Among children born full term, those conceived with the help of fertility drugs are slightly shorter than naturally conceived children but overall are physically healthy, a new study finds. Results of the study will be presented Saturday at The Endocrine Society's 94th Annual Meeting in Houston. "Reassuringly, these children remained well within the normal height range for both their sex and age," said researcher Tim Savage, MD, a pediatrician and research fellow at The Liggins Institute, University of Auckland, in Auckland, New Zealand. Because some studies have found ...

The hot flashes and night sweats that most women experience early in menopause are not linked to increased levels of cardiovascular disease risk markers unless the symptoms persist or start many years after menopause begins. These new study results will be presented Saturday at The Endocrine Society's 94th Annual Meeting in Houston. "Our study provides reassurance that the common experience of menopausal symptoms in early menopause is not associated with increases in blood pressure or other risk markers for cardiovascular disease," said lead researcher Emily Szmuilowicz, ...

An investigational parathyroid hormone replacement effectively treated a rare disorder characterized by low calcium and high phosphate levels in the blood, a new study finds. The results will be presented Saturday at The Endocrine Society's 94th Annual Meeting in Houston. The parathyroid hormone replacement is called recombinant human parathyroid hormone, or rhPTH(1-84). It is produced in the lab using a replica of the human parathyroid hormone gene. rhPTH(1-84) is identical to the naturally occurring parathyroid hormone and acts to regulate calcium levels in the same ...

June 25, 2012 – The human gut is home to a teeming ecosystem of microbes that is intimately involved in both human health and disease. But while the gut microbiota is interacting with our body, they are also under constant attack from viruses. In a study published online in Genome Research, researchers have analyzed a bacterial immune system, revealing a common set of viruses associated with gut microbiota in global populations. Viruses that prey on bacteria, called phages, pose a constant threat to the health of bacterial communities. In many ecological systems, viruses ...

Nuremberg, Germany: The use of genome-wide array analysis[1] in parents whose children are suspected of having a genetic disease shows that the parents frequently also have previously undetected genetic abnormalities, a researcher from The Netherlands told the annual conference of the European Society of Human Genetics today (Sunday). Being aware of this is important to parents because it means that their risk of having another affected child is significantly increased. Dr. Nicole de Leeuw, a clinical laboratory geneticist in the Department of Human Genetics of the ...

Nuremberg, Germany: The first report of the diagnostic use of the technique of exome sequencing, where short sequences of DNA are analysed, shows that it can give good results at low cost, a researcher from The Netherlands will tell the annual conference of the European Society of Human Genetics today (Monday). The scientists were able to perform a genetic diagnosis in around 20% of 100 cases of patients with intellectual disability (ID) and 50% of the 25 cases of blindness studied. Not only is the exome test cheaper, but results are available more quickly than with ...

PITTSBURGH—With the University of Pittsburgh's development of a cell-free, biodegradable artery graft comes a potentially transformative change in coronary artery bypass surgeries: Within 90 days after surgery, the patient will have a regenerated artery with no trace of synthetic graft materials left in the body. Research published online June 24 in Nature Medicine highlights work led by principal investigator Yadong Wang, a professor in Pitt's Swanson School of Engineering and School of Medicine's Department of Surgery, who designed grafts that fully harness the body's ...

Researchers at Yale School of Medicine have zeroed in on a set of neurons in the part of the brain that controls hunger, and found that these neurons are not only associated with overeating, but also linked to non-food associated behaviors, like novelty-seeking and drug addiction. Published in the June 24 online issue of Nature Neuroscience, the study was led by Marcelo O. Dietrich, postdoctoral associate, and Tamas L. Horvath, the Jean and David W. Wallace Professor of Biomedical Research and chair of comparative medicine at Yale School of Medicine. In attempts to ...

Normally a material can be either magnetically or electrically polarized, but not both. Now researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen have studied a material that is simultaneously magnetically and electrically polarizable. This opens up new possibilities, for example, for sensors in technology of the future. The results have been published in the scientific journal, Nature Materials. Materials that can be both magnetically and electrically polarized and also have additional properties are called multiferroics and were previously discovered ...

The patient-centered medical home (PCMH) is a concept at the heart of many health care reform models that aim to both improve the quality of care and reduce wasteful spending. But a new analysis of federally qualified health centers finds that clinics with higher scores as medical homes also had higher per-patient operating costs. The research, published online in the Journal of the American Medical Association and presented today at the AcademyHealth conference in Orlando, Fla., is the first national study to put a price on these additional costs. "We're not saying ...

Every day the human brain is presented with tasks ranging from the trivial to the complex. How much mental effort and attention are devoted to each task is usually determined in a split second and without conscious awareness. Now a study from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers finds that a structure deep within the brain, believed to play an important role in regulating conscious control of goal-directed behavior, helps to optimize behavioral responses by predicting how difficult upcoming tasks will be. The report is receiving advance online publication ...

MADISON -- The blood-brain barrier -- the filter that governs what can and cannot come into contact with the mammalian brain -- is a marvel of nature. It effectively separates circulating blood from the fluid that bathes the brain, and it keeps out bacteria, viruses and other agents that could damage it. But the barrier can be disrupted by disease, stroke and multiple sclerosis, for example, and also is a big challenge for medicine, as it can be difficult or impossible to get therapeutic molecules through the barrier to treat neurological disorders. Now, however, the ...

