Body

TORONTO, ON. – Gay men who are not considered sexually desirable are more likely to engage in risky sexual behavior according to new research out of the University of Toronto. They may also develop psychological problems as a consequence of feeling undesirable.

Adam Isaiah Green, Assistant Professor of Sociology at U of T, interviewed dozens of gay men in Toronto to determine what qualities made some men more sexually desirable than others, and what the consequences of being undesirable might be on mental and physical health.

When starved of their food source and then presented with a chemoattractant signal like cAMP, individual Dictyostelium cells acquire a polarized morphology and aggregate to form a migrating stream. This is the first step in a developmental program that culminates in the formation of a multicellular organism. Kriebel et al. show how this streaming response is coordinated at a single-cell level in the December 1, 2008 issue of the Journal of Cell Biology (www.jcb.org).

Patients who have had the common chest wall deformity known as pectus excavatum corrected report improved body image and ability to exercise, according to a study published December in the journal Pediatrics.

The study, conducted at 11 North American hospitals, involved telephone interviews of more than 200 patients between the ages of 8 and 21 who had pectus excavatum surgery. Researchers interviewed parents as well.

The results were dramatic. Patients reported greatly improved body image and marked decrease in problems with exercise.

If you think your levels of "good cholesterol" are good enough, a new study published in the December 2008 issue of The FASEB Journal suggests that you may want to think again. In the report, researchers from the University of Chicago challenge the conventional wisdom that simply having high levels of good cholesterol (HDL) and low levels of bad cholesterol (LDL) is necessary for good heath. Instead, they show that the good cholesterol has varying degrees of quality and that poor quality HDL is actually bad for you.

PHILADELPHIA – Latina women have a lower risk of breast cancer than European or African-American women generally, but those with higher European ancestry could be at increased risk, according to data published in the December 1 issue of Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Philadelphia, December 1, 2008 -- On World AIDS Day, the American College of Physicians (ACP) is giving doctors a call-to-action to routinely encourage HIV screening to all of their patients older than 13 years. This new practice guideline appears on the Annals of Internal Medicine Web site at www.annals.org.

Prostate cancer – and perhaps other cancers – promotes the growth of new nerves and the branching axons that carry their messages, a finding associated with more aggressive tumors, said researchers from Baylor College of Medicine in the first report of the phenomenon that appears today in the journal Clinical Cancer Research.

Previous research showed that prostate cancer follows the growth of nerves, but this is the first time that scientists have demonstrated that the tumors actually promote nerve growth.

Alexandria, VA – Patients with cochlear implants may want to steer clear of certain magnetic imaging devices, such as 3T MRI machines, because the machines can demagnetize the patient's implant, according to new research published in the December 2008 issue of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — The costs that health care providers are charged and reimbursed for childhood vaccines vary widely, and the high cost of some immunizations is leading to significant financial strain for some physicians, according to a pair of new studies from the University of Michigan Health System.

The findings suggest that many physicians appear to be paying too much and receiving too little reimbursement, but they can use this new data to help improve both areas, the researchers say.

Bethesda, MD (Dec. 1, 2008) – Antibiotics are the single largest class of agents that cause idiosyncratic drug-induced liver injury (DILI), reports a new study in Gastroenterology, an official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) Institute. DILI is the most common cause of death from acute liver failure and accounts for approximately 13 percent of cases of acute liver failure in the U.S. It is caused by a wide variety of prescription and nonprescription medications, nutritional supplements and herbals.

Bethesda, MD (Dec. 1, 2008) – Obesity is a growing epidemic in the U.S. with a significant increase in prevalence from 15 percent to 32.9 percent from 1980 to 2004. Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is an emerging problem related to the obesity epidemic, becoming one of the most common causes of liver disease in the nation.

CHICAGO – Combining an ultrasound-guided technique with steroid injection is 95 percent effective at relieving the common and painful foot problem called plantar fasciitis, according to a study presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

CHICAGO – Women with early-stage breast cancer who have undergone breast augmentation may be treated successfully with a partial-breast radiation treatment called brachytherapy, according to a study presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). Patients treated with brachytherapy have better cosmetic outcomes and avoid the risk of the implant hardening, compared to patients who undergo whole-breast radiation therapy.

CHICAGO – Adolescent gymnasts are developing a wide variety of arm, wrist and hand injuries that are beyond the scope of previously described gymnastic-related trauma, according to a study presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

Scientists at Johns Hopkins have determined how the characteristic shedding of fatty substances, or lipids, by ovarian tumors allows the cancer to evade the body's immune system, leaving the disease to spread unchecked. Ovarian cancer is considered to be one of the most aggressive malignancies, killing more than 70 percent of diagnosed women within five years, including an estimated 15,000 this year.