hopkins have found that in the most severe cases of the disease, the immune system makes a unique subset of antibodies that have a disease-promoting role. Reporting in the journal Science Translational Medicine online May 22, the Johns Hopkins team describes how it found the novel antibodies to peptidylarginine deiminase 4, or PAD4, in blood samples from people with aggressive inflammation and connective tissue ...

Canadian and Swedish scientists today released genome sequences of two of the most economically important forest trees in the world. Conifers supply raw materials for the Canadian forestry industry, which accounted for $23.7 billion in Canada's economy in 2011. Gross output of the forest sector in Sweden in 2009 was $29.7 billion. At 20-30 billion base-pairs and up to 10 times larger than the human genome, the white spruce genome, published in Bioinformatics, and the Norway spruce genome, published in Nature, are also the largest genome sequence assemblies to date. ...

While humans have harnessed the power of yeast to ferment bread and beer, the function of yeast or other types of fungi that live in and on the human body is not well understood. In the first study of human fungal skin diversity, National Institutes of Health researchers sequenced the DNA of fungi at skin sites of healthy adults to define the normal populations across the skin and to provide a framework for investigating fungal skin conditions. Human skin surfaces are complex ecosystems for microorganisms, including fungi, bacteria and viruses, which are known collectively ...

PHILADELPHIA - The human gut is loaded with commensal bacteria – "good" microbes that, among other functions, help the body digest food. The gastrointestinal tract contains literally trillions of such cells, and yet the immune system seemingly turns a blind eye. However, in several chronic human diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), HIV/AIDS, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes, the immune system attacks these normally beneficial bacteria, resulting in chronic inflammation and contributing to disease progression. Now, researchers may finally understand ...

VIDEO: EPFL scientists have revealed the mechanism, hidden deep within cell mitochondria, that is responsible for making organisms age. Nematodes treated with antibiotics designed to disrupt this mechanism lived longer and... Click here for more information. Why is it that within a homogeneous population of the same species, some individuals live three times as long as others? This question has stumped scientists for centuries. Now, EPFL researchers led by Johan Auwerx ...

Chevy Chase, MD—Widely-used fish oil supplements modestly increase amounts of a hormone that is associated with lower risk of diabetes and heart disease, according to a study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM). Fish oil supplements, also called omega 3 fatty acid capsules, raise levels of adiponectin in the bloodstream. Adiponectin is an important hormone that has beneficial effects on metabolic processes like glucose regulation and the modulation of inflammation. In long-term human studies, higher ...

Chevy Chase, MD—Patients with underlying heart failure are more likely to experience adverse outcomes from mild hypothyroidism, according to a recent study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM). Hypothyroidism occurs when an underactive thyroid does not produce enough hormones. More than 9.5 million people nationwide have hypothyroidism. People who have thyroid function at the low end of the normal range have subclinical hypothyroidism, also called mild hypothyroidism. "Our data suggest that mild hypothyroidism ...

Irvine, Calif. – As the world prepares for what may be the next pandemic strain of influenza virus, in the H7N9 bird flu, a new UC Irvine study reveals that the 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic was deadliest for people under the age of 65, while those 65 and over had greater immunity due to previous exposure to similar viruses. Deaths from flu pandemics tend to skew younger than those from seasonal flu because of "antigenic recycling," or the fact that some parts of flu viruses have already made the rounds. Between 1918 and 1957, all flu viruses in circulation fell into the ...

Radically different viruses share genes and are likely to share ancestry, according to research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Virology Journal this week. The comprehensive phylogenomic analysis compares giant viruses that infect amoeba with tiny viruses known as virophages and to several groups of transposable elements. The complex network of evolutionary relationships the authors describe suggests that viruses evolved from non-viral mobile genetic elements and vice versa, on more than one occasion. The recent discovery of virophages inside the giant ...

Researchers from Queen Mary, University of London have led the largest sequencing study of human disease to date, investigating the genetic basis of six autoimmune diseases. The exact cause of these diseases – autoimmune thyroid disease, coeliac disease, Crohn's disease, psoriasis, multiple sclerosis and type 1 diabetes– is unknown, but is believed to be a complex combination of genetic and environmental factors. In each disease only aproportion of the heritability is explained by the identifiedgenetic variants. The techniques used to date, have generally identified common ...

Swedish scientists have mapped the gene sequence of Norway spruce (the Christmas tree) – a species with huge economic and ecological importance - and that is the largest genome to have ever been mapped. The genome is complex and seven times larger than that of humans. The results have been published in the prestigious journal Nature. This major research project has been led by Umeå Plant Science Centre (UPSC) in Umeå and the Science for Life Laboratory (SciLifeLab) in Stockholm. In addition to its scientific interest this new knowledge has immense importance to the ...

Researchers at the Universities of Leeds and Chicago have uncovered an important mechanism behind the generation of astrophysical magnetic fields such as that of the Sun. Scientists have known since the 18th Century that the Sun regularly oscillates between periods of high and low solar activity in an 11-year cycle, but have been unable to fully explain how this cycle is generated. In the 'Information Age', it has become increasingly important to be able to understand the Sun's magnetic activity, as it is the changes in its magnetic field that are responsible for ...

Irvine, Calif. – Two hungry young galaxies that collided 11 billion years ago are rapidly forming a massive galaxy about 10 times the size of the Milky Way, according to UC Irvine-led research published Wednesday in the journal Nature. Capturing the creation of this type of large, short-lived star body is extremely rare – the equivalent of discovering a missing link between winged dinosaurs and early birds, said the scientists, who relied on the once-powerful Herschel space telescope and observatories around the world. The new mega-galaxy, dubbed HXMM01, "is the brightest, ...

What people take from nature – water, food, timber, inspiration, relaxation – are so abundant, it seems self-evident. Until you try to quantitatively understand how and to what extent they contribute to humans. In today's world, where competition for and degradation of natural resources increases globally, it becomes ever more crucial to quantify the value of ecosystem services – the precise term that defines nature's benefits, and even more important to link how different types of ecosystem services affect various components of human well-being. Scientists at Michigan ...

In the tropics at heights more than 10 miles above the surface, the prevailing winds alternate between strong easterlies and strong westerlies roughly every other year. This slow heartbeat in the tropical upper atmosphere, referred to as the quasibiennial oscillation (QBO), impacts the winds and chemical composition of the global atmosphere and even the climate at Earth's surface. The pulse of the QBO has weakened substantially at some altitudes over the last six decades, according to a new study by scientists at the International Pacific Research Center, University ...