Body

PASADENA, Calif. – May 22, 2013 — The new 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV13) appears to be as safe as the previous version used prior to 2010, the 7-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV7), according to a Kaiser Permanente study published today in Vaccine.

Adventitious changes in cellular DNA can endanger the whole organism, as they may lead to life-threatening illnesses like cancer. Researchers at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich now report how byproducts of respiration cause mispairing of subunits in the double helix.

On May 22, JoVE will publish details of a technique to measure the health of human genetic material in relation to a patient’s age. The method is demonstrated by the laboratory of Dr. Gil Atzmon at New York’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Dr. Atzmon hopes that the dissemination of this technique will lead to the development of a “genetic thermometer” to assess a patient’s health in relation to other individuals of the same age.

The University of Gothenburg Vaccine Research Institute (GUVAX) announces successful results in a placebo controlled phase I study of an oral, inactivated Escherichia coli diarrhea vaccine.

Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) bacteria are the primary cause of diarrhea in children living in low and middle income countries result in 400 million diarrheal episodes and approximately 300 000 deaths among children per year.

Two new minute spider species have been discovered from the Sichuan and Chongqing, China. The tiny new spiders are both less than 2 mm in length, with Trogloneta yuensis being as little as 1.01 mm and Mysmena wawuensis measured to be the even tinier 0.75 mm, which classes it among the smallest spiders known. The two species described in the open access journal Zookeys both have a bizarre body shape with disproportionately big spherical posterior body.

The feared Legionella pneumophila bacteria is responsible for legionellosis, an infectious disease that can lead to pneumonia. In order to infect us, this pathogen has developed a complex method enabling it to camouflage itself and go unnoticed in our cells, thus avoiding these acting against the infectious bacteria.

UCLA life scientists provide important new details on how climate change will affect interactions between species in research published online May 21 in the Journal of Animal Ecology. This knowledge, they say, is critical to making accurate predictions and informing policymakers of how species are likely to be impacted by rising temperatures.

Irvine, Calif., May 22, 2013 – Early screening for prostate cancer could become as easy for men as personal pregnancy testing is for women, thanks to UC Irvine research published today in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Boston, MA – New research from Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) finds that a genetic risk factor for pulmonary fibrosis, an uncommon but deadly lung disease, may be effective in identifying individuals at risk for this disease. These findings will be presented at the American Thoracic Society International Conference and publish online simultaneously at the New England Journal of Medicine on May 22 and will appear in the July 4, 2013 print edition.

Study leader, Professor John Mathews from the University of Melbourne said this small increase in cancer risk must be weighed against the undoubted benefits from CT scans in diagnosing and monitoring disease.

The study findings are reported in the British Medical Journal today and involved researchers at eight other centres in Australia, Oxford University, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France.

NEW YORK, May 22, 2013. Plastic additives known as phthalates (pronounced THAL-ates) are odorless, colorless and just about everywhere: They turn up in flooring, plastic cups, beach balls, plastic wrap, intravenous tubing and—according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—the bodies of most Americans. Once perceived as harmless, phthalates have come under increasing scrutiny.

Declines in the biodiversity of pollinating insects and wild plants have slowed in recent years, according to a new study.

Researchers led by the University of Leeds and the Naturalis Biodiversity Centre in the Netherlands found evidence of dramatic reductions in the diversity of species in Britain, Belgium and the Netherlands between the 1950s and 1980s.

But the picture brightened markedly after 1990, with a slowdown in local and national biodiversity losses among bees, hoverflies and wild plants.

The researchers say that in a group of 10,000 young people, they would expect 39 cancers to occur during the next 10 years, but if they all had one CT scan, up to six extra cancers would occur.

CT (computed tomography) scans have great medical benefits, but their increasing use since the 1980s has raised some concerns about possible cancer risks, particularly following exposures in childhood. Most previous studies have estimated risks indirectly, and some radiation experts have questioned the validity of these estimates.

The higher death rate associated with mental illness has been extensively documented, but most of the attention has focused on the elevated risk of suicide, whereas most of the risk can be attributed to physical illness such as cardiovascular and respiratory diseases and cancer (80% of deaths). The higher death rate is also normally reported in terms of mortality rates but other measures can be used such as potential years of life lost, average age at death and life expectancy. Life expectancy is also a useful alternative as it can reflect changes in rates across ages.

He calls on the UK's Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition and the Department of Health "to act swiftly" to tackle the rising obesity crisis and increasing prevalence of type 2 diabetes.

In 2003 the World Health Organization stated that "added sugars" should contribute no more than 10% of total energy intake. This was in line with the UK government's Committee on Medical Aspects of Food and Nutrition Policy (COMA) recommendations.