Overweight couch potatoes live a dangerous life: Epidemiologists estimate that about 80 percent of the most common diseases are linked to severe overweight and obesity and a sedentary lifestyle. Obese people are at an increased risk for cardiovascular diseases, vascular diseases, hypertension, diabetes and cancer. This lowers their life expectancy. Weight loss and physical activity help to counteract this. Women who lose weight lower their breast cancer risk. Regular physical activity lowers the risk of developing breast, colorectal and cervical cancers.
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The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has released a new report, Making Health Care Safer II, which identifies the top 10, evidence-based patient safety strategies available to clinicians.
Principal investigators of the new work are Robert M. Wachter, MD, professor and associate chairman of the UCSF Department of Medicine and chief, UCSF Division of Hospital Medicine; Paul Shekelle of RAND; and Peter Pronovost, MD, of Johns Hopkins University.
Do mothers invest more care in their sons if they believe their child is destined to be a king, president or a high-powered leader?
The answer is definitively yes – as long as those mothers and their sons happen to have hooves.
New research from BYU reports that, just like the classic tale of Bambi, females from the deer family are more likely to invest more in the survival and health of their male offspring if there is a good chance those sons will become a "Great Prince of the Forest."
A team of scientists led by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the National University of Singapore (NUS), revealed in a new study, for the first time, the presence of the pathogenic chytrid fungus (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis) in amphibians sampled in Singapore. And the American bullfrog may be a central player in the spread of the disease.
The study appears in the current issue of the journal EcoHealth, and is the first to consider the role that Southeast Asia's commercial trade plays in the spread of amphibian pathogens.
According to his theory, bacteria that are non-resistant to antibiotics acquire said resistance accidentally because they take up the DNA of others that are resistant, due to the stress to which they are subjected.
Philadelphia, PA, March 7, 2013 – Support is needed in child care centers to help meet existing water policies and new water requirements included in the 2010 Child Nutrition Reauthorization Act, according to a study published by the Yale Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity. The study, published in the March/April 2013 issue of the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, is the first to document availability and accessibility of water in compliance with state and federal policy and accreditation standards in child care centers.
In a huge study of half a million men and women, research in Biomed Central's open access journal BMC Medicine demonstrates an association between processed meat and cardiovascular disease and cancer.
This means that 320 million people - 40% of Europe's population - who could benefit from treatment with disease modifying drugs (DMARDs) would struggle to get access to them, say the researchers.
DMARDs are extremely effective for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, and the European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) recommends the use of synthetic DMARDs immediately after diagnosis to halt progress of the disease. But they are expensive.
Subtle changes in messaging can have a profound impact on the effectiveness of charitable messages such as calls for blood donations, according to research published March 6 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Eileen Chou from the University of Virginia and co-author Keith Murnighan at Northwestern University.
Analysis of DNA extracted from a fossil tooth recovered in southern Siberia confirms that the tooth belonged to one of the oldest known ancestors of the modern dog, and is described in research published March 6 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Anna Druzhkova from the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Russian Federation, and colleagues from other institutions.
A survey of bat activity in burned and unburned areas after a major wildfire in the southern Sierra Nevada mountains found no evidence of detrimental effects on bats one year after the fire. The findings suggest that bats are resilient to high-severity fire, and some species may even benefit from the effects of fire on the landscape.
BOSTON– Kidney failure affects 25 million individuals in the U.S. and many more throughout the world. Loss of kidney function means the majority of these patients must undergo dialysis treatments to remove excess fluids and waste products. Although dialysis therapy coupled with medication has improved the life expectancy for people with kidney failure, for unknown reasons, patients' risk of sudden heart failure and death remains 10 to 20 times greater than average.
For the past few decades, health officials have been reporting increases in the incidence of autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS). Now researchers at Yale School of Medicine, Harvard Medical School and the Broad Institute have identified a prime suspect in the mystery — dietary salt.
In the March 6 issue of the journal Nature, Yale researchers showed that salt can induce and worsen pathogenic immune system responses in mice and that the response is regulated by genes already implicated in a variety of autoimmune diseases.
MANHASSET, NY – In collaboration with other research institutions, a Feinstein Institute for Medical Research investigator discovered a new protein that controls the sense of taste. The findings are published in the March issue of Nature.
Boston, MA – New work from the Broad Institute's Klarman Cell Observatory, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard University, MIT, and Yale University expands the understanding of how one type of immune cell – known as a T helper 17 or Th17 cell – develops, and how its growth influences the development of immune responses. By figuring out how these cells are "wired," the researchers make a surprising connection between autoimmunity and salt consumption, highlighting the interplay of genetics and environmental factors in disease susceptibility.