Durham, NC – What makes some ocean animals more prone to extinction than others? A new study of marine fossils provides a clue. An analysis of roughly 500 million years of fossil data for marine invertebrates reveals that ocean animals with small geographic ranges have been consistently hard hit — even when populations are large, the authors report. The oceans represent more than 70% of the Earth's surface. But because monitoring data are harder to collect at sea than on land, we know surprisingly little about the conservation status of most marine animals. By using ...

Boosting the activity of a vitamin-sensitive cell adhesion pathway has the potential to counteract the muscle degeneration and reduced mobility caused by muscular dystrophies, according to a research team led by scientists at the University of Maine. The discovery, published 23 October in the open access journal PLOS Biology, is particularly important for congenital muscular dystrophies, which are progressive, debilitating and often lethal diseases that currently remain without cure. The researchers found that they could improve muscle structure and function in a zebrafish ...

A team of neuroscientists have proposed a new and potentially revolutionary way of determining the neuronal connectivity (the "connectome") of the whole brain of the mouse, in an essay published October 23 in the open access journal PLOS Biology. The team, led by Professor Anthony Zador, Ph.D. of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, aims to provide a comprehensive account of neural connectivity. At present the only method for obtaining this information with high precision relies on examining individual cell-to-cell contacts (synapses) by electron microscopy. But such methods ...

STANFORD, Calif. — In a painless clinical procedure performed on a patient with electrodes temporarily implanted in his brain, Stanford University doctors pinpointed two nerve clusters that are critical for face perception. The findings could have practical value in treating people with prosopagnosia — the inability to distinguish one face from another — as well in gaining an understanding of why some of us are so much better than others at recognizing and remembering faces. In a study to be published Oct. 24 in the Journal of Neuroscience, the scientists showed that ...

CHICAGO – Among nearly 45,000 men who were followed up for more than two decades, those with the risk factors of smoking, hypertension, high cholesterol, and type 2 diabetes had an associated greater risk of developing PAD, according to a study in the October 24/31 issue of JAMA. "Peripheral artery disease (PAD) is a distinct atherosclerotic syndrome marked by stenosis or occlusion [blockage] of the arteries, particularly of the lower extremities. PAD affects 8 to 10 million individuals in the United States, and is associated with reduced functional capacity and increased ...

CHICAGO – In an examination of the characteristics of studies that yield large treatment effects from medical interventions, these studies were more likely to be smaller in size, often with limited evidence, and when additional trials were performed, the effect sizes became typically much smaller, according to a study in the October 24/31 issue of JAMA. "Most effective interventions in health care confer modest, incremental benefits," according to background information in the article. "Large effects are important to document reliably because in a relative scale they ...

CHICAGO –Among patients without acute respiratory distress syndrome, protective mechanical ventilation with use of lower tidal volumes (the volume of air inhaled and exhaled during each breath) was associated with better outcomes including less lung injury, lower mortality, fewer pulmonary infections and a shorter hospital length of stay, according to a meta-analysis of previous studies, reported in the October 24/31 issue of JAMA. "Mechanical ventilation is a life-saving strategy in patients with acute respiratory failure. However, unequivocal evidence suggests that ...

Lives could be saved by removing age restrictions on rotavirus vaccination A study published in this week's PLOS Medicine, which suggests that the additional children's lives saved by removing the age restrictions for rotavirus vaccination in low- and middle-income countries would be much greater than any extra deaths from vaccine-associated complications (namely, intussusception-a form of bowel obstruction), has informed policy regarding the age restrictions for this vaccine. Hundreds of thousands of infants world-wide have been vaccinated against rotavirus (which ...

A new study reported in this week's PLOS Medicine reports findings from a study carried out in four African countries by Carla Makhlouf Obermeyer and colleagues on approaches towards expanding testing and counselling for HIV. Provider-initiated HIV testing has the potential to expand access to treatment and prevention services, but there have been concerns as to whether consent practices, client confidentiality, and the referral to care will be acceptable under provider-initiated testing modes. The study, conducted in Burkina Faso, Kenya, Malawi and Uganda, found that ...

When regulatory systems for medical products in low-and middle-income countries work, people live but when such systems fail, people die, according to experts from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) writing in this week's PLOS Medicine. Charles Preston, Mary Lou Valdez, and Katherine Bond from the Office of International Programs at the FDA, argue that few global initiatives focus on strengthening the medical product regulatory systems in low-and middle-income countries but that globalization and the scaling up of medicines and vaccines to these countries are highlighting ...

STANFORD, Calif. — Use of colonoscopy for colorectal cancer screening could explain a significant decrease in the cancer's incidence over the past decade, according to a new study from researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Although colonoscopy is now the most common colorectal cancer screening method, there has been conflicting evidence as to its effectiveness compared with sigmoidoscopy, a method that examines only a portion of the colon. The team scrutinized data collected from more than 2 million patients over the past 20 years, and found that ...

SALT LAKE CITY, Oct. 24, 2012 – Computer simulations provide new mathematical support for the "grandmother hypothesis" – a famous theory that humans evolved longer adult lifespans than apes because grandmothers helped feed their grandchildren. "Grandmothering was the initial step toward making us who we are," says Kristen Hawkes, a distinguished professor of anthropology at the University of Utah and senior author of the new study published Oct. 24 by the British journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The simulations indicate that with only a little bit of grandmothering ...

