Body

Just when everyone thought that almost every plant species on the Iberian Peninsula had been discovered, Spanish researchers have discovered Taraxacum decastroi and Taraxacum lacianense, two dandelions from the Pyrenees and the Cordillera Cantábrica mountain range, respectively. This finding confirms Spain's privileged position as a hotbed of biodiversity.

The way the heart responds to an early beat is predictive of cardiac death, especially for people with no conventional markers of cardiovascular disease, according to new research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

The conventional risk factors, such as high cholesterol, smoking, diabetes and high blood pressure, account for many but not all deaths from cardiovascular causes. As a result, doctors are always searching for better ways to identify patients at risk of cardiac death.

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.

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. The new findings present possible new opportunities for developing organism-specific drugs, which target the pathogen but leave other microorganisms, which are beneficial to us, untouched.

More than a third of coral reef fish species are in jeopardy of local extinction from the impacts of climate change on coral reefs, a new scientific study has found.

(Local extinction refers to the loss of species from individual locations, while they continue to persist elsewhere across their range.)

A new predictive method developed by an international team of marine scientists has found that a third of reef fishes studied across the Indian Ocean are potentially vulnerable to increasing stresses on the reefs due to climate change.

PORTLAND, Ore. — Researchers at Oregon Health & Science University Doernbecher Children's Hospital have defined the cell of origin for a kind of cancer called sarcoma. In a study published today as the Featured Article in the journal Cancer Cell, they report that childhood and adult sarcomas are linked in their biology, mutations and the cells from which these tumors first start. These findings may lead to non-chemotherapy medicines that can inhibit "molecular targets" such as growth factor receptors, thereby stopping or eradicating the disease.

Millions of Americans, or 10 percent of the population, suffers from daily heartburn or other symptoms of reflux such as regurgitation, chronic cough, hoarseness and dental erosions. Until recently, many of these patients faced either a lifetime of daily medications, incomplete resolution, or worsening of their symptoms while treatment options were often limited to surgery. Scott & White Healthcare – Round Rock is offering a new procedure to patients who meet specific requirements and are generally not doing well on daily medications known as Proton Pump Inhibitors (PPIs).

Practical medical advice that works in the "real world" may more effectively prevent cardiovascular disease in women than recommendations based only on findings in clinical research settings, according to the 2011 update to the American Heart Association's cardiovascular disease prevention guidelines for women.

First published in 1999, the guidelines until now have been primarily based on findings observed in clinical research. That alone often doesn't consider the personal and socioeconomic factors that can keep women from following medical advice and treatment.

According to Dr Annette Baudisch of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany, current methods of comparing patterns of ageing are limited because they confound two different elements of ageing – pace and shape.

Obesity is a killer in its own right, irrespective of other biological or social risk factors traditionally associated with coronary heart disease, suggests research published online in Heart.

Increasing weight is associated with a higher prevalence of known risk factors for coronary artery disease, such as diabetes, high blood pressure and cholesterol. And it has been assumed that these have been responsible for the increased risk of heart disease seen in obesity, say the authors.

Portable pedal machines could help counter the harmful effects of prolonged periods spent at a desk or workstation among an increasingly sedentary workforce, suggests a small study published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

The researchers base their findings on 18 full time employees who were given a pedal exercise machine for four weeks, specifically designed to be used while seated at a desk in the workplace.

Healthcare practitioners can increase the number of patients with heart disease referred to a cardiac rehabilitation program by 40 per cent, helping them to reduce their risk of dying and improve their quality of life, say researchers at the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre.

That human evolution follows a progressive trajectory is one of the most deeply-entrenched assumptions about our species. This assumption is often expressed in popular media by showing cavemen speaking in grunts and monosyllables (the GEICO Cavemen being a notable exception). But is this assumption correct? Were the earliest humans significantly different from us?

In a paper published in the latest issue of Current Anthropology, archaeologist John Shea (Stony Brook University) shows they were not.

Most medical devices recently recalled by the Food and Drug Administration because of very serious risks were initially approved through an expedited process or were exempt from regulatory review, according to a report posted online today that will be published in the June 14 print issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Dietary fiber may be associated with a reduced risk of death from cardiovascular, infectious and respiratory diseases, as well as a reduced risk of death from any cause over a nine-year period, according to a report posted online today that will be published in the June 14 print issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.