Body

We constantly grow new skin and slough off the old. Until now, scientists have never agreed on exactly how this works, but new research from the University of Sheffield may provide the answer.

Down syndrome, more commonly known as "trisomy 21" is very often accompanied by pathologies found in the general population: Alzheimer's disease, leukemia, or cardiac deficiency. In a study conducted by Professor Stylianos Antonarakis' group from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Geneva (UNIGE), researchers have identified the genomic variations associated with trisomy 21, determining the risk of congenital heart disease in people with Down syndrome.

OTTAWA, Canada—June 26, 2013—Until now, there has been no research dedicated to the importance of Vitamin D supplementation in children with congenital heart disease (CHD). However, over the past few years, researchers at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) Research Institute and Cardiovascular Surgery Program teamed with the Canadian Critical Care Trials Group to understand the impact of cardiac surgery on the Vitamin D status of infants and children, to be printed next month in Anesthesiology.

CLEVELAND, Ohio (June 26, 2013)—Should women take calcium and vitamin D supplements after menopause for bone health? Recommendations conflict, and opinions are strong. But now, an analysis from the major Women's Health Initiative (WHI) trial throws weight on the supplement side—at least for women taking hormones after menopause. The analysis was published online today in Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society.

Asians – recently found to be the fastest growing minority group in the U.S. – have been described asthe least segregated minority group in the U.S. In fact, Chinese and Indians are segregated almost ashighly as Hispanics, and Vietnamese segregation is almost as high as that of African Americans.At the same time, every Asian nationality except Vietnamese lives on average in neighborhoods withhigher income and share of college-educated residents than do non-Hispanic whites.

The appearance of cutlery can affect perception of a food's taste, reports BioMed Central's open access journal Flavour. Food tastes saltier when eaten from a knife, and denser and more expensive from a light plastic spoon. Taste was also affected by the color of the cutlery.

Scientists in the US have developed a novel vaccination method that uses tiny gold particles to mimic a virus and carry specific proteins to the body's specialist immune cells.

The technique differs from the traditional approach of using dead or inactive viruses as a vaccine and was demonstrated in the lab using a specific protein that sits on the surface of the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).

The results have been published today, 26 June, in IOP Publishing's journal Nanotechnology by a team of researchers from Vanderbilt University.

In the light of Novel Corona Virus, concerns over H7N9 Influenza in S.E. Asia, and more familiar infections such as measles and seasonal influenza, it is as important as ever to be able to predict and understand how infections transmit through the UK population.

Researchers at the University of Warwick and University of Liverpool have mapped the daily contact networks of thousands of individuals to shed light on which groups may be at highest risk of contracting and spreading respiratory diseases.

New evidence supports a causal relationship between adiposity and heart failure, and between adiposity and increased liver enzymes, according to a study published this week in PLOS Medicine. The study, conducted by Inga Prokopenko, Erik Ingelsson, and colleagues from the ENGAGE (European Network for Genetic and Genomic Epidemiology) Consortium, also provides additional support for several previously shown causal associations such as those between adiposity and type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, dyslipidemia, and hypertension.

A drug developed to treat genetic diseases such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy and cystic fibrosis may need a radical rethink. In a new study published on 25 June in the open access journal PLOS Biology, researchers question the mechanistic basis of the drug called PTC124 (also known as Ataluren), casting doubt as to whether it has the molecular effects that are claimed for it. This may have implications for its effectiveness in treating genetic diseases.

An international research team led by Swedish scientists has used a new method to investigate obesity and overweight as a cause of cardiovascular disease. Strong association have been found previously, but it has not been clear whether it was overweight as such that was the cause, or if the overweight was just a marker of another underlying cause, as clinical trials with long-term follow-ups are difficult to implement.

A team of scientists with the Wildlife Conservation Society, BirdLife International, and other groups have discovered a new species of bird with distinct plumage and a loud call living not in some remote jungle, but in a capital city of 1.5 million people.

NEW YORK (June 25, 2013) -- Based on the experience of a large hospital in Tanzania, Weill Cornell Medical College researchers have discovered a "startlingly" high burden of hypertension in this sub-Saharan African country.

In the Journal of Hypertension, the researchers say non-communicable disease -- driven primarily by hypertension, resulting in stroke and other cardiovascular diseases -- accounted for nearly half of the deaths and admissions during a three-year period at Weill Bugando Medical Center, one of Tanzania's preeminent teaching hospitals.

Use of advanced treatment technologies for prostate cancer, such as intensity-modulated radiotherapy and robotic prostatectomy, has increased among men with low-risk disease, high risk of noncancer mortality, or both, a population of patients who are unlikely to benefit from these treatments, according to a study in the June 26 issue of JAMA.

In 2 large studies, the association between aspirin use and risk of colorectal cancer was affected by mutation of the gene BRAF, with regular aspirin use associated with a lower risk of BRAF-wild-type colorectal cancer but not with risk of BRAF-mutated cancer, findings that suggest that BRAF-mutant colon tumor cells may be less sensitive to the effect of aspirin, according to a study in the June 26 issue of JAMA.