CINCINNATI - New research in Nature Medicine shows that boosting a protein pathway in the body's blood making system protects mice from otherwise fatal radiation poisoning. Scientists in the multi-institutional study – posted online by the journal on June 24 – say their findings open the potential for new treatments against radiation toxicity during cancer treatment or environmental exposures – such as in a nuclear explosion or accident. By identifying a target-specific intervention to protect the hematopoietic system against radiation toxicity, the study addresses ...

Hemimegalencephaly is a rare but dramatic condition in which the brain grows asymmetrically, with one hemisphere becoming massively enlarged. Though frequently diagnosed in children with severe epilepsy, the cause of hemimegalencephaly is unknown and current treatment is radical: surgical removal of some or all of the diseased half of the brain. In a paper published in the June 24, 2012 online issue of Nature Genetics, a team of doctors and scientists, led by researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, ...

The vagaries of South Asian summer monsoon rainfall impact the lives of more than one billion people. A review in Nature Climate Change (June 24 online issue) of over 100 recent research articles concludes that with continuing rise in CO2 and global warming, the region can expect generally more rainfall, due to the expected increase in atmospheric moisture, as well as more variability in rainfall. In spite of the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration of about 70 parts per million by volume and in global temperatures of about 0.50°C over the last 6 decades, the All India ...

Kyoto, Japan -- In what may prove to be a significant boon for industry, separating mixtures of liquids or gasses has just become considerably easier. Using a new process they describe as "reverse fossilization," scientists at Kyoto University's WPI Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (iCeMS) have succeeded in creating custom designed porous substances capable of low cost, high efficiency separation. The process takes place in the mesoscopic realm, between the nano- and the macroscopic, beginning with the creation of a shaped mineral template, in this case ...

The study is the first to give a comprehensive projection for this long perspective, based on observed sea-level rise over the past millennium, as well as on scenarios for future greenhouse-gas emissions. "Sea-level rise is a hard to quantify, yet critical risk of climate change," says Michiel Schaeffer of Climate Analytics and Wageningen University, lead author of the study. "Due to the long time it takes for the world's ice and water masses to react to global warming, our emissions today determine sea levels for centuries to come." Limiting global warming could considerably ...

CHICAGO – Federally funded community health centers with higher patient-centered medical home ratings on measures such as quality improvement had higher operating costs, according to a study appearing in JAMA. This study is being published early online to coincide with its presentation at the Annual Research Meeting of AcademyHealth. "The patient-centered medical home (PCMH) is a model of care characterized by comprehensive primary care, quality improvement, care management, and enhanced access in a patient-centered environment. The PCMH is intuitively appealing and has ...

In choosing a mate both males and females rely on visual cues to determine which potential partner will supply the best genes, best nesting site, best territory, and best parenting skills. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Frontiers in Zoology shows that male blue tits' (Cyanistes caeruleus) parental behavior is determined by female ornamentation (ultraviolet coloration of the crown), as predicted by the differential allocation hypothesis (DAH). DAH makes the assumption that aesthetic traits indicate quality and arises from the needs of a ...

Offenders with mental health problems need improved and on-going access to health care, according to the first study to systematically examine healthcare received by offenders across the criminal justice system. A new report from Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry, Plymouth University, and the Centre for Mental Health, suggests that prison and community sentences offer the best opportunities to provide this. If improvements to mental health are to contribute to breaking the cycle of repeat offending, unemployment and ill-health, advantage should be taken of ...

EVANSTON, Ill. – Want to nail that tune that you've practiced and practiced? Maybe you should take a nap with the same melody playing during your sleep, new provocative Northwestern University research suggests. The research grows out of exciting existing evidence that suggests that memories can be reactivated during sleep and storage of them can be strengthened in the process. In the Northwestern study, research participants learned how to play two artificially generated musical tunes with well-timed key presses. Then while the participants took a 90-minute nap, the ...

A new study shows that although gastric bypass surgery reverses Type 2 diabetes in a large percentage of obese patients, the disease recurs in about 21 percent of them within three to five years. The study results will be presented Saturday at The Endocrine Society's 94th Annual Meeting in Houston. "The recurrence rate was mainly influenced by a longstanding history of Type 2 diabetes before the surgery," said the study's lead author, Yessica Ramos, MD, an internal medicine resident at Mayo Clinic Arizona in Scottsdale. "This suggests that early surgical intervention ...

A team of researchers from Mount Sinai School of Medicine and four other institutions have found that young children with documented or likely allergies to milk and/or eggs, whose families were instructed on how to avoid these and other foods, still experienced allergic reactions at a rate of almost once per year. Of severe cases, less than a third received epinephrine, a medication used to counter anaphylaxis, a life-threatening allergic condition. The findings are from an ongoing Consortium of Food Allergy Research (CoFAR) study that has been following more than 500 ...

A team of researchers led by an epidemiologist at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and University of Iceland has found a correlation between the age at which children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) begin taking medication, and how well they perform on standardized tests, particularly in math. The study, titled, "A Population-Based Study of Stimulant Drug Treatment of ADHD and Academic Progress in Children," appears in the July, 2012, edition of Pediatrics, and can be viewed online on June 25. Using data from the Icelandic Medicines Registry and the ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – A national survey identifies which U.S. military veterans may be at most risk of aggression after deployment and what strategies could potentially help reduce likelihood of violence when service members return home. The study examined protective factors that are important in preventing violence, including employment, meeting basic needs, living stability, social support, spiritual faith, ability to care for oneself, perceived self-determination, and resilience (ability to adapt to stress). Veterans with these factors in place were 92 percent less ...