Body

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Online support communities for high survival rate cancers contain a greater amount of emotional support content than online support communities for cancers with low survival rates, according to a new study from the University of Michigan Health System and the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System.

The researchers also found that support communities for low survival rate cancers contain a greater amount of informational support content than online support communities for high survival rate cancers.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The risk of non-AIDS cancer is higher for individuals infected with HIV than for the general population, according to a meta-analysis presented here at the American Association for Cancer Research's Seventh Annual International Conference on Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - An abstract presented at the American Association for Cancer Research's Seventh Annual International Conference on Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research shows that lower socioeconomic status reduced the chance of early stage diagnosis and survival of colorectal cancer in Colorado.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - African-American women are at a higher risk for ER/PR negative breast cancer. A new study, to be presented at the American Association for Cancer Research's Seventh Annual International Conference on Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research, found that race, socioeconomic characteristics and other tumor characteristics are all important predictors of having ER/PR negative breast cancer.

ER/PR negative breast cancer has a poorer prognosis than hormonally-responsive cancer because treatment options are more limited.

A new study provides the first evidence of a link between alcohol-industry sponsorship and hazardous drinking among sportspeople.

Researchers from The University of Manchester and the University of Newcastle in Australia quizzed nearly 1,300 sportspeople and found alcohol-related companies sponsored almost half of them.

The sponsorship ranged from financial incentives, such as payment of competition fees and the supply of sports kit, but nearly half of the sponsorship deals included free or discounted alcohol for sporting functions and post-match celebrations.

San Diego, November 18, 2008 –The American Journal of Preventive Medicine special issue on climate change (November 2008), will be featured at the "Changing Climate … Changing People" conference today in Los Angeles. Leading off the event is Guest Editor Howard Frumkin, MD, DrPH, speaking about the impacts of climate change on human health.

MBL, WOODS HOLE, MA—Using a novel technique developed by Mitchell Sogin of the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) to identify different types of bacteria, scientists have completed the most precise survey to date of how microbial communities in the human gut respond to antibiotic treatment.

COLLEGE STATION, Nov. 18, 2008 — A team led by a Texas A&M University anthropologist has discovered a group of primates not seen alive in 85 years. The pygmy tarsiers, furry Furby/gremlin-looking* creatures about the size of a small mouse and weighing less than 2 ounces, have not been observed since they were last collected for a museum in 1921. Several scientists believed they were extinct until two Indonesian scientists trapping rats in the highlands of Sulawesi accidentally trapped and killed a pygmy tarsier in 2000.

Population growth and significant increases in development across the country are leading to changes in traffic and driving behavior in many areas where motorists share the road with farmers moving their equipment – changes that worry some members of the agriculture community. Now researchers from North Carolina State University have found a number of risk factors associated with traffic accidents involving farm vehicles, which could point the way toward changes that will better protect farmers and motorists.

CLEVELAND—When retiring, men are more likely than women to move directly from work to retirement, but overall the retirement patterns for dual-income married couples are complex and call for additional considerations in planning for the future, according to a new study from the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences at Case Western Reserve University.

The use of insecticide-treated bed nets (ITNs) to protect children from malaria has risen six-fold in the past seven years, according to research funded by the Wellcome Trust. Despite this success, however, 90 million children still do not have access to this simple protective tool, and remain at risk from the life-threatening disease.

Men with facial scars are more attractive to women seeking short-term relationships, scientists at the University of Liverpool have found.

It was previously assumed that in Western cultures scarring was an unattractive facial feature and in non-Western cultures they were perceived as a sign of maturity and strength. Scientists at Liverpool and Stirling University, however, have found that Western women find scarring on men attractive and may associate it with health and bravery.

Severely obese patients who underwent two different gastric bypass techniques had lost up to 31 per cent of their Body Mass Index (BMI) after four years, with no deaths reported among the 50 study subjects, according to the November issue of the British Journal of Surgery.

The number of patients suffering from high blood pressure fell by 76 per cent, diabetes fell by 90 per cent and cases of dyslipidaemia – abnormal concentrations of lipids or lipoproteins in the blood – fell by 77 per cent.

Manchester, UK, 18 November 2008 - A study of patients, at the Christie Hospital, Manchester, has shown that the decision to fund patient care depends more on where the patient lives, than the patient's health circumstances, raising public concern regarding a "postcode lottery" since each decision is made solely by the patients' local Primary Care Trust (PCT). The findings of this study are published in a letter to Clinical Oncology (http://www.elsevier.com/clinonc).

Two common cancer drugs have been shown to both prevent and reverse type 1 diabetes in a mouse model of the disease, according to research conducted at the University of California, San Francisco. The drugs – imatinib (marketed as Gleevec) and sunitinib (marketed as Sutent) – were found to put type 1 diabetes into remission in 80 percent of the test mice and work permanently in 80 percent of those that go into remission.