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Whooping cough has been found in a fifth of UK school age children visiting their doctor with a persistent cough, even though most have been fully vaccinated, finds a study published on bmj.com today.

Before the preschool pertussis booster vaccination had been introduced in the UK in 2001, evidence of recent pertussis infection could be found in nearly 40% of school age children who presented in primary care with a persistent cough.

These findings will help to inform consideration of the need for an adolescent booster vaccination in the UK.

Four years after falling in love with the disco clam – a cute little mollusk known for its underwater light show – Lindsey Dougherty has discovered the secret of its mirrored lips.

A dive instructor and University of California, Berkeley, graduate student, Dougherty first encountered the two-inch clam in 2010 while diving with her mother and sister in Wakatobi, Indonesia. She and her sister even did a bit of underwater disco dancing to the clam's flashing beat.

Deliberate attacks on patients, hospitals, and clinics during armed conflict are atrocious acts, state the PLOS Medicine editors writing in an editorial in this week's PLOS Medicine, and call for more research on the practical approaches to preventing such attacks, as well as studies that evaluate interventions to improve health care in conflict settings.

"The right of all persons to choose whom they love must remain a fundamental of international discourse and law" writes Chris Beyrer of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health in an Essay in this week's PLOS Medicine. He notes that without this right both freedoms and lives will be lost.

Boston, MA – In a groundbreaking study, researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) have identified a related family of molecules believed to be a major root cause of pulmonary hypertension, a deadly vascular disease with undefined origins. This is one of the first studies to leverage advanced computational network modeling to decipher the molecular secrets of this complex human disease.

The study is published online June 24, 2014 in The Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Habitat loss is a primary driver of biodiversity loss – so it isn't surprising that optimising the amount of protected land is high on policy-makers' priorities. However, according to research to be published in the Open Access journal PLOS Biology on June 24 by Oscar Venter and colleagues, many protected areas are established in locations of low economic value, failing to protect the imperilled biodiversity found on more valuable land. More of the earth's land surface is set to be protected in the next decade, but the trend of using poor quality land seems set to continue.

Millions of women will develop breast cancer at some point in their lives. While many women will completely recover from this cancer, others will not respond to treatment, and predicting which women will not respond to treatment is currently difficult. Breast cancer cells divide rapidly, and treatments that can restrict their growth are of great interest. In a June 24th study in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Rong Li and colleagues at the University of Texas determined that activation of the estrogen receptor β (ERβ) limits tumor cell growth.

Scientists from James Cook University, the Wildlife Conservation Society, the University of Queensland, Stanford University, BirdLife International, the International Union for Nature Conservation, and other organizations have warned that the world's protected areas are not safeguarding most of the world's imperilled biodiversity, and clear changes need to be made on how nations undertake future land protection if wildlife is going to be saved. These findings come at a time when countries are working toward what could become the biggest expansion of protected areas in history.

Scientists from James Cook University, the Wildlife Conservation Society, the University of Queensland, Stanford University, BirdLife International, the International Union for Nature Conservation, and other organizations have warned that the world's protected areas are not safeguarding most of the world's imperilled biodiversity, and clear changes need to be made on how nations undertake future land protection if wildlife is going to be saved. These findings come at a time when countries are working toward what could become the biggest expansion of protected areas in history.

The addition of tomosynthesis, a 3-dimensional breast imaging technique, to digital mammography in more than 170,000 examinations was associated with a decrease in the proportion of patients called back for additional imaging and an increase in the cancer detection rate, according to a study in the June 25 issue of JAMA.

Among more than 56,000 adults undergoing hip repair between 2004 and 2011, the use of regional anesthesia compared with general anesthesia was not associated with a lower risk of death at 30 days, but was associated with a modestly shorter length of hospital stay, according to a study in the June 25 issue of JAMA.

Among patients with a severe, life-threatening type of sclerosis, treatment with hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), compared to intravenous infusion of the chemotherapeutic drug cyclophosphamide, was associated with an increased treatment-related risk of death in the first year, but better long-term survival, according to a study in the June 25 issue of JAMA.

PHILADELPHIA—Reporting in the June 25 issue of JAMA, researchers from Penn Medicine and other institutions found that 3D mammography—known as digital breast tomosynthesis— found significantly more invasive, or potentially lethal, cancers than a traditional mammogram alone and reduced call-backs for additional imaging. This is the largest study reported to date—with nearly a half a million women—measuring the effectiveness of the technology, and could potentially lead to a change in the standard of care for breast screening.

CLEVELAND – 3D Mammography finds significantly more invasive cancers and reduces unnecessary recalls, according to a large, retrospective study published in June 25 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). The study features data from University Hospitals Case Medical Center Seidman Cancer Center.

The study, the largest of its kind, focused on the impact of 3D mammography at a diverse range of sites across the U.S, looking at nearly half a million mammograms at 13 sites.

Key Findings:

Complex heart imaging can increase cancer risks for children throughout their lifetime, according to a new study co-authored by Le Bonheur Cardiologist Jason Johnson, MD, MHS. The study, which appears in the June 9, 2014 issue of the American Heart Association's journal Circulation, is the first in which researchers quantified cumulative radiation doses in pediatric heart patients and predicted lifetime cancer risks based on the types of exposures.