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European researchers have recovered a genome of the bacterium Brucella melitensis from a 700-year-old skeleton found in the ruins of a Medieval Italian village.

Crop spraying on British farms could be aiding a life-threatening fungus suffered by tens of thousand of people in the UK each year.

New research by British and Dutch scientists has found that Aspergillus – a common fungus that attacks the lungs and is found in soil and other organic matter – has become resistant to life - saving drugs in parts of rural Yorkshire.

Labelling people with moderately high blood sugar as pre-diabetic is a drastically premature measure with no medical value and huge financial and social costs, say researchers from UCL and the Mayo Clinic, Minnesota.

The analysis, published in the BMJ, considered whether a diagnosis of pre-diabetes carried any health benefits such as improved diabetes prevention. The authors showed that treatments to reduce blood sugar only delayed the onset of type 2 diabetes by a few years, and found no evidence of long-term health benefits.

Patients with serious heart and lung conditions don't have the normal range of facial expressions, particularly the ability to register surprise in response to emotional cues, finds preliminary research published online in Emergency Medicine Journal.

This finding could be used to help busy emergency care doctors decide whom to prioritise for treatment, and gauge who really needs often costly and invasive tests, suggest the researchers.

TORONTO, July 14, 2014 – Ontario spent nearly $110 million dollars between 2006 and 2010 on bonuses to motivate family doctors to screen more of their patients for cancer but these bonuses were associated with little or no improvement in actual cancer screening rates, according to researchers at St. Michael's Hospital and the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES).

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Researchers at UC Davis, University of Massachusetts and Harvard Medical School have created a combination drug that controls both tumor growth and metastasis. By combining a COX-2 inhibitor, similar to Celebrex, and an epoxide hydrolase (sEH) inhibitor, the drug controls angiogenesis (blood vessel formation), limiting a tumor's ability to grow and spread. The study appears today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Hoffman Estates, IL – Around the globe, fibre and calcium intakes are below the levels recommended by experts1,2,3 contributing to potential long-term public health implications1,3,4. New research, published this month in the British Journal of Nutrition, shows soluble corn fibre (SCF) may not simply boost fibre intake when added to foods, but can also increase the amount of beneficial bacteria present in the gut, while enhancing calcium absorption in adolescents5.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The return of LeBron James to the Cleveland Cavaliers may have riveted the sports world and social media, but the phenomenon of "going home," whether to a geographic location or a former job, is not unique to professional athletes.

According to two studies co-written by a University of Illinois expert in organizational behavior and human resources management, organizations of all types are beginning to recognize and embrace the value of recruiting and welcoming back former employees.

Home blood pressure-monitoring kits can save insurance companies money by improving healthcare quality and reducing healthcare costs, according to new research in the American Heart Association's journal Hypertension.

In the United States, more than 76 million adults have diagnosed high blood pressure, and many more are undiagnosed. Since high blood pressure typically has no symptoms, periodic testing is critical especially for people with the factors that put them at risk for the condition.

Bottom Line: Management of low-risk prostate cancer (which is unlikely to cause symptoms or affect survival if left untreated) varies widely among urologists and radiation oncologists, with patients whose diagnosis is made by a urologist that treats non-low-risk prostate cancer more likely to receive treatment vs. observation.

Author: Karen E. Hoffman, M.D., M.H.Sc., of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, and colleagues.

Bottom Line: Eating foods high in ω-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) from vegetable and marine sources may help reduce the risk for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the fatal neurodegenerative disease commonly referred to as Lou Gehrig's disease.

Author: Kathryn C. Fitzgerald, M.Sc., of the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, and colleagues.

New research from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center is shedding light on the important role a diagnosing urologist plays in whether older men with low-risk prostate cancer receive treatment for their disease, and if so, the type of treatment they receive as a result.

The findings, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, sought to examine why active surveillance, a management program for low-risk disease, which includes repeat PSAs, prostate exams and biopsies, is underused in this patient population.

Despite impressive medical strides, cancer remains a leading killer and overwhelming burden to healthcare systems, causing well over a half million fatalities per year with a projected cost of $174 billion by 2020, according to the National Cancer Institute. Reducing the human and economic toll will require diagnosis and intervention at early stages of illness, when the best prognosis for a cure exists.

If you consider your friends family, you may be on to something. A study from the University of California, San Diego, and Yale University finds that friends who are not biologically related still resemble each other genetically.

Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study is coauthored by James Fowler, professor of medical genetics and political science at UC San Diego, and Nicholas Christakis, professor of sociology, evolutionary biology, and medicine at Yale.

One of the riddles of mammal evolution explained: the strong conservation of the number of trunk vertebrae. Researchers of the Naturalis Biodiversity Center and the University of Utah show that this conservation is probably due to the essential role of speed and agility in survival of fast running mammals. They measured variation in vertebrae of 774 individual mammal skeletons of both fast and slow running species.