New research could clarify how inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), conditions that include ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease, are triggered and develop. Scientists at Emory University School of Medicine have shown how the immune system can compensate for a "leaky gut" and prevent disease in mice that are susceptible to intestinal inflammation. These findings could explain why some individuals who are susceptible to developing IBD do or do not get the disease. The results will be published online Sept. 13 in the journal Immunity. "Our results suggest that when ...

Patients admitted to hospital with obstructed heart arteries were three times more likely to experience complications when they were in hospital if they felt they were not in control of their condition, according to research published in the October issue of the Journal of Advanced Nursing. However, persistent anxiety on its own appeared to have little effect on whether patients experienced complications or not. Researchers looked at 171 patients admitted to hospitals in the USA, Australia and New Zealand with acute coronary syndrome (ACS), following them for two years. ...

It isn't only birds that move south as autumn approaches. Some insects also live their lives on the same principle. A new study of migratory insects has just been published that shows that a considerably higher number of insects survive and migrate back south in the autumn than was previously believed. "These results are really exciting, because we have managed to show that it really is profitable for insects to migrate north at the start of the summer", says Lars Pettersson, a Reader at the Department of Biology, Lund University, Sweden. The findings help to fundamentally ...

Amsterdam, September 12, 2012 - Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, announced today the publication of a position statement by the European Menopause and Andropause Society (EMAS) in the journal Maturitas. The society published a clinical guide on low-dose vaginal estrogens for postmenopausal vaginal atrophy also including a summary of recommendations. Vaginal atrophy is common after menopause and adversely affects quality of life in one out of every two women. This guide provides the evidence for ...

Philadelphia, PA, September 13, 2012 – Ghrelin is a hormone released by the lining of the stomach that promotes feeding behavior. Decreasing ghrelin levels could potentially help combat obesity -- in fact, a vaccine that lowers ghrelin levels in order to reduce appetite is being studied as a treatment for obesity. However, many people eat as a way to relieve stress. If low ghrelin levels increase stress, its effectiveness as a treatment for obesity may be reduced. In the current issue of Biological Psychiatry, researchers led by Dr. Zane Andrews of Monash University in ...

Inhibitory neurotransmitters dampen the activity of neurons. This regulatory effect forms the basis for the action of many anesthetics. For example, propofol, a common anesthetic, interacts with receptors on neural cell membranes that normally bind the inhibitory neurotransmitter gamma-amino butyric acid (GABA). Binding of GABA opens protein channels through which negatively charged chloride ions stream into the cell. By raising the resting electrical potential across the membrane, this makes the cell less likely to fire in response to an incoming stimulus. Propofol magnifies ...

An international team of scientists headed from the University of Santiago de Compostela ensures that reading the labels on food products is linked to obesity prevention, especially in women. According to the study which used data from the USA, female consumers who consult food labels weigh nearly 4 kilograms less. Along with the Universities of Tennessee, Arkansas (USA) and the Norwegian Institute for Agricultural Finance Research, the University of Santiago de Compostela has participated in a study on the relationship between reading the food label and obesity. The ...

WHAT: Several large clinical trials have demonstrated that a daily oral dose of one or two antiretroviral drugs used to treat HIV infection can prevent infection in an approach known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP. The level of protection, however, depends on taking the drugs regularly. For instance, the landmark iPrEx study (http://www.niaid.nih.gov/news/newsreleases/2010/Pages/iPrEx.aspx) found that overall, men who have sex with men who received a daily dose of tenofovir plus emtricitabine (Truvada) had a 44 percent lower risk of HIV infection compared with ...

A mysterious form of cell death, coded in proteins and enzymes, led to a discovery by UNC researchers uncovering a prime suspect for new cancer drug development. CIB1 is a protein discovered in the lab of Leslie Parise, PhD , professor and chair of the department of biochemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The small calcium binding protein is found in all kinds of cells. Cassandra Moran, DO, was a pediatric oncology fellow at UNC prior to accepting a faculty position at Duke University. She is interested in neuroblastoma, a deadly form of ...

VIDEO: To develop a program that allows computers to recognize rough sketches, we need to understand how humans actually sketch objects. Researchers from Brown University and the Technical University of Berlin... Click here for more information. PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — First they took over chess. Then Jeopardy. Soon, computers could make the ideal partner in a game of Draw Something (or its forebear, Pictionary). Researchers from Brown University and the ...

Cancer of the oesophagus is becoming more common in Europe and North America. Around 7,800 people in the UK are diagnosed each year. The exact causes of this cancer aren't fully understood. It appears to be more common in people who have long-term acid reflux (backflow of stomach acid into the oesophagus). Other factors that can affect the risk of developing cancer of the oesophagus include: Gender – It is more common in men than in women. Age – The risk of developing oesophageal cancer increases as we get older. It occurs most commonly in people over 45. Smoking ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Millions of women experience a loss of bladder control, or urinary incontinence, in their lifetime. It's a common and often embarrassing problem that many patients don't bring up with their doctors – and when they do, it may be mentioned as a casual side note during a visit for more pressing medical issues. Now, new guidelines from doctors at the University of Michigan Health System offer family physicians a step-by-step guide for the evaluation of urinary leakage, to prevent this quality-of-life issue from being ignored. "I think a lot of physicians ...

