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Treating metabolic syndrome and undergoing carotid angioplasty may prevent recurrent stroke or transient ischemic attack (TIA), according to revised American Heart Association/American Stroke Association guidelines.

Last updated in 2006, the evidence-based guidelines for doctors will be published in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association.

Boston, Mass. - A cholesterol-lowering drug reduced the enlarged prostates of hamsters to the same extent as a drug commonly used to treat benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), report researchers at Children's Hospital Boston and their colleagues in the October issue of the Journal of Urology. Together, the drugs worked even better.

LA JOLLA, CA, October 21, 2010 — A multi-institutional consortium led by The Scripps Research Institute scientists, the Joint Center for Structural Genomics (JCSG), is the sole focus of a special issue of the journal Acta Crystallographica Section F. This is the first time in the history of the monthly journal, which publishes peer-reviewed crystallography and structural biology articles, that an entire issue is devoted to the works of a single scientific center.

Most flowering plants, equipped with both male and female sex organs, can fertilize themselves and procreate without the aid of a mate. But this may only present a short-term adaptive benefit, according to a team of researchers led by two University of Illinois at Chicago biologists, who report that long-term evolutionary survival of a species favors flowers that welcome pollen from another plant.

WHAT: Researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health have found that the major malaria-transmitting mosquito species, Anopheles gambiae, is evolving into two separate species with different traits, a development that could both complicate malaria control efforts and potentially require new disease prevention methods. Their findings were published in back-to-back articles in the October 22 issue of the journal Science.

WASHINGTON, D.C., (Oct. 21, 2010) -- Over the past decade, Christine Mahoney and a team of scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Maryland have been working to stop the threat of terrorist-based attacks in the form of explosives or explosive-based devices, by providing a sound measurement and standard infrastructure.

Researchers at the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet have been able to describe the 3D structure of a complete egg receptor that binds sperm at the beginning of fertilization. The results, published in the journal Cell, will lead to better understanding of infertility and may enable entirely new types of contraceptives.

The majority of emergency department patients consider having their condition correctly diagnosed with computed tomography (CT) more important than any associated radiation risk. However, two-thirds of patients prefer their ordering physician discuss the risks and benefits of CT with them before ordering the imaging test, according to a study in the November issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology (www.ajronline.org).

(Boston) – A new research study conducted by Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) shows that patient navigation services significantly improve biennial mammography screening rates among inner city women. The results, published online in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, indicate the importance of patient navigation in reducing health disparities in vulnerable patient populations.

CHICAGO (October 21, 2010) – Occupants in motor vehicles with airbags are much less likely to suffer kidney or renal damage in a crash than are occupants in vehicles without airbags, according to a new study in the September Journal of the American College of Surgeons.

Little is known about how to prevent or reduce injury to solid organs from motor vehicle collisions. In fact, this study is the first to evaluate the protective effect of airbags on a specific organ system – in this case, the kidney and other renal, or upper urinary tract, organs.

CHICAGO (October 21, 2010) – Telementoring may be an effective way for subspecialist surgeons to assist remotely located general surgeons in the care of patients in need of emergency subspecialty surgical procedures, according to new research findings published in the September issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons.

Growing up with lots of sisters makes a man less sexy. For rats, anyway. A new study published in Psychological Science, says that the sex ratio of a male rat's family when he's growing up influences both his own sexual behavior and how female rats respond to him.

A commentary published in the journal, Science Translational Medicine, examines the structures of translational research investment in the UK.

The commentary has been written by researchers from the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) comprehensive Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) at Guy's and St Thomas' and King's College London. The authors consider the results of substantial Government and charitable investment in translational research taking place within the NHS.

Scientists at The University of Nottingham and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute near Cambridge have pin-pointed the 72 molecular switches that control the three key stages in the life cycle of the malaria parasite and have discovered that over a third of these switches can be disrupted in some way.

Their research which has been funded by Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council (MRC) is a significant breakthrough in the search for cheap and effective vaccines and drugs to stop the transmission of a disease which kills up to a million children a year.