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SALT LAKE CITY – A team of researchers from the University of Utah and the University of Massachusetts has identified the first gene associated with frequent herpes-related cold sores.

The findings were published in the Dec. 1, 2011, issue of the Journal of Infectious Diseases.

NEW YORK -- More than 270,000 Americans get hip replacement surgeries every year -- a number that is projected to double in the next decade as the population ages. With various options for implants, including metal-on-polyethylene, metal-on-metal and ceramic-on-ceramic, there have been questions about which kind works best.

As global temperatures rise and climatic zones move polewards, species will need to find different environments to prevent extinction. New research, published today in the journal Molecular Ecology, has revealed that climate change is causing certain species to move and adapt to a range of new habitats.

The study, led by academics at the Universities of Bristol and Sheffield, aimed to understand the role of evolution in helping a species to successfully track ongoing climate change.

Declaring the eradication of polio will be far more difficult than it was for smallpox, according to a review published in the Journal of General Virology. Further research into the complex virus - host interactions and how the vaccine is used in the final stages of the eradication programme is crucial to its success.

New hip implants appear to have no advantage over traditional implants, suggests a review of the evidence published on bmj.com today.

And some evidence shows that new implants may be associated with higher rates of revision surgery.

While hip replacement is a successful operation, substantial numbers of patients require revision surgery within 10 years to replace the implant because of infection, dislocation, wear, instability, loosening, or other mechanical failures.

In the UK, women doctors are set to outnumber their male counterparts by 2017. The press has dubbed the rise "worrying" and "bad for medicine" but in an editorial published by Student BMJ today, Maham Khan asks is medicine becoming overfeminised and is having too many female doctors bad practice?

Policies aimed specifically at men are urgently needed to improve the health of Europe's men, say experts on bmj.com today.

Action is needed throughout the life course and in every setting say Professor Alan White at Leeds Metropolitan University and colleagues whose recent report, The State of Men's Health in Europe, shows marked differences in health outcomes between men, which are strongly related to their biology, culture, and socioeconomic realities.

A collection of nine new articles to be published in PLoS Medicine and PLoS ONE, in conjunction with the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the United States President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), highlights how scaling up voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) for HIV prevention in eastern and southern Africa can help prevent HIV not only at individual but also at community and population level as well as lead to substantial cost savings for countries due to averted treatment and care costs.

BRONX, NY -- Elevated blood sugar levels are associated with an increased risk of colorectal cancer, according to a study led by researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University. The findings, observed in nearly 5,000 postmenopausal women, appear in the Nov. 29 online edition of the British Journal of Cancer.

PULLMAN, Wash. -- It looks like bone. It feels like bone. For the most part, it acts like bone.

And it came off an inkjet printer.

Washington State University researchers have used a 3D printer to create a bone-like material and structure that can be used in orthopedic procedures, dental work, and to deliver medicine for treating osteoporosis. Paired with actual bone, it acts as a scaffold for new bone to grow on and ultimately dissolves with no apparent ill effects.

States that prescribe abstinence-only sex education programs in public schools have significantly higher teenage pregnancy and birth rates than states with more comprehensive sex education programs, researchers from the University of Georgia have determined.

The researchers looked at teen pregnancy and birth data from 48 U.S. states to evaluate the effectiveness of those states' approaches to sex education, as prescribed by local laws and policies.

Researchers at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia's Center for Injury Research and Prevention studied nearly 1,000 1- to 8-year-old children involved in crashes and found no evidence of increased injury risk for children across a broad weight range. All of the children included in the study were properly restrained in the correct child safety seat or booster seat for their height and weight.

Removing organs for transplant unless person explicitly opts out of donation before death not best way to address scarcity, raises sticky ethical questions

Changing the organ donation process in this country from opt-in -- by, say, checking a box on a driver's license application -- to opt-out, which presumes someone's willingness to donate after death unless they explicitly object while alive, would not be likely to increase the donation rate in the United States, new Johns Hopkins research suggests.

HOUSTON -- Combination treatment with everolimus, an inhibitor of the mammalian target rapamycin (mTOR), and octreotide has shown to improve progression-free survival for patients with advanced neuroendocrine tumors and a history of carcinoid syndrome, according to researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Results of the international, randomized, placebo-controlled Phase III study were published today in the journal Lancet.

New research out of McGill University's Goodman Cancer Research Centre provides compelling new evidence that a gene known as 14-3-3σ plays a critical role in halting breast cancer initiation and progression. The study, led by the Dept. of Biochemistry's William J. Muller, will be published online today in the journal Cancer Discovery.

The discovery of this new target points to novel therapies that eventually could slow or stop breast cancer progression. Muller also says that this gene is likely a major player in a number of other types of cancer.