Body

Specially designed probiotics can modulate the physiology of host fat cells say scientists writing in Microbiology. The findings could lead to specialised probiotics that have a role in the prevention or treatment of conditions such as obesity.

Shouldering family demands and worries seems to increase the risk of angina, the precursor to coronary artery disease, reveals research published online in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

Previous research has indicated that rewarding personal relationships are a boost for heart health, so the authors wanted to know if the reverse might also be true.

They tracked the heart health of more than 4,500 randomly selected men and women in their 40s and 50s for six years. None had any heart problems at the start of the study in 1999.

Teen girls living in the most deprived areas are five times as likely to be assaulted as their affluent male and female peers, reveals research published online in Emergency Medicine Journal.

Young men are twice as likely to be a victim of assault as young women, but the link between deprivation and assault is far stronger for their female peers, the study shows.

STANFORD, Calif. — A study fast-tracked for online publication Dec. 22 in the New England Journal of Medicine has identified an important gene deletion in up to one of every four cases of glioblastoma, the most common adult brain cancer. This deletion contributes to tumor development, promotes resistance to therapy and considerably worsens a patient's survival prospects.

Penn State researchers have found that native pollinators, like wild bees and wasps, are infected by the same viral diseases as honey bees and that these viruses are transmitted via pollen. Their research published on December 22nd in PLoS ONE, an online open-access journal for the communication of all peer-reviewed scientific and medical research.

This multi-institutional study provides new insights into viral infections in native pollinators, suggesting that viral diseases may be key factors impacting pollinator populations.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Eating a Southern staple, fried fish, could be one reason people in Alabama and across the "stroke belt" states are more likely than other Americans to die of a stroke, according to a study published in the December 22, 2010, online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology (AAN).

BUFFALO, NY (December 22, 2010) -- Experiments by a team of researchers in New York and New Jersey have generated evidence that questions the common belief that the pterygotid eurypterids ("sea scorpions") were high-level predators in the Paleozoic oceans. This group, which ranged the seas from about 470 to 370 million years ago (long before the dinosaurs appeared), included the largest and, arguably, scariest-looking arthropods known to have evolved on planet Earth.

A protein implicated in the development of vascular diseases may also contribute to the failure of arteriovenous (AV) fistulas created for vascular access in dialysis patients, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN).

"Our findings raise the possibility that monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) may contribute to the relatively poor outcomes regarding the function and longevity of human hemodialysis AV fistulas," comments Karl A. Nath, MB.ChB (Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN).

HOUSTON — People with higher levels of folate in their red blood cells were more likely to have two tumor-suppressing genes shut down by methylation, a chemical off switch for genes, researchers report in the December issue of Cancer Prevention Research.

ST. PAUL, Minn. –People living in the "stroke belt" states eat more fried fish than people living in the rest of the country, which may contribute to the high rate of death from stroke in those states, according to a study published in the December 22, 2010, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

Studies have shown that the omega-3 fatty acids in fish, especially fatty fish, may reduce the risk of stroke. Research has shown that frying fish leads to the loss of the natural fatty acids.

MADISON – To survive in a tumultuous environment, sea urchins literally eat through stone, using their teeth to carve out nooks where the spiny creatures hide from predators and protect themselves from the crashing surf on the rocky shores and tide pools where they live.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Marine ecologists at Oregon State University have shown for the first time that tiny fish larvae can drift with ocean currents and "re-seed" fish stocks significant distances away – more than 100 miles in a new study from Hawaii.

Researchers have discovered evidence of a distinct group of "archaic" humans existing outside of Africa more than 30,000 years ago at a time when Neanderthals are thought to have dominated Europe and Asia. But genetic testing shows that members of this new group were not Neanderthals, and they interbred with the ancestors of some modern humans who are alive today.

The journal Nature reported the finding this week. The National Science Foundation's Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences Division partially funded the research.

STANFORD, Calif. — Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have discovered that many cancer cells carry the seeds of their own destruction — a protein on the cell surface that signals circulating immune cells to engulf and digest them. On cancer cells, this "eat me" signal is counteracted by a separate "don't eat me" signal that was described in an earlier study. The two discoveries may lead to better cancer therapies, and also solve a mystery about why a previously reported cancer therapy is not more toxic.

FINDINGS: By determining how corticosteroids act to increase production of red blood cell progenitors, Whitehead Institute researchers have identified a class of drugs that may be beneficial in treating some erythropoietin-resistant anemias. One such anemia is Diamond-Blackfan anemia (DBA), which is frequently treated with corticosteroids, despite their severe side-effects. The identified class of drugs may be able to treat other anemias, including those resulting from trauma, sepsis, malaria, kidney dialysis, and chemotherapy.