BOSTON – Although placebos have played a critical role in medicine and clinical research for more than 70 years, it has been a mystery why these inactive treatments help to alleviate symptoms in some patients – and not others. Now researchers have for the first time identified genetic differences between placebo responders and non-responders, providing an important new clue to what has come to be known as "the placebo effect." Led by investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Harvard Medical School (HMS), the new findings demonstrate that genetic ...

The laws that govern how intricate surface patterns, such as those found in the cauliflower, develop over time have been described, for the first time, by a group of European researchers. In a study published today, 24 October, in the Institute of Physics and German Physical Society's New Journal of Physics, researchers have provided a mathematical formula to describe the processes that dictate how cauliflower-like patterns – a type of fractal pattern – form and develop. The term fractal defines a pattern that, when you take a small part of it, looks similar, although ...

It has long been known that breast density, or mammographic density, is a strong risk factor for breast cancer, and that estrogen and progestin hormone therapy increases dense breast tissue. Now, a study published in BioMed Central's open access journal Breast Cancer Research has identified several gene variants in hormone metabolism and growth factor pathways that may be associated with breast density and, hence, breast cancer risk. Mammographic density relates to the fact that x-rays permeate different types of breast tissue in different ways, leading to white areas ...

Patients who have received radiotherapy for head and neck cancer often suffer from the unpleasant and distressing side-effect of a dry mouth, caused by damage to their salivary glands from the radiation. Now, a new study has shown that acupuncture can relieve the symptoms of dry mouth (known as xerostomia). The findings from the largest trial yet to investigate this are published in the cancer journal Annals of Oncology [1] today (Wednesday). Around half a million people worldwide develop head and neck cancer each year and, at present, there are few effective treatments ...

A species relies on genetic diversity to survive and low diversity usually indicates that there has been inbreeding due to a decrease in population size. By looking at historic mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from museum samples, new research published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Genetics has found that koalas (Phascolarctos cinereus) have had low genetic diversity for over 120 years. The genetic diversity of koalas is known to be low in modern populations but historical reports suggest that koala populations have had a chequered past. When Europeans first ...

A major three-year trial led by researchers at UCL, in partnership with the Health Protection Agency, has shown that giving one-to-one feedback to healthcare workers makes them twice as likely to clean their hands or use soap. The Feedback Intervention Trial (FIT) is the first such trial to be done in a large number of hospitals anywhere in the world. Carried out across 60 wards in 16 hospitals that were already implementing the English and Welsh Cleanyourhands campaign, the study showed that an intervention that coupled feedback to personalised action planning improved ...

Avastin, or Bevacizumab, has been shown to increase survival from bowel cancer in around ten to 15 per cent of patients, but it has been impossible to predict who will benefit. Avastin works by targeting and blocking the VEGF-A protein, two major forms of which are VEGF165 and VEGF165b. VEGF165 helps cancers to grow new blood vessels, so they can get food and oxygen from the blood - all cancers need a blood supply to be able to survive and grow. Its sister protein, VEGF165b, has the opposite effect and acts as a brake on this growth. Cancer Research UK funded scientists ...

PHILADELPHIA – Cutting the expenses associated with "low-value" medical tests and treatments – such as unnecessary imaging tests and antibiotics for viral infections that won't benefit from them – will require a multi-pronged plan targeting insurance companies, patients, and physicians, according to a JAMA Viewpoint article published this week by researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. These efforts transcend economic impact, however, and may also be essential for improving health care quality and patient safety. The piece follows ...

'Direct to consumer' research, using data obtained through increasingly popular online communities such as 23andMe, PatientsLikeMe and the Personal Genome Project, has methodological limitations that are known to epidemiological studies, including selection bias, information bias, and confounding. These limitations mean that the results and conclusions of research using these methods need to be interpreted with caution, according to a paper published in the journal PLoS Medicine. Cecile Janssens, PhD, formerly of the Erasmus University Medical Center in The Netherlands ...

BALTIMORE, Md. – Oct. 23, 2012. Old Order Amish children are much more physically active and three times less likely to be overweight than non-Amish children, which may provide them with some long-term protection against developing Type 2 diabetes, University of Maryland School of Medicine researchers report in the journal Diabetes Care. The researchers found that Amish children in Lancaster County, Pa., spent an additional 34 minutes a day in light physical activity, plus another 53 additional minutes a day in moderate to vigorous activity compared to non-Amish white ...

Cold Spring Harbor, NY -- A team of neuroscientists has proposed a new and potentially revolutionary way of obtaining a neuronal connectivity map (the "connectome") of the whole brain of the mouse. The details are set forth in an essay published October 23 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology. The team, led by Professor Anthony Zador, Ph.D., of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, aims to provide a comprehensive account of neural connectivity. At present the only method for obtaining this information with high precision relies on examining individual cell-to-cell contacts ...

New research carried out by scientists at Universities in Exeter, France and Switzerland reveals for the first time the importance of social networking in producing a successful family. The study found that, regardless of how big and healthy individual chicks are, what really matters to their chances of surviving and breeding is how siblings in the nest interact with each other, with cooperative families faring best. Differences in patterns of feeding between mothers and fathers were a key factor in determining the behaviour of their offspring, according to the study ...

Sauder School of Business researchers at the University of British Columbia have found that a person's date of birth can affect their climb up the corporate ladder. The Sauder study shows that only 6.13 per cent of an S&P 500 CEO sample was born in June and only 5.87 per cent of the sample was born in July. By comparison, people born in March and April represented 12.53 per cent and 10.67 per cent of the sample of CEOs. "Our findings indicate that summer babies underperform in the ranks of CEOs as a result of the 'birth-date effect,' a phenomenon resulting from the ...