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Female physicians, smaller patient loads and electronic reminders are associated with better delivery of preventive health care to patients, rather than the way in which primary care practices are funded, states an article in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).

Although there is significant interest around the world in improving primary care delivery -- that is, first-line general health care -- and disease prevention, there is a lack of evidence about which payment model is associated with superior delivery of primary care.

Philadelphia, Pa., USA -- With signs of declining malaria deaths in Africa raising hopes of eradicating the disease worldwide, researchers unveiled today at the annual meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) a new malaria map that is the first to identify on a global scale where the long-lasting and potentially deadly form of malaria—a parasite known as Plasmodium vivax—has a firm foothold in large swaths of South Asia and parts of Latin America.

COLUMBIA, Mo. – In pets and people, the time it takes to diagnose an infection may mean life or death. Now, a University of Missouri veterinarian is identifying ways to diagnose pet infections in approximately a third of the current diagnosis time. The resulting test could be used eventually for humans.

Life-threatening viruses such as HIV, SARS, hepatitis and influenza, could soon be combatted in an unusual manner as researchers have demonstrated the effectiveness of plasma for inactivating and preventing the replication of adenoviruses.

When exposed to plasma – the fourth state of matter in addition to solids, liquids and gases – for a period of just 240 seconds, it was found that only one in a million viruses could still replicate – practically all were inactivated.

With greater water scarcity in some regions and increasing global demand for high quality water, international trade agreements need to help save water globally. This was the main conclusion of a special report, published by the UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education.

Researchers at the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet have demonstrated that a growth hormone, PDGF-BB, and the blood protein EPO are involved in the development of cancer tumours and that they combine to help the tumours proliferate in the body. These new preclinical findings offer new potential for inhibiting tumour growth and bypassing problems of resistance that exist with many drugs in current use. The results are published in the scientific journal Nature Medicine.

New York, NY -- Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) researchers have found the first direct evidence that an acquired trait can be inherited without any DNA involvement. The findings suggest that Lamarck, whose theory of evolution was eclipsed by Darwin's, may not have been entirely wrong. The study is slated to appear in the December 9 issue of Cell.

One of the most common types of neonatal illness in piglets is coccidiosis, a parasitic disease of the intestinal tract caused by the unicellular organism Isospora suis. There are many reasons for attempting to control the disease, ranging from animal welfare considerations to pure financial concerns. Unfortunately, however, the literature contains no clear guidelines on how this should be done.

Arterial calcification and coronary heart disease, neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, cancer and even the aging process itself are suspected to be partially caused or accelerated by oxidative stress. Oxidative stress arises in tissues when there is an excess of what are called reactive oxygen species (ROS). "However, up to now, nobody was able to directly observe oxidative changes in a living organism and certainly not how they are connected with disease processes," said Associate Professor (PD) Dr. Tobias Dick of DKFZ.

BOSTON, MA -- Researchers at Joslin Diabetes Center have determined key differences between Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes in the Asian American population. This study, published today in PLoS ONE, identified ways to differentiate the types of diabetes, which can be clinically similar in young Asian Americans.

During a pilot study of 30 healthy-weight diabetic and non-diabetic Asian Americans, the researchers proved that insulin resistance was consistently higher in those with type 2 diabetes, despite their normal body mass index (BMI).

Chestnut Hill, MA – Fruit flies and mosquitoes share similar sensory receptors that allow them to distinguish among thousands of sensory cues – particularly heat and chemical odors – as they search for food or try to avoid danger, researchers from Boston College and Brandeis University report in the current electronic edition of the journal Nature.

STANFORD, Calif. -- Damage to podocytes -- a specialized type of epithelial cell in the kidney -- occurs in more than 90 percent of all chronic kidney disease. Now researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have uncovered an unexpected pathway that reveals for the first time how these cells may regenerate and renew themselves during normal kidney function.

This finding is an important step toward one day therapeutically coaxing the cells to divide, which could be used to treat people with chronic kidney disease.

Singapore and China scientists, headed by Dr Liu Jianjun, Senior Group Leader and Associate Director of Human Genetics at the Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS) and Dr Gu Jieruo, a rheumatologist at the 3rd Affiliated Hospital of the Sun Yat-Sen University, have identified new genes that are associated with the spine disease ankylosing spondylitis (AS). This discovery, reported in the advanced online issue of Nature Genetics on 4 December 2011, brings scientists closer to understanding the disease and work towards its cure.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- The ranges of species will have to change dramatically as a result of climate change between now and 2100 because the climate will change more than 100 times faster than the rate at which species can adapt, according to a newly published study by Indiana University researchers.

Researchers at the Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS) have, for the very first time, developed a computational tool that comes with a guarantee on its reliability when reconstructing the DNA sequence of organisms, thus enabling a more streamlined process for reconstructing and studying genomic sequences.

The work, lead by Dr Niranjan Nagarajan, Assistant Director of Computational and Mathematical Biology at the GIS, was reported in the November 2011 issue of the Journal of Computational Biology.