Body

The study at Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, was based on the Swedish National Epilepsy Surgery Register, which includes all cases since 1990. The researchers reviewed data for the 865 patients who were operated on at Sweden's six epilepsy surgery clinics from 1996 to 2010.

The purpose of surgery is to enable a person with severe epilepsy to be free of seizures or to reduce their frequency to the point that (s)he can enjoy better quality of life.

Downward trend

Using a new imaging technique, National Institutes of Health researchers have found that the biological machinery that builds DNA can insert molecules into the DNA strand that are damaged as a result of environmental exposures. These damaged molecules trigger cell death that produces some human diseases, according to the researchers. The work, appearing online Nov. 17 in the journal Nature, provides a possible explanation for how one type of DNA damage may lead to cancer, diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular and lung disease, and Alzheimer's disease.

Results presented November 19 by University of Colorado Cancer Center investigator Daniel Pollyea, MD, MS, at the 26th European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer Symposium in Barcelona show "extremely promising" early phase 1 clinical trial results for the investigational drug AG-120 against the subset of patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) harboring mutations in the gene IDH1. The finding builds on phase 1 results of a related drug, AG-221, against IDH2 mutations, presented at the most recent meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research.

After mining the genetic records of thousands of breast cancer patients, researchers from the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center have identified a gene whose presence may explain why some breast cancers are resistant to tamoxifen, a widely used hormone treatment generally used after surgery, radiation and other chemotherapy.

The treatment of people who cannot keep their gambling habits in check is often complicated because they also tend to suffer from personality disorders. So says Meredith Brown of Monash University in Australia, in a review in Springer's Journal of Gambling Studies.

Genes make proteins and proteins tell your body's cells what to do: one talks to the next, which talks to the next, and to the next. Like a game of telephone, researchers call these "signaling pathways". Abnormalities in these signaling pathways can cause the growth and survival of cancer cells. Commonly, mutations or rearrangements of genes in the MAPK signaling pathway create cancer's fast growth, and alterations in the PI3K signaling pathway allow cancer cells to survive into virtual immortality.

FRANKFURT/GIESSEN. Healthy cells reduce their growth when there is a lack of oxygen (hypoxia). This makes it even more surprising that hypoxia is a characteristic feature of malignant tumours. In two publications in the current edition of the "Nature Communications" journal, researchers from Goethe University and Justus-Liebig-University of Giessen report on how cancer cells succeed at circumventing the genetic program of growth inhibition.

Expensive tests for measuring everything from sperm motility to cancer diagnosis have just been made hundreds of thousands of pounds cheaper by a PhD student from Brunel University London who hacked his own microscope.

Adam Lynch, from the university's College of Health and Life Sciences, created his own inverted microscope by adapting a cheap instrument he bought online to save himself time and money.

Extreme weather events, such as El Niño, can have long-lasting effects on health, according to research published in the open access journal Climate Change Responses. The study, in coastal Peru, shows that children born during and after the 1997-98 El Niño have a lower height-for-age than others born before the event.

A high intake of yogurt has been found to be associated with a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes, according to research published in open access journal BMC Medicine. This highlights the importance of having yogurt as part of a healthy diet.

Task Force finds insufficient evidence to recommend for or against routine vitamin D screeningFree content

A National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded research team has successfully tested an autonomous underwater vehicle, AUV, that can produce high-resolution, three-dimensional maps of Antarctic sea ice. SeaBED, as the vehicle is known, measured and mapped the underside of sea-ice floes in three areas off the Antarctic Peninsula that were previously inaccessible.

Study: Breakfast in Classroom Program Linked to Better Breakfast Participation, Attendance

Schools offering Breakfast in the Classroom (BIC) had higher participation in the national school breakfast program and attendance, but math and reading achievement did not differ between schools with or without BIC, according to a study published online by JAMA Pediatrics.

SAN ANTONIO (Nov. 24, 2014) -- HIV-1-infected U.S. military members and beneficiaries treated with antiretroviral therapy (ART) soon after infection were half as likely to develop AIDS and were more likely to reconstitute their immune-fighting CD4+ T-cells to normal levels, researchers reported Nov. 24 in JAMA Internal Medicine.

MADISON, Wis. -- Sixty years ago, the plows ended their reign and the fields were allowed to return to nature -- allowed to become the woodland forests they once were.

But even now, the ghosts of land-use past haunt these woods. New research by Philip Hahn and John Orrock at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on the recovery of South Carolina longleaf pine woodlands once used for cropland shows just how long lasting the legacy of agriculture can be in the recovery of natural places.