Body

To better understand problems during pregnancies today, we should look to the experiences of our ancestors, research published in the open access journal BMC Medicine suggests. Scientists investigating pregnancies in four generations of rats show that inherited epigenetic effects of stress could affect pregnancies for generations.

PHILADELPHIA — Analysis of the gut microbiome more successfully distinguished healthy individuals from those with precancerous adenomatous polyps and those with invasive colorectal cancer compared with assessment of clinical risk factors and fecal occult blood testing, according to data published in Cancer Prevention Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Brief, acute psychological stress promoted healing in mouse models of three different types of skin irritations, in a study led by UC San Francisco researchers.

The scientists found that healing was brought about by the anti-inflammatory effects of glucocorticoids – steroid hormones – produced by the adrenal glands in response to stress.

Long-term survival from pancreatic cancer has failed to improve in 40 years – with the outlook remaining the lowest of the 21 most common cancers, according to new figures published by Cancer Research UK today.

Today just over three per cent of pancreatic cancer patients survive for at least five years, only a fraction more than the two per cent who survived that long in the early 1970s.

Human milk is infant food, but for sick, hospitalized babies, it's also medicine. That's the central premise of a series of articles in a neonatal nursing journal's special issue focused on human milk for sick newborns. The articles are being published during World Breastfeeding Week, Aug. 1-7, 2014.

Breast cancer risks for one of potentially the most important genes associated with breast cancer after the BRCA1/2 genes are today reported in the New England Journal of Medicine. Women with mutations in the PALB2 gene have on average a one in three chance of developing breast cancer by the age of seventy.

Say what you will about the parasitic lifestyle, but in the evolution of life on Earth, it's a winner.

MINNEAPOLIS – In the largest study of its kind, researchers suggests that in older people, not getting enough vitamin D may double the risk of developing dementia and Alzheimer's disease. The study is published in the August 6, 2014, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

The study looked at blood levels of vitamin D, which includes vitamin D from food, supplements and sun exposure. Dietary vitamin D is found in fatty fish such as salmon, tuna or mackerel and milk, eggs and cheese.

Bottom Line: An outreach campaign that included local media and culturally sensitive educational programs in targeted neighborhoods was associated with an increase in consent rates for organ donation among Hispanic Americans in the Los Angeles area.

Author: Ali Salim, M.D., of Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, and colleagues.

Background: Nearly 20 people die each day waiting for an organ transplant. The organ shortage affects all ethnic groups but is more pronounced in minority populations.

Brenna Anderson, MD, of the Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine at Women & Infants of Rhode Island and an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, has published a commentary in the current issue of BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, now available online. The commentary is entitled "The time has come to consider neonatal outcomes when designing embryo transfer policies."

KANSAS CITY, MO — Adult organisms ranging from fruit flies to humans harbor adult stem cells, some of which renew themselves through cell division while others differentiate into the specialized cells needed to replace worn-out or damaged organs and tissues.

Understanding the molecular mechanisms that control the balance between self-renewal and differentiation in adult stem cells is an important foundation for developing therapies to regenerate diseased, injured or aged tissue.

In the current issue of the journal Nature, scientists at the

Countries need to work together to ensure Antarctic research continues and key questions on the region are answered, researchers say.

In an article published in Nature this week, 75 scientists along with policy makers in 22 countries have outlined what they see as the major priorities for Antarctic research over the next 20 years and beyond.

In it they outline six priorities for Antarctic science – the most important scientific questions to be addressed in the region, as well as what they think is needed to achieve them.

Black truffles, also known as Périgord truffles, grow in symbiosis with the roots of oak and hazelnut trees. In the world of haute cuisine, they are expensive and highly prized.

In the world of epigenetics, however, the fungi (Tuber melanosporum) are of major interest for another reason: their unique pattern of DNA methylation, a biochemical process that chemically modifies nucleic acids without changing their sequence. Epigenetics is the study of changes in gene expression caused by mechanisms other than changes in the DNA sequence.

Wikipedia the free, online collaborative encyclopedia is an important source of information. However, while the team of volunteer editors endeavors to maintain high standards, there are occasionally problems with the veracity of content, deliberate vandalism and incomplete entries. Writing in the International Journal of Information Quality, computer scientists in China have devised a software algorithm that can automatically check a particular entry and rank it according to quality.

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Sequencing the genomes of tumor cells has revealed thousands of mutations associated with cancer. One way to discover the role of these mutations is to breed a strain of mice that carry the genetic flaw — but breeding such mice is an expensive, time-consuming process.

Now, MIT researchers have found an alternative: They have shown that a gene-editing system called CRISPR can introduce cancer-causing mutations into the livers of adult mice, enabling scientists to screen these mutations much more quickly.