A paper published in this week's issue of PLoS Medicine provides the most detailed assessment thus far of civilian deaths in the course of the recent Iraq war. Madelyn Hsiao-Rei Hicks from King's College London, UK and colleagues analyzed data from Iraq Body Count (IBC), a nongovernmental project that collates media reports of deaths of individual Iraqi civilians and cross-checks these reports with data from hospitals, morgues, nongovernmental organizations, and official figures. The authors studied 92,614 Iraqi civilian direct deaths from the IBC database that occurred ...

Although there is no evidence to suggest a direct causal pathway, some intravaginal practices used by women in sub-Saharan Africa (such as washing the vagina with soap) may increase the acquisition of HIV infection and so should be avoided. Encouraging women to use less harmful intravaginal practices (for example, washing with water alone) should therefore be included in female-initiated HIV prevention research strategies in sub-Saharan Africa. These are the key findings from a study by Nicola Low, from the University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland, and colleagues and published ...

Water softeners provide no additional clinical benefit to usual care in children with eczema, so the use of ion-exchange water softeners for the treatment of moderate to severe eczema in children should not be recommended. However, it is up to each family to decide whether or not the wider benefits of installing a water softener in their home are sufficient to consider buying one. These are the findings of a study by Kim Thomas from the University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK, and colleagues and published in this week's PLoS Medicine. The authors conducted their randomised ...

New research sheds light on the interaction between the semi-flexible protein tropomyosin and actin thin filaments. The study, published by Cell Press on February 15th in the Biophysical Journal, provides the first detailed atomic model of tropomyosin bound to actin and significantly advances the understanding of the dynamic relationship between these key cellular proteins. Tropomyosin is a long protein that associates with actin, a highly conserved thin filament protein found in organisms from yeast to humans. Actin, a major part of the cell's cytoskeleton, drives shape ...

VIDEO: This movie shows a typical (wild type) mouse as it spends much more time exploring an object it has never seen before and little time with the object it has... Click here for more information. DURHAM, N.C. – Scientists at Duke University Medical Center have uncovered clues to memory and learning by exploring the function of a single gene that governs how neurons form new connections. The finding may also provide insights into a form of human mental retardation. In a ...

PHILADELPHIA—Researchers from Jefferson's Kimmel Cancer Center have genetic evidence suggesting the antioxidant drugs currently used to treat lung disease, malaria and even the common cold can also help prevent and treat cancers because they fight against mitochondrial oxidative stress—a culprit in driving tumor growth. For the first time, the researchers show that loss of the tumor suppressor protein Caveolin-1 (Cav-1) induces mitochondrial oxidative stress in the stromal micro-environment, a process that fuels cancer cells in most common types of breast cancer. "Now ...

Elderly Medicare black patients have a higher 30-day hospital readmission rate for several conditions including congestive heart failure and pneumonia compared to white patients, that is related in part to higher readmission rates among hospitals that disproportionately care for black patients, according to a study in the February 16 issue of JAMA. "Racial disparities in health care are well documented, and eliminating them remains a national priority. Reducing readmissions has become a policy focus because it represents an opportunity to simultaneously improve quality ...

An analysis of data including more than 500,000 adults indicates that levels in the blood of bilirubin (a compound produced by the breakdown of hemoglobin from red blood cells) in the normal range but relatively higher were associated with a reduced risk of lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and all-cause death, according to a study in the February 16 issue of JAMA. Serum total bilirubin is routinely measured in the primary care setting to identify hepatobiliary (liver, gall bladder and bile ducts) and blood diseases. Bilirubin may have cytoprotective ...

Among a group of children's hospitals, nearly 20 percent of admissions and one-quarter of inpatient expenditures were accounted for by a small percentage of patients who have frequent recurrent admissions, according to a study in the February 16 issue of JAMA. Hospital readmission is increasingly considered an indicator of quality of care. Some children with chronic illnesses may be readmitted on a recurrent basis, but there are limited data regarding the impact of their rehospitalizations, according to background information in the article. "Children with chronic conditions ...

Accurate transmission of genetic information requires the precise replication of DNA. Errors in DNA replication are common and nature has developed several cellular mechanisms for repairing these mistakes. Mutations, which can be deleterious (development of cancerous cells), or beneficial (evolutionary adaption), arise from uncorrected errors. Researchers from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (U.S.A) and Umea° University (Sweden) report that a method by which cells repair breaks in their DNA, known as Break-induced Replication (BIR), is up to 2,800 times ...

Zinc supplements reduce the severity and duration of illness caused by the common cold, according to a systematic review published in The Cochrane Library. The findings could help reduce the amount of time lost from work and school due to colds. The common cold places a heavy burden on society, accounting for approximately 40% of time taken off work and millions of days of school missed by children each year. The idea that zinc might be effective against the common cold came from a study carried out in 1984, which showed that zinc lozenges could reduce how long symptoms ...

Some biologic drugs may be safer than others according to a new systematic review by Cochrane researchers. Biologics are a broad class of drugs based on biological molecules. The drugs are used to reduce inflammation in diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease. Although the effectiveness of biologics is now well established, it is thought that some may have rare but serious side effects related to their immune-suppressing activities. Links have been made to increased risk of infections, reactivation of tuberculosis (TB), cancer and congestive ...