TORONTO, ON – Men with divorced parents are significantly more likely to suffer a stroke than men from intact families, shows a new study from the University of Toronto. The study, to be published this month in the International Journal of Stroke, shows that adult men who had experienced parental divorce before they turned 18 are three times more likely to suffer a stroke than men whose parents did not divorce. Women from divorced families did not have a higher risk of stroke than women from intact families. "The strong association we found for males between parental ...

It seems as if a tumor deprived of oxygen would shrink. However, numerous studies have shown that tumor hypoxia, in which portions of the tumor have significantly low oxygen concentrations, is in fact linked with more aggressive tumor behavior and poorer prognosis. It's as if rather than succumbing to gently hypoxic conditions, the lack of oxygen commonly created as a tumor outgrows its blood supply signals a tumor to grow and metastasize in search of new oxygen sources – for example, hypoxic bladder cancers are likely to metastasize to the lungs, which is frequently deadly. ...

VIDEO: The movie shows the injector firing into open air without a skin or gel target. The jet, which is approximately the diameter of a human hair, seems dispersed but a... Click here for more information. WASHINGTON, Sept. 13—From annual flu shots to childhood immunizations, needle injections are among the least popular staples of medical care. Though various techniques have been developed in hopes of taking the "ouch" out of injections, hypodermic needles are still the ...

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- In 2010 malaria caused an estimated 665,000 deaths, mostly among African children. Now, chemists at Indiana University have developed a new synthesis for the world's most useful antimalarial drug, artemisinin, giving hope that fully synthetic artemisinin might help reduce the cost of the live-saving drug in the future. Effective deployment of ACT, or artemisinin-based combination therapy, has been slow due to high production costs of artemisinin. The World Health Organization has set a target "per gram" cost for artemisinin of 25 cents or less, but ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A new study of giant viruses supports the idea that viruses are ancient living organisms and not inanimate molecular remnants run amok, as some scientists have argued. The study reshapes the universal family tree, adding a fourth major branch to the three that most scientists agree represent the fundamental domains of life. The new findings appear in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology. The researchers used a relatively new method to peer into the distant past. Rather than comparing genetic sequences, which are unstable and change rapidly over time, ...

It's not a magic trick and it's not sleight of hand – scientists really are using levitation to improve the drug development process, eventually yielding more effective pharmaceuticals with fewer side effects. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have discovered a way to use sound waves to levitate individual droplets of solutions containing different pharmaceuticals. While the connection between levitation and drug development may not be immediately apparent, a special relationship emerges at the molecular level. At the molecular ...

Obese patients with type 2 diabetes who consume higher amounts of fructose display reduced levels of liver adenosine triphosphate (ATP)—a compound involved in the energy transfer between cells. The findings, published in the September issue of Hepatology, a journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, indicate that elevated uric acid levels (hyperuricemia) are associated with more severe hepatic ATP depletion in response to fructose intake. This exploratory study, funded in part by grants from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and ...

Although the federal government's 1996 reform of welfare brought some improvements for the nation's poor, it also may have made extremely poor Americans worse off, new research shows. The reforms radically changed cash assistance—what most Americans think of as 'welfare'— by imposing lifetime limits on the receipt of aid and requiring recipients to work. About the same time, major social policy reforms during the 1990s raised the benefits of work for low-income families. In the wake of these changes, millions of previous welfare recipients, largely single mothers, ...

The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) can contain dozens of different mutations, called polymorphisms. In a recent study an international team of researchers, including MU scientists, found that one of those mutations, called 172K, made certain forms of the virus more susceptible to treatment. Soon, doctors will be able to use this knowledge to improve the drug regiment they prescribe to HIV-infected individuals. "The 172K polymorphism makes certain forms of HIV less resistant to drugs," said Stefan Sarafianos, corresponding author of the study and researcher at MU's ...

Moderate exercise may help people cope with anxiety and stress for an extended period of time post-workout, according to a study by kinesiology researchers in the University of Maryland School of Public Health published in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. "While it is well-known that exercise improves mood, among other benefits, not as much is known about the potency of exercise's impact on emotional state and whether these positive effects endure when we're faced with everyday stressors once we leave the gym," explains J. Carson Smith, assistant ...

HOUSTON -- (Sept. 13, 2012) -- In one of the first studies to examine how the loss of forest birds is effecting Guam's island ecosystem, biologists from Rice University, the University of Washington and the University of Guam found that the Pacific island's jungles have as many as 40 times more spiders than are found on nearby islands like Saipan. "You can't walk through the jungles on Guam without a stick in your hand to knock down the spiderwebs," said Haldre Rogers, a Huxley Fellow in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Rice and the lead author of a new study this ...

Scientists at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden describe in a new study how so-called DNA origami can enhance the effect of certain cytostatics used in the treatment of cancer. With the aid of modern nanotechnology, scientists can target drugs direct to the tumour while leaving surrounding healthy tissue untouched. The drug doxorubicin has long been used as a cytostatic (toxin) for cancer treatment but can cause serious adverse reactions such as myocardial disease and severe nausea. Because of this, scientists have been trying to find a means of delivering the drug to the ...

CHICAGO (September 13, 2012) – New research demonstrates that daily cleaning of high-touch surfaces in isolation rooms of patients with Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) significantly reduces the rate of the pathogens on the hands of healthcare personnel. The findings underscore the importance of environmental cleaning for reducing the spread of difficult to treat infections. The study is published in the October issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology ...