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High-fat/Calorie Diet Ups Development of Pancreatic Cancer

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In humans, diet high in fat and calories accelerates development of pancreatic cancer, say scientists. "Our results showed that in mice, a diet high in fat and calories led to obesity and metabolic disturbances such as insulin resistance that are seen in obese humans. It also greatly enhanced pancreatic inflammation and pancreatic cancer development," said Guido Eibl, M.D., an associate professor in the department of surgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine ...

Study Finds 'Brain Pacemaker' Effective Treatment for Parkinson's Disease

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Deep brain stimulation (DBS) that functions as a 'brain pacemaker' remains an effective treatment for Parkinson's disease for at least three years, according to a study in the June 2012 online issue of iNeurology/i, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. But while improvements in motor function remained stable, there were gradual declines in health-related quality of life and cognitive abilities. First author of the study is Frances ...

Researchers Propose Mathematical Model to Study Malaria Transmission

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A mathematical model to study transmission of malaria has been proposed by researchers. Malaria affects over 200 million individuals every year and kills hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. The disease varies greatly from region to region in the species that cause it and in the carriers that spread it. It is easily transmitted across regions through travel and migration. This results in outbreaks of the disease even in regions that are ...

Drug Combo More Effective Than AZT Alone at Preventing Mother-to-child HIV Transmission

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A combination of two or three drugs given to infants born to HIV-postive mothers who did not receive antiretroviral treatment, works better than AZT alone in reducing mother-to-child HIV transmission, research reveals. Non-breastfed babies born to HIV-positive mothers who didn't receive antiretroviral therapy during pregnancy are routinely given zidovudine, commonly known as AZT, shortly after birth to prevent mother-to-child transmission of the virus that causes ...

India-Norway Initiative to Reduce Child And Maternal Mortality Extended

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Extension of an India-Norway initiative for reducing child and maternal mortality till 2017 will coincide with the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) plan, an official statement said Tuesday. The Norway-India Partnership Initiative (NIPI), which was launched in 2006, completes its first phase in 2012. A statement issued from the Norwegian embassy here said an agreement was signed Monday between the two countries in Oslo, extending the programme ...

Chinese Astronauts Get E-mail from Earth

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Receiving the first of its kind e-mail from earth are Chinese astronauts in the orbiting space module Tiangong-1 on Tuesday. The Beijing Aerospace Control Centre said the e-mail contains photos, text and videos. It was sent through a special communication channel between the control centre and the space module, Xinhua reported. Through the communication channel, astronauts can maintain instant contact with earth, which helps their work and ...

Online Weight Loss Programs Could Help Dieters: Study

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Web-based weight loss programs may be an effective approach for weight loss, say researchers. Researchers created a website called AchieveTogether and evaluated the weight-loss success of users. They compared users with a group of people attempting to lose weight on their own, and then allowed that second group access to the site 12 weeks later. "Internet-based weight loss programs could help address the obesity epidemic, as they can be widely shared and used ...

Hearing Loss Risk Higher for Children Exposed to HIV in the Womb

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Children born of HIV-infected mothers may be more likely to experience hearing loss by age 16 than their unexposed peers, said scientists in a National Institutes of Health research network. The researchers estimated that hearing loss affects 9 to 15 percent of HIV-infected children and 5 to 8 percent of children who did not have HIV at birth but whose mothers had HIV infection during pregnancy. Study participants ranged from 7 to 16 years old. The ...

Thousands of Yoga Fans Welcome Summer at Times Square

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The Times Square in New York resembled an immense outdoor yoga class as several thousand New Yorkers calmly invaded the place Wednesday, to salute the arrival of summer. Some 1,500 yoga mats were distributed free for the occasion, and pedestrian spaces in New York's most frenetic crossroads were completely covered. All day, thousands of yogis, beginners and veterans alike, dutifully sweated in the heat, following directions broadcast over loudspeakers. ...

Fructose-rich Diet Causes Liver Injury

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A study on rats concluded that administration of a diet rich in fructose leads to increased triglyceride and blood sugar levels and alters insulin resistance, possibly contributing to the development of metabolic syndrome. Fructose, in addition, reduces antioxidant activity and contributes to liver damage. Fructose is an ingredient used in beverages as a sweetening agent. Studies have shown that metabolic syndrome is associated with intake of western ...

World's First Test Tube Baby's Mother Dies in Britain

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The British woman who underwent the first successful IVF treatment and gave birth to the world's first test tube baby has died aged 64, her family said on Wednesday. Lesley Brown made history on July 22, 1978 when her daughter Louise was born following pioneering in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment. She died in hospital in Bristol, southwest England, on June 6 after a short illness, her family said. She successfully conceived following ...

Diabetes Drug may Kill Cancer Stem Cells: Study

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Antidiabetic drug metformin may effectively kill cancer stem cells, say scientists. In addition, when metformin was combined with a standard chemotherapy used for pancreatic cancer, the combination treatment was able to efficiently eradicate both cancer stem cells and more differentiated cancer cells, which form the bulk of the tumor, according to data presented by Christopher Heeschen, M.D., Ph.D., at the American Association for Cancer Research''s Pancreatic ...

Delamanid for Multidrug-Resistant Pulmonary Tuberculosis

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Pulmonary tuberculosis (TB), a contagious bacterial lung infection, is caused by bacteria iMycobacterium tuberculosis/i (M. tuberculosis). TB can be transmitted from one person to another by breathing in air droplets from a cough or sneeze of an infected person. The last 20 years have witnessed a rising incidence of multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB), that is, TB caused by strains of emMycobacterium tuberculosis/em that is unresponsive to traditional ...

Early Predictors of Sedentary Behavior in Kids Identified

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Children are more active if their television time is limited, reveals study published in iPLoS ONE/i. The authors, led by Mark Pearce of Newcastle University, reveal that children are not spending enough time being active and that girls are already becoming more sedentary than boys by the age of eight. Using information from the Gateshead Millennium Study, which collected data from over 1,000 infants born between 1999-2000 and monitored ...

Apple Peel Compound Reduces Obesity in Mice

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A natural compound present in apple peel protects mice from obesity, say researchers. The findings suggest that the substance known as ursolic acid reduces obesity and its associated health problems by increasing the amount of muscle and brown fat, two tissues recognized for their calorie-burning properties. The study, which was published June 20 in the journal iPLoS ONE/i, was led by Christopher Adams, M.D., Ph.D., UI associate professor of ...

Link Between Traffic Noise and Heart Attack Risk

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Traffic noise exposure is associated with higher risk of heart attack, reveals study published in iPLoS ONE/i. Previous work had investigated that combined effects of both noise and air pollution caused by traffic, but the results were inconsistent. The new study, led by Mette Sorensen on the Danish Cancer Society, showed a clear relationship between traffic noise and heart attack, with a 12% higher risk per 10 decibels of noise, based on 50,614 study ...

Laparoscopic Gastric Bypass Surgery Found to be Safer Than Open Procedure

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Laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery found to be safer than open procedure, reveals a recent study. A major public health concern, obesity has been associated with such adverse health conditions as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension and some cancers. Bariatric surgery has proven to be an effective option to treat those patients who are morbidly obese, although mortality and other complications are serious risks associated with the procedure, according ...

Communication Routing Strategy for the Brain That Mimics the American Highway System

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A new study proposes a communication routing strategy for the brain that mimics the American highway system, with the bulk of the traffic leaving the local and feeder neural pathways to spend as much time as possible on the longer, higher-capacity passages through an influential network of hubs, the so-called rich club. The study, published this week online in the Early Edition of the iProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences/i, involves researchers from ...

Detailing 2010 Haitian Cholera

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A new study by an international team of scientists led by researchers from the Institute for Genome Sciences (IGS) at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at the University of Maryland, College Park, and CosmosIDTM Inc., College Park, have found two distinct strains of cholera bacteria may have contributed to the 2010 Haitian cholera outbreak. The team published its results June 18, 2012 in the IProceedings ...

Commensal Bacteria Aid in the Battle Against Viruses

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Healthy humans have many varieties of bacteria and other bugs which exist within their intestines. These microbial partners provide beneficial aid in multiple ways - from helping digest food to the development of a healthy immune system. In a new study published online in the journal IImmunity/I, David Artis, PhD, associate professor of Microbiology, and Michael Abt, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in the Artis lab, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, ...

High Risk of Abuse and Depression Among Canadian Teen Mums

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Teen mothers carry a higher risk of abuse and postpartum depression than older moms, a recent study has revealed. Dawn Kingston, an assistant professor in the Faculty of Nursing, analyzed data from the Maternity Experiences Survey, which asked more than 6,400 new mothers about their experiences with stress, violence, pre- and postnatal care, breastfeeding and risky behaviour like smoking and drug use before, during and after pregnancy. Kingston said ...

Bioinformatics Experts Look at Coding Potential Hidden in the Human Genome

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Alfonso Valencia's group discover proteins made by combining different genes in healthy cells and tissues To date this has been considered a rarity confined to anomalous processes like cancer The authors believe their finding opens a new line of research inquiry with multiple implications in Human Genomics and cancer Sequencing the human genome was just the first step. The next challenge is of the kind that makes history: to decode the genome, ...

Compound in Plastic Bottle can Cause Harm to Many Generations

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Exposure to low doses of Bisphenol A (BPA), a toxic man-made chemical, during gestation has immediate and long-lasting trans-generational effects on the brain and social behaviour, says a study. BPA is present in a variety of products including plastic water bottles, food containers, receipt paper and dental sealants and is now widely detected in human urine and blood. Public health concerns have been fuelled by findings that BPA exposure can influence ...

Gay-rights March on Croatia's Capital

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Nearly 2000 people participated in a gay-rights march on Croatia's capital, to bring the government's attention to improve the rights of same-sex couples. "Hatred is Not a Family Value" and "I Have Rights Because I'm a Lesbian Woman -- Human" read some of the banners carried by participants in the hour-long Gay Pride parade through downtown Zagreb. Special police marched alongside to separate the participants from onlookers, as marchers blew whistles, ...

Teen Drunk Driving Witnesses Reduction With the Help of Driving Laws

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Restrictive licensing laws have helped reduce teen drunk driving and fatal crashes by 30 percent. "We were interested in determining whether these laws were making it less likely for teens to engage in drinking and driving behaviors," Cavazos-Rehg says. The researchers gathered drinking and driving information from more than 220,000 16-17-year olds who were surveyed between 1999 and 2009, when state laws that restrict teen driving were strengthened. ...

Listening to Distorted Music Akin to Animals' Distress Call

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When one listens to music with distortion it is akin to hearing the cries of animals in distress, say researchers. "Music that shares aural characteristics with the vocalisations of distressed animals captures human attention and is uniquely arousing," said study co-author Daniel Blumstein, the journal Biology Letters reports. In distress, animals distort their ...

Novel 'Bat Signal' Helps Mark Distressed Cells in Childhood Genetic Diseases

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Bethesda, MD-Just as Gotham City uses the Bat Signal to call for Batman's aid, a new tool developed by scientists from the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute in La Jolla, California, should serve as the cellular equivalent for children with glycosylation disorders, sometimes called "CDG syndromes." In a new report appearing online in The iFASEB Journal/i , scientists describe how they used a green fluorescent protein to identify the presence of genes-known and unknown-associated ...