Body

Complementary and alternative medical (CAM) treatments such as herbal supplements have become increasingly popular in the United States, especially among older patients and those with chronic pain. However, many of these products can have serious and potentially harmful side effects when combined with medications prescribed during and after surgery, according to a review article in the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (JAAOS).

A newly developed method for microscopically extracting, or "mining," information from genomes could represent a significant boost in the search for new therapeutic drugs and improve science's understanding of basic functions such as how cells communicate with one another.

Assigning environment-related legal cases to specialized tribunals, courts and judges is among the ideas being aired as experts convene in Malaysia for a two-day United Nations conference on the relationship between the world's law, justice and governance systems and sustainable development.

High court "green benches" already exist in India, established by that country's Supreme Court to ensure judges have the expertise and resources to properly consider environmental issues.

A battle that brews in the mother's womb between the father's biological goal to produce the biggest, healthiest baby possible vs. the mother's need to live through delivery might help explain preeclampsia, an often deadly disease of pregnancy. The fetus must be big enough to thrive, yet small enough to pass through the birth canal. In a new study, Yale researchers describe the mechanism that keeps these conflicting goals in balance.

The findings are published in the October 11, 2011 online issue of Reproductive Sciences.

Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma (OSCC) is responsible for nearly a quarter of all head and neck cancers. It is one of the leading causes of cancer death - largely due to the failure of current histological procedures in predicting the recurrence of the disease. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Cancer shows that a four-gene signature may accurately predict which patients are at higher risk of OSCC recurrence.

World class scientist Professor Willem M. de Vos will explain next Monday how the microbes that are closest to our hearts – gut microbes – could underpin a new way of thinking about human biology. As well as looking at our own genes, we can now include those of our microbes in studies of human health and disease. This is a significant shift in the way we approach human biology.

More research is needed before conclusions can be drawn about the effect of recent reforms on hospital quality, let alone about the merits of the coalition government's proposals to extend competition, warn experts on bmj.com today.

Professor Gwyn Bevan and Matthew Skellern at the London School of Economics and Political Science argue that the jury is still out on the effects of hospital competition on quality of care within the English NHS.

CHICAGO – Consuming dietary supplements, including multivitamins, folic acid, iron and copper, among others, appears to be associated with an increased risk of death in older women, according to a report in the October 10 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. The article is part of the journal's Less Is More series.

Antivirulence drugs disarm pathogens rather than kill them, and although they could be effective in theory, antivirulence drugs have never been tested in humans. A new study to be published in the online journal mBio® on Tuesday, October 18 reveals these drugs have the potential to fight infection while avoiding the pitfalls of drug resistance.

ST. PAUL, Minn. -- People who are able to cross their legs soon after having a severe stroke appear to be more likely to have a good recovery compared to people who can't cross their legs. That's according to new research published in the October 11, 2011, print issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

If you're a middle-aged woman with Restless Legs Syndrome, you may have a higher risk of developing high blood pressure, according to new research reported in Hypertension: Journal of the American Heart Association.

RLS is a common yet under-recognized sensory motor disorder characterized by intense, unpleasant leg sensations, and an irresistible urge to move the legs. RLS symptoms can lead to poor sleep and daytime drowsiness. It affects as many as 15 percent of the adult population.

Researchers found that women who reported:

Researchers at the Medical College of Wisconsin have shown that a protein can inhibit metastasis of colon and melanoma cancers. The findings are published in the October 10, 2011 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Michael B. Dwinell, Ph.D., director of the Bobbie Nick Voss Laboratory and associate professor of microbiology and molecular genetics, is the lead author on the paper.

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine say that losing the ability to make a particular kind of sugar molecule boosted disease protection in early hominids, and may have directed the evolutionary emergence of our ancestors, the genus Homo.

The findings, published in this week's early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are among the first evidence of a novel link between cell surface sugars, Darwinian sexual selection, and immune function in the context of human origins

Researchers from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute have today (07/10/2011) announced a new technique to reprogramme human cells, such as skin cells, into stem cells. Their process increases the efficiency of cell reprogramming by one hundred-fold and generates cells of a higher quality at a faster rate.

Some cancers can be effectively treated with drugs inhibiting proteins known as receptor tyrosine kinases, but not those cancers caused by mutations in the KRAS gene. A team of researchers led by Jeffrey Engelman, at Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, Boston, has now identified a potential way to effectively use receptor tyrosine kinases inhibitors to treat individuals with KRAS mutant colorectal cancers — combine them with inhibitors of the MEK/ERK signaling pathway.