Giving vitamin D supplements to healthy children with normal vitamin D levels does not improve bone density at the hip, lumbar spine, forearm or in the body as a whole, according to a new Cochrane Systematic Review. Building bone density in children helps protect against osteoporosis in later life. Osteoporosis is a condition where bones are weak, brittle and break easily. Vitamin D helps the body absorb calcium from food, reduces losses of calcium from the body and encourages calcium deposition into bone. Bone density is a major measure of bone strength and measures ...

When compared with placebo and other drugs, long-term use of finasteride improves urinary tract symptoms associated with benign prostatic hyperplasia, and reduces disease progression. This conclusion comes from combining the findings of 23 randomized clinical trials that evaluated almost 21,000 men, and is published this month in The Cochrane Library. Finasteride is frequently given to men who have lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) such as frequent voiding at night (nocturia), incomplete emptying, hesitancy, weak stream, and frequent and urgent urination. The symptoms ...

There is no evidence that increasing the dose of inhaled corticosteroids at the onset of an asthma exacerbation, as part of a patient-initiated action plan, reduces the need for rescue oral corticosteroids. This is the conclusion of work published in The Cochrane Library this month. There are two mechanisms acting in the lungs of people with asthma. The first is called bronchoconstriction, which is when people's airways constrict during an asthma attack, making it much harder for them to move air in and out of their lungs. The first line treatment for this sort of acute ...

Diabetes is the leading reason for kidney failure in the world, resulting in patients requiring dialysis or kidney transplantation. New research has found a cell in the kidney called the podocyte could be the key to understanding why this happens. The study led by Dr Richard Coward, in the School of Clinical Sciences at the University of Bristol, is published in Cell Metabolism and funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC). Diabetes related kidney disease has previously been thought to be mainly due to the high levels of sugar in the blood damaging the small blood ...

Kyoto, Japan -- Knowing how to build nanosized assemblies of polymers (long molecular chains) holds the key to improving a broad range of industrial processes, from the production of nanofibers, filters, and new materials to the manufacture of low-energy, nanoscale circuits and devices. A recent paper in Nature Communications sheds light on key behaviors of polymers in specially engineered confined spaces, opening the door to a level of control that has previously been impossible. Scientists in Japan at Kyoto University and Nagoya University have succeeded in manufacturing ...

Members of the European Parliament are calling on the Presidency of the EU and Member States to tackle urgently the problem of chronic non-communicable diseases that are responsible for 86% of all deaths in the WHO European Region. Their call is supported by an alliance of European health professionals, including ECCO – the European CanCer Organisation – and ESMO – the European Society for Medical Oncology. After a meeting later today (Tuesday) between MEPs and the Chronic Disease Alliance of ten not-for-profit European organisations that represent over 100,000 health ...

The Government's ability to intervene directly to protect people's health and well-being has reached its limits in modern society because the health issues of today are closely tied in with individual lifestyle choice and freedoms, a leading academic will say today (October 5). Public health issues have previously been more amenable to government intervention and included improving sanitation or air quality, or controlling infectious disease. But public health issues today, like smoking, drink and diet, have meant that legislation is a blunt instrument in tackling these ...

Washington, D.C. (October 5, 2010) -- A prototype device developed in Hong Kong will allow laboratory researchers to non-invasively test drugs for their ability to kill tumors by subjecting cancerous cells with different concentration gradients. The new device is built upon microfluidics -- a set of technologies that allows the control and manipulation of fluids at the sub-millimeter scale -- and is described in the American Institute of Physics' journal Biomicrofluidics. Microfluidic valves within the device, said Hongkai Wu of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, ...

Washington, D.C. (October 5, 2010) -- The explosion of portable communication devices that we enjoy today -- such as cell and smart phones, Bluetooth hands-free units, and wireless Internet networks -- has resulted in part from the development of a wide variety of integrated circuits that create, process and receive the microwave frequencies on which the communication is based. Continuing demand for higher performance over a wider range of frequencies has shrunk the physical size of circuits and fueled the development of new materials in thin-film forms, tested in detail ...

Washington, D.C. (October 5, 2010) -- Protein molecules inside cells are constantly reorganizing themselves, driven by very tiny forces exerted by all the other molecules in their crowded environment. Most experimental techniques and theoretical/computational models are necessarily built around much greater driving forces. A new theoretical model reported in the Journal of Chemical Physics investigates the unfolding of fibronectin under gentler conditions. "Typical models study very fast processes and consume a lot of CPU time," says author Alessandro Pelizzola of the ...

Washington, D.C. (October 5, 2010) -- Carbon nanotubes -- long, hollow cylinders of carbon billionths of a meter in diameter -- have many potential uses in nanotechnology, optics, electronics, and many other fields. The exact properties of nanotubes depend on their structure, and scientists as yet have little control over that structure, which is determined during the initial formation -- or growth -- of the nanotubes. In fact, says chemical engineer and materials scientist Eray Aydil of the University of Minnesota, "we do not know precisely how the nanotubes grow." In ...

For Immediate Release - (October 5, 2010) –Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) has been selected as one of seven adult field trial sites in North America and the only site in Canada to test proposed diagnostic criteria for the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Used by health professionals around the world, DSM is the manual that provides descriptions, symptoms and other criteria for diagnosing mental disorders. CAMH is participating in field trials to help assess ...

