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Researchers from McGill University and the Génome Québec Innovation Centre have achieved a technical breakthrough that should result in speedier diagnosis of cancer and various pre-natal conditions.

Racial differences in life expectancy have declined nationally but still vary substantially across U.S. states, according to a new study by McGill University researchers. The findings, published in the journal Health Affairs, suggest that state policies could play a key role in further reducing racial differences in mortality. The researchers calculated annual state-specific life expectancies for blacks and whites from 1990 to 2009 and found that progress was uneven across states during the past two decades.

Bottom Line: Children and adolescents with an abnormal kidney ultrasonography finding or with a combination of a fever of at least 102 degrees and infection with an organism other than E.coli appear to be at high risk for renal scarring with their first urinary tract infection (UTI).

Author: Nader Shaikh, M.D., of the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, and colleagues.

Bottom Line: Hypertension in middle age (48 to 67 years) was associated with a greater, although still a modest, decline in cognition over a 20-year period compared with individuals who had normal blood pressure.

Author: Rebecca F. Gottesman, M.D., Ph.D., of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, and colleagues.

Background: Evidence suggests hypertension is a risk factor for cognitive change and dementia and midlife hypertension may be the stronger risk factor.

A pilot program intended to implement and test a cost-saving strategy for orthopedic procedures at hospitals in California failed to meet its goals, succumbing to recruitment challenges, regulatory uncertainty, administrative burden and concerns about financial risk, according to a new RAND Corporation study.

PASADENA, Calif., August 4, 2014 — The mantra for treatment for high blood pressure has been "the lower, the better," but that goal can potentially put patients at risk of kidney failure or death, according to a Kaiser Permanente study published today in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Researchers examined the electronic health records of nearly 400,000 Kaiser Permanente patients in Southern California who were taking medications to treat high blood pressure from January 2006 through December 2010. They found that:

WASHINGTON (Aug. 4, 2014) — The polypill, a combination pill taken just once a day that includes key medications for secondary prevention of heart disease, may be an effective low-cost strategy to improve adherence to medication recommendations and reduce costs, according to researchers from Spain and New York, who reviewed research on the polypill.

FRANKFURT. Despite improved therapy, only one out of every two adult patients survive acute myeloid leukaemia (AML). The mean survival time for this disease, which predominantly occurs in the elderly, is less than a year for patients over 65 years. It is assumed that leukaemic stem cells, which cannot be completely eliminated during treatment, are the origin of relapse.

ROCHESTER, Minn. — If a research survey of African American professional women is any indication, attitudes may be changing towards participation in medical research. Mayo Clinic and The Links, Incorporated researchers teamed up to survey members of the international women's organization, and found that a majority of African American women surveyed are willing to or have taken part in medical research. The results appear in the Journal of Women's Health.

Mouse models of human diseases are essential research tools that are widely used in the medical sciences to increase our understanding of the pathogenesis and pathophysiology of various diseases, and to search for cures. Despite the widespread use of mice as animal models of disease, in 2013, Seok et al. reported that mouse models poorly mimic human inflammatory diseases, such as severe burn injury, sepsis, and acute infection, in terms of gene expression (PNAS 2013, 110(9), 3507-3523), which has been cited more than 400 times since its publication only 18 months ago.

CLEVELAND – August 4, 2014 – Since its landmark discovery in 1922, insulin has improved the health and extended the lives of more than 500 million people worldwide with diabetes mellitus. Yet the question of how this key hormone binds to its target cells in the body’s organs has posed an enduring scientific mystery. A global team of researchers from Cleveland, Australia, Chicago, India and Oregon has made a discovery about insulin and its structure that promises to enable design of new insulin products that will do a better job of regulating the metabolism of patients with diabetes.

Researchers have traced genetic changes in a bacterial pathogen over 450 years, and claim that epidemics of bacterial disease in human history may be caused by chance environmental changes rather than genetic mutations.

In a study published in PNAS, a team led by the University of Warwick analysed 149 genomes of Salmonella enterica serovar Paratyphi A, which is a major cause of enteric fever. Enteric fever is currently estimated at 27 million clinical cases each year, resulting in 200,000 deaths.

Every year, millions of birds make the journey from North America to Central and South America for the winter. But the evolutionary origins of this long-distance migration have remained opaque due to the complex geographic distributions of modern and ancient bird ranges.

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- A new technique for studying the lifecycle of the hepatitis B virus could help researchers develop a cure for the disease.

In a paper published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Sangeeta Bhatia of MIT and Charles Rice of Rockefeller University describe using microfabricated cell cultures to sustain hepatitis B virus in human liver cells, allowing them to study immune responses and drug treatments.

Each year, millions of birds migrate thousands of miles between the locations where they breed and raise young, and the areas where they spend the winter. Each migration is a trip fraught with danger—many birds die before they reach their final destination. To scientists, long distance migration still holds many mysteries, one of which is: where did migration begin and how did it evolve? This question has long been a debated topic among scientists, but thanks to new research from Field Museum scientists, we may have an answer for one of the largest groups of migratory birds.