Body

INDIANAPOLIS – It's not uncommon for individuals to take as many as a dozen different prescriptions, each with its own set of possible side effects. If a patient experiences one of the potential hundreds of different adverse reactions such as nausea, headaches, insomnia or heart palpitations, how does the physician quickly and accurately determine which drug is the culprit?

LETHBRIDGE, AB -- APRIL 2010 -- Close to 50 years of data show the Devon Island ice cap, one of the largest ice masses in the Canadian High Arctic, is thinning and shrinking.

A paper published in the March edition of Arctic, the journal of the University of Calgary's Arctic Institute of North America, reports that between 1961 and 1985, the ice cap grew in some years and shrank in others, resulting in an overall loss of mass. But that changed 1985 when scientists began to see a steady decline in ice volume and area each year.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Most women scheduled for gynecologic surgery to address noncancerous symptoms said in a recently published survey that they were not worried about the effects of the procedure on their sex lives.

However, a surprising 37 percent of women planning to be sterilized did express concern in this study that they might have less sexual desire after the operation – even though that surgery does not affect hormone levels.

URBANA –University of Illinois scientists have learned that a specific omega-6 fatty acid may be critical to maintaining skin health.

"In experiments with mice, we knocked out a gene responsible for an enzyme that helps the body to make arachidonic acid. Without arachidonic acid, the mice developed severe ulcerative dermatitis. The animals were very itchy, they scratched themselves continuously, and they developed a lot of bleeding sores," said Manabu Nakamura, a U of I associate professor of food science and human nutrition.

A team of researchers from the United States and Europe has identified more than a dozen genes that may play a role in the etiology of common forms of kidney disease. The team, known as the CKDGen Consortium, examined common variations in DNA sequences in more than 65,000 individuals of European descent. Common variations in several genes were found to be more frequent among people with poor kidney function or chronic kidney disease than in those with normal kidney function. The researchers further confirmed their findings in more than 20,000 additional individuals.

As published today in Science, researchers from Cambridge, Glasgow and Greece have discovered a remarkable amount of plasticity in how transcription factors, the proteins that bind to DNA to control the activation of genes, maintain their function over large evolutionary distances.

Hamilton, ON (April 9, 2010) – An international osteoporosis study involving a McMaster University researcher has found that most postmenopausal women at risk for hip and other osteoporosis-related fractures fail to appreciate their actual risk of debilitating bone breaks.

The finding, the latest to emerge from the Global Longitudinal Study of Osteoporosis in Women (GLOW), underscores the need for public education about osteoporosis risk factors and treatment.

The research is published in the journal Osteoporosis International.

The commitment to health by country governments in the developing world has grown dramatically over the last two decades, according to a new study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington and Harvard Medical School.

Overall domestic government spending on health doubled in low-income countries over 12 years to reach $18 billion in 2006, the study shows. That is three times as much as the amount of development assistance for health the governments received.

Researchers in Singapore are reporting this week that they have gleaned key insights into the architecture of a protein that controls iron levels in almost all organisms. Their study culminated in one of the first successful attempts to take apart a complex biological nanostructure and isolate the rules that govern its natural formation.

Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists are figuring out how to turn wheat straw into ethanol "gold," and learning more about the bacteria that can "infect" ethanol plants and interfere with fuel production.

At the ARS National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research (NCAUR) in Peoria, Ill., ARS chemist Badal Saha conducted a 5-year study that examined whether wheat straw--a crop residue left over after the grain has been harvested--could have commercial potential for cellulosic ethanol production.

Two partial skeletons have been discovered in the cave deposits in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site near Johannesburg, in the Republic of South Africa by members of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

The human fossils, close to 2 million years old, have been classified as a new species: Australopithecus sediba. Australopithecus means "southern ape" and Sediba, taken from the local South African language seSotho means "natural spring, fountain or wellspring".

In a discovery that could rewrite the story of human evolution, scientists working in South Africa have uncovered the skeletal remains of a new species of ancient human. The anatomy and age are described in two papers in the latest issue of the prestigious journal Science.

The two partial skeletons of an adult female and child were found in miners' debris in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site in 2008 by Professor Lee Berger from South Africa's University of the Witwatersrand.

Gastritis produced by acetyl-salicylic acid (ASA) consumption is a common disorder worldwide. The use of probiotics has been proposed to ameliorate different gastrointestinal tract diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease, diarrhea, irritable bowel syndrome, etc. However, little attention has been paid to the use of probiotics in gastric disease. The health-promoting effects ascribed to probiotic strains or fermented foods arise not only from bacteria themselves but also from the metabolites produced during fermentation such as exopolysaccharides (EPS).

Leukemia related protein 16 (LRP16) gene is an important estrogen-responsive gene. LRP16 gene plays an important role in the carcinogenesis and progression of hormone-dependent cancer. LRP16 expression was also reported to be associated with invasion, metastasis and prognosis of gastric carcinoma. But no comprehensive description of LRP16 protein expression in colorectal cancer has been reported.

Gastrointestinal (GI) chronic perforations require closure and control of extraluminal collections and sepsis. Covered self-expandable metal stents or plastic stents are an effective method in more than 80% of cases, but have many drawbacks.