Berkeley — The Western fence lizard's reputation for helping to reduce the threat of Lyme disease is in jeopardy. A new study led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, found that areas where the lizard had been removed saw a subsequent drop in the population of the ticks that transmit Lyme disease. "Our expectation going into this study was that removing the lizards would increase the risk of Lyme disease, so we were surprised by these findings," said study lead author Andrea Swei, who conducted the study while she was a Ph.D. student in integrative ...

Boston, MA – Elderly black patients were more likely to be readmitted to the hospital after a prior hospital stay for a heart attack, heart failure, or pneumonia, according to a new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers. They found that the higher readmission rates were due to disparities related to both race and the hospitals where patients were treated. "Disparities in health and health care are well-documented in this country, but little was previously known about whether there were disparities in hospital readmissions at the national level," ...

(New York, NY) February 15, 2011 – A new study led by an NYU School of Medicine investigator and published in the February 15, 2011, Advance Online Publication, International Journal of Obesity, challenges the idea that calorie labeling has an effect on the purchasing behavior of teenagers or what parents purchase for their children. Teens appear to notice the calorie information at the same rate as adults, however they respond at a lower rate. The conclusions are similar to a previous study about adult eating behavior by Dr. Brian Elbel, assistant professor and colleagues, ...

Men who start to lose hair at the age of 20 are more likely to develop prostate cancer in later life and might benefit from screening for the disease, according to a new study published online in the cancer journal, Annals of Oncology [1] today. The French study compared 388 men being treated for prostate cancer with a control group of 281 healthy men and found that those with the disease were twice as likely as the healthy men to have started going bald when they were 20. However, if the men only started to lose their hair when they were 30 or 40, there was no difference ...

Boston, Mass. - Hospital readmissions are increasingly viewed as an indicator of quality of care. If patients receive appropriate discharge care planning and coordinated outpatient follow-up when leaving the hospital, they should transition safely home without the need to return to the hospital. n a retrospective study of inpatient records at 37 free-standing children's hospitals between 2003 and 2008, nearly 20 percent of admissions and one-quarter of inpatient expenditures ($3.4 billion) were accounted for by a small group (2.9 percent) of patients who were readmitted ...

DALLAS – Feb. 15, 2011 – Breast-cancer patient Kristin Wiginton is the first to be treated at UT Southwestern Medical Center with high-beam radiation using the Accuray CyberKnife System, which offers improved cosmetic results, less radiation exposure to surrounding tissue and a shorter treatment period. Dr. Wiginton is among 45 participants in a UT Southwestern-based clinical trial – the first of its kind in the Southwest – investigating use of the radiation delivery system for breast cancer. Her post-lumpectomy therapy lasted one-third the duration of a typical radiation ...

Chemical releases, suicide bombers, air and subsurface threats: the U.S. Secret Service needs to be prepared to handle these real-life incidents. Training to respond to such incidents, however, has been more theoretical than practical. Now, with help from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science & Technology Directorate (S&T), the Secret Service is giving training scenarios a high-tech edge: moving from static tabletop models to virtual kiosks with gaming technology and 3D modeling. For the past 40 years, a miniature model environment called "Tiny Town" ...

Since 1965, the chances of dying early (under 75) are a fifth higher in the north of England than the south, finds a study published on bmj.com today. An accompanying editorial says the north-south health divide is now at its widest for 40 years and warns that "the north is being decimated at the rate of a major city every decade." The north-south health divide in England is well documented and has posed a public health challenge - as well as a political and economic challenge - to successive governments. From 2003 to 2010, the UK government had performance targets ...

Depression can be treated effectively with psychotherapy by mental health nurses with minimal training, according to new preliminary research findings. The study, led by Durham University's Mental Health Research Centre, shows that patients with severe depression can be treated successfully with behavioural activation – a psychotherapy for depression – by non-specialist mental health staff which could potentially lead to considerable cost-savings for the NHS. Currently, psychotherapies, such as behavioural activation, are delivered by specialist clinicians and therapists. ...

The genome of the Blackleg fungus, which causes the most damaging disease to canola crops worldwide, has been sequenced for the first time by a team of French and Australian scientists. Professor Barbara Howlett from the School of Botany at the University of Melbourne, who led the Australian research team, said the discovery was a significant step towards controlling the rampant Blackleg disease. "The 12,500 genes that constitute the genetic blue print for the fungus Leptosphaeria maculans have been identified and now can be mined to discover how this fungus causes ...

VIDEO: Three snapshots of the 3-D structure of Mycobacterium tuberculosis' enzyme PriA are combined in this video to show the changes the enzyme is capable of undergoing. Click here for more information. In a paper published today in PNAS, scientists from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Hamburg, Germany, reveal new insights into the workings of enzymes from a group of bacteria including Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium that causes tuberculosis. ...

UPTON, NY - Scientists hoping to unravel the mystery of proton spin at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC, http://www.bnl.gov/rhic/), a 2.4-mile-circumference particle accelerator at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, have a new tool at their disposal - the first to directly explore how quarks of different types, or "flavors," contribute to the overall spin of the proton. The technique, described in papers just published by RHIC's STAR and PHENIX collaborations in Physical Review Letters, relies on the measurement of particles called ...

Scientists today agree that there are five molecules that are known to affect or cause Alzheimer's disease, which plagues an estimated five million Americans. The potency of these molecules is linked to environmental factors such as diet and lifestyle. Prof. Daniel Michaelson of Tel Aviv University's Department of Neurobiology at the George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences has illuminating news about one of these five molecules — APOE, created by the apolipoprotein E. gene found in all of our bodies. Prof. Michaelson says APOE comes in two forms, a "good" APOE gene ...