A research team from the University of British Columbia and the Child & Family Research Institute (CFRI) at BC Children's Hospital has identified the role of a type of T cell in type 1 diabetes that may lead to new treatment options for young patients. Also known as juvenile diabetes, type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease primarily affecting children and young adults. In patients with type 1 diabetes, the body attacks itself by destroying insulin-producing cells in the pancreas that regulate glucose, or blood sugar. Led by Rusung Tan, a Pathology professor in the ...

### For the complete business office feature with individual company rankings, go to dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.opms.r1000097. The article will be posted at this URL address the evening of 7 October 2010. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is the world’s largest general scientific society, and publisher of the journal, Science (www.sciencemag.org) as well as Science Translational Medicine (www.sciencetranslationalmedicine.org) and Science Signaling (www.sciencesignaling.org). AAAS was founded in 1848, and includes some 262 affiliated ...

Spanish and Scottish researchers have added wool fibres to the clay material used to make bricks and combined these with an alginate, a natural polymer extracted from seaweed. The result is bricks that are stronger and more environmentally-friendly, according to the study published recently in the journal Construction and Building Materials. "The objective was to produce bricks reinforced with wool and to obtain a composite that was more sustainable, non-toxic, using abundant local materials, and that would mechanically improve the bricks' strength", Carmen Galán and ...

Pioneering new research by archaeologists at the University of York suggests that Neanderthals belied their primitive reputation and had a deep seated sense of compassion. A team from the University's Department of Archaeology took on the 'unique challenge' of charting the development of compassion in early humans. The researchers examined archaeological evidence for the way emotions began to emerge in our ancestors six million years ago and then developed from earliest times to more recent humans such as Neanderthals and modern people like ourselves. The research by ...

Allergies occur when the defence mechanisms of the immune system malfunction and misread normal substances entering the body as invading pathogens. Antibodies are part of our biochemical arsenal for combating viruses, bacteria, parasites and other alien substances, but during an allergic reaction the antibody, known as IgE, is directed against usually harmless substances such as grass pollen, nuts, pets or eggs. Asthma and allergies are chronic diseases that reduce quality of life and pose an economic burden on society. New parents have therefore previously been asked if ...

Light drinking during pregnancy does not harm a young child's behavioural or intellectual development, reveals research published online in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. A previous study of 3 year olds drew similar conclusions, but the authors wanted to rule out possible delayed "sleeper" effects in older children. They used data from the Millennium Cohort Study - a large study tracking the long term health of children born in the UK - drawing on a representative sample of 11,513 children born between September 2000 and January 2002. Participants' ...

The provision of made-to-order drugs ("specials") in primary care is expensive, often unnecessary, and associated with legal pitfalls, says the Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin (DTB). It calls for a major overhaul of the practice, in a review of the evidence in this month's issue. Bespoke drugs or "specials" are medicines made specifically to meet the needs of individual patients, so may be prepared in formulations and strengths which differ from those of standard licensed medicines. They might be prescribed, for example, when a patient can't or won't swallow tablets ...

A persistently noisy workplace more than doubles an employee's risk of serious heart disease, suggests research published online in Occupational and Environmental Medicine. Young male smokers seemed to be particularly at risk, the findings showed. The researchers base their findings on a nationally representative sample of more than 6,000 employees, aged from 20 upwards, who had been part of the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) between 1999 and 2004. This involved detailed household interviews, to include lifestyle and occupational health, ...

Therapeutic antibodies can be an efficient alternative when common drugs do not work anymore. However, antibodies obtained from blood of animals such as mice could not be used: The human immune system recognizes them as foreign and rejects them. In an international cooperation, scientists from the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig, Germany have now succeeded in developing a promising approach to solve this problem; with the help of human stem cells they generated mice with a human immune system, which were then vaccinated to produce human monoclonal ...

AUGUSTA, Ga. – The most toxic free radical appears responsible for much of the lung damage that can result from oxygen therapy in the critically ill or injured, Medical College of Georgia researchers report. Within just a few days, ventilators and oxygen chambers used to significantly increase oxygen levels can also dramatically increase levels of peroxynitrite, an oxidant powerful enough to break down DNA and cause proteins to malfunction, said Dr. Yunchao Su, pharmacologist in the MCG Schools of Medicine and Graduate Studies. Oxygen toxicity is the most severe side ...

Montreal, October 05, 2010 – Working nine-to-five may be the way to make a living, but it may be padding more than the wallet. According to a new study from the Université de Montréal, office-workers have become less active over the last three decades and this decreased activity may partly explain the rise in obesity. Their findings, published in the early online edition of Preventive Medicine, may have health implications for the millions of people toiling behind their desks. "People eat better and exercise more today than they did in the 1970's, yet obesity rates ...

Today's Oct. 4 issue of the high-impact journal, Applied Physics Letters, contains a new electrofluidics design from the University of Cincinnati and start-up company Gamma Dynamics that promises to dramatically reshape the image capabilities of electronic devices. This patent-pending electrofluidics breakthrough by the Novel Devices Laboratory at the University of Cincinnati and partner companies Gamma Dynamics, Dupont and Sun Chemical follows about seven years of work. According to lead researcher Jason Heikenfeld, UC associate professor of electrical and computer engineering ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Fish oil – long encouraged by doctors as a supplement to support heart and joint health, among other benefits – induced severe colitis and colon cancer in mice in research led by Michigan State University and published this month in the journal Cancer Research. Jenifer Fenton, a food science and human nutrition researcher at MSU, led the research that supports establishing a dose limit for docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), one of the omega-3 fatty acids present in fish oil, particularly in people suffering from chronic conditions such as inflammatory bowel ...