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Placing speed cameras on roads reduces the number of road traffic injuries and deaths, concludes a team of researchers from The University of Queensland, in Brisbane, Australia. Their findings are published this month in The Cochrane Library. Preventing road traffic injuries is of global public health importance.

When compared with placebo and other drugs, long-term use of finasteride improves urinary tract symptoms associated with benign prostatic hyperplasia, and reduces disease progression. This conclusion comes from combining the findings of 23 randomized clinical trials that evaluated almost 21,000 men, and is published this month in The Cochrane Library.

There is no evidence that increasing the dose of inhaled corticosteroids at the onset of an asthma exacerbation, as part of a patient-initiated action plan, reduces the need for rescue oral corticosteroids. This is the conclusion of work published in The Cochrane Library this month.

The provision of made-to-order drugs ("specials") in primary care is expensive, often unnecessary, and associated with legal pitfalls, says the Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin (DTB).

It calls for a major overhaul of the practice, in a review of the evidence in this month's issue.

Bespoke drugs or "specials" are medicines made specifically to meet the needs of individual patients, so may be prepared in formulations and strengths which differ from those of standard licensed medicines.

A persistently noisy workplace more than doubles an employee's risk of serious heart disease, suggests research published online in Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

Young male smokers seemed to be particularly at risk, the findings showed.

The researchers base their findings on a nationally representative sample of more than 6,000 employees, aged from 20 upwards, who had been part of the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) between 1999 and 2004.

A new species of dinosaur discovered in Arizona suggests dinosaurs did not spread throughout the world by overpowering other species, but by taking advantage of a natural catastrophe that wiped out their competitors.

Contrary to current thinking, the group of serotypes of Streptococcus pneumoniae responsible for most invasive pneumococcal disease worldwide is conserved across regions. Streptococcus pneumoniae is the leading bacterial cause of pneumonia, sepsis, and meningitis in children, which together comprise more than 25% of the 10 million deaths estimated to have occurred in 2000 in children under 5 years of age, and preventable by access to appropriate vaccines.

In this week's PLoS Medicine, Gabriel Leung from the Government of the Hong Kong SAR and Angus Nicoll from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control offer their reflections on the international response to the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic, including what went well and what changes need to be made on the part of global and national authorities in anticipation of future flu pandemics.

Source: Public Library of Science

By reconstructing an ancient protein and tracing how it subtly changed over vast periods of time to produce scores of modern-day descendants, scientists have shown how evolution tinkers with early forms and leaves the impression that complexity evolved many times.

ST. LOUIS -- Low levels of the male sex hormone, testosterone, in older men is associated with the onset of Alzheimer's disease, according to research by a team that includes a Saint Louis University scientist.

In an unprecedented international project, researchers have found multiple genetic mutations that play a role in heart attack or coronary artery disease (CAD) risk.

Sensation seeking—the urge to do exciting things—has been linked to dopamine, a chemical that carries messages in your brain. For a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, scientists analyzed genes in the dopamine system and found a group of mutations that help predict whether someone is inclined toward sensation seeking.

DURHAM, N.H. -- Looking at a hagfish – an eyeless, snot-covered, worm-like scavenger of the deep –the last thing that comes to mind is sex. Yet the reproductive functioning of these ancient vertebrates is such an enduring enigma that a gold medal was once offered to anyone who could elucidate it.

Researchers from Northwestern University and NorthShore University HealthSystem (NorthShore) have developed a method to detect early signs of lung cancer by examining cheek cells in humans using pioneering biophotonics technology.