Body

WHAT:Researchers have identified important risk factors for death and transplantation in children with dilated cardiomyopathy (heart muscle disease), according to results from a study supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health.

Using these risk factors, physicians may be able to better identify children who will or will not benefit from life-saving transplantation surgery; the current criteria for receiving a transplant sometimes miss children who may benefit.

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Changes in relationship formation and dissolution in the past 50 years have revealed new patterns in romantic relations among young adults. The U.S. Census indicates that young people are choosing to marry later and cohabitating more often than past generations. Now, a University of Missouri researcher has found that people in their 20s are redefining dating by engaging in "stayover relationships," spending three or more nights together each week while maintaining the option of going to their own homes.

Preventing heart disease before it starts is a good long-term investment in the nation's health, according to a new policy statement from the American Heart Association.

The policy statement, published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, summarizes years of research on the value of investing in prevention, particularly through community-based changes to make it easier to live a healthy lifestyle:

In premenopausal women who have repeated urinary tract infections (UTIs), the antibiotic trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (TMP-SMX) appeared more effective than cranberry capsules for preventing recurrent infections, at the risk of contributing to antibiotic resistance, according to a report in the July 25 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Measuring hemoglobin A 1c (HbA 1c ) levels in patients with diabetes is associated with improvement in models for predicting risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD), according to a report published Online First today by Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

New Rochelle, NY, July 25, 2011—Better data are needed to evaluate access to care by minority groups at increased risk for diabetes, such as older African Americans, and to assess the benefits of new community-based treatment strategies, including greater use of health information technology and access to multilevel diabetes education teams, according to a report in Population Health Management, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. The article is available free online.

Honolulu, HI---As school buses drive down the gravel roads in Dunn County, North Dakota, they stir up more than dirt. The clouds of dust left in their wake contain such high levels of the mineral erionite that those who breathe in the air every day are at an increased risk of developing mesothelioma, a type of cancer of the membranes around the lungs, new research shows. Erionite is a natural mineral fiber that shares similar physical similarities with asbestos. When it's disturbed by human activity, fibers can become airborne and lodge themselves in people's lungs.

DALLAS – July 25, 2011 – UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have narrowed the potential drug targets for advanced prostate cancer by demonstrating that late-stage tumors are driven by a different hormonal pathway than was thought previously.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Researchers who have been working for nearly a decade to piece together the process by which an enzyme repairs sun-damaged DNA have finally witnessed the entire process in full detail in the laboratory.

What they saw contradicts fundamental notions of how key biological molecules break up during the repair of sunburn – and that knowledge could someday lead to drugs or even lotions that could heal sunburn in humans.

Around the globe, many nations are realizing that the potential for bioterrorism isn't just about the U.S., officials say.

And because an intentional introduction of bacteria, a virus or a toxin could happen anywhere, the World Organization for Animal Health is issuing a paper aimed at prevention.

"Any emerging country that is beginning to think about maintaining international trade needs to be aware of the potential for bioterrorism," said Dr. Neville Clarke, special assistant to the Texas A&M University System's vice chancellor of agriculture.

PASADENA, Calif.— For modern biologists, the ability to capture high-quality, three-dimensional (3D) images of living tissues or organisms over time is necessary to answer problems in areas ranging from genomics to neurobiology and developmental biology. The better the image, the more detailed the information that can be drawn from it.

OAK BROOK, Ill. – July 25, 2011 – Researchers from New England report in a new study that using a tumor marker, serum CA 19-9, combined with an endoscopic ultrasound if the tumor marker is elevated, is more likely to detect stage 1 pancreatic cancer in a high-risk population than by using the standard means of detection. The study appears in the July issue of GIE: Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, the monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal of the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (ASGE).

HOUSTON — A regulatory T cell that expresses three specific genes shuts down the mass production of antibodies launched by the immune system to attack invaders, a team led by scientists at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center reported online in the journal Nature Medicine.

Diabetes rate increases in status Aboriginal adults in Alberta appear to be slowing compared with the general population, although diabetes is more common in status Aboriginals and death rates for this group are significantly higher than the general population, states an article in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). Death rates have in fact remained unchanged for status Aboriginals who do not have diabetes.

Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is the most frequently inherited cause of infant mortality. Two independent research groups — one led by Alex MacKenzie, at Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute, Ottawa; and one led by Umrao R. Monani, at Columbia University Medical Center, New York, and Cathleen M. Lutz, at The Jackson Laboratory, Bar Harbor — have now generated new data in mouse models of severe SMA that provide hope that a therapeutic providing meaningful benefit to individuals with SMA can be developed.