Body

People who take bisphosphonates after joint replacement surgery are less likely to need a repeat operation, finds a new study published on bmj.com today.

While hip and knee replacements are cost effective procedures, substantial numbers of patients require revision surgery within 10 years to replace the implant because of infection, wear, loosening, or other mechanical failures.

San Antonio, TX - Accelerated partial breast irradiation (APBI) brachytherapy, the localized form of radiation therapy growing increasingly popular as a treatment choice for women with early-stage breast cancer, is associated with higher rate of later mastectomy, increased radiation-related toxicities and post-operative complications, compared to traditional whole breast irradiation (WBI), according to researchers from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

In women, there is a positive association between rotating night shift work and the risk of developing type 2 diabetes and, furthermore, long duration of shift work may be associated with greater weight gain. These findings from a study by Frank Hu and colleagues from Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, USA, published in this week's PLoS Medicine, are of potential public health significance as a large proportion of the working population is involved in some kind of permanent night and rotating night shift work.

In this week's PLoS Medicine, Paul Newton of Mahosot Hospital, Vientiane, Lao PDR and the University of Oxford, UK and colleagues argue that public health issues, and not intellectual property or trade issues, should be the prime consideration in defining and combating counterfeit medicines. They say that the World Health Organization (WHO) should take a more prominent role. The authors advocate that an international treaty on medicine quality, under the auspices of the WHO, could play a key role in the struggle against counterfeit and substandard medicines.

Boston, MA -- Women who work a rotating (irregular) schedule that includes three or more night shifts per month, in addition to day and evening working hours in that month, may have an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes when compared with women who only worked days or evenings, according to a new study led by researchers at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). In addition, the researchers found that extended years of rotating night shift work was associated with weight gain, which may contribute to the increased risk of type 2 diabetes.

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. -- Supercomputer simulations at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory are giving scientists unprecedented access to a key class of proteins involved in drug detoxification.

Jerome Baudry and Yinglong Miao, who are jointly affiliated with ORNL and the University of Tennessee, have performed simulations to observe the motions of water molecules in a class of enzymes called P450s. Certain types of P450 are responsible for processing a large fraction of drugs taken by humans.

Nguyen and Choueiri found that cardiovascular deaths occurred in 11 percent of the patients who underwent ADT versus 11.2 percent in the control patients – an insignificant difference. ADT did prolong survival, as shown by the finding that all-cause mortality in the treated patients was 37.7 percent compared with 44.4 percent in the control group.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – With chubby cheeks and weighing in at a healthy 10 pounds, the imminently huggable Lexi Morrison is far removed from the 1-pound, 9 –ounce preemie she was in June when she was born premature at 24 weeks.

And had it not been for antenatal corticosteroids provided by the University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital's Regional Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, Lexi's story might have ended badly for her and mom Laci Freeman.

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – The era of widely available next generation personal genomic testing has arrived and with it the ability to quickly and relatively affordably learn the sequence of your entire genome. This would include what is referred to as the "exome," your complete set of protein-coding sequences.

But as University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill medical geneticists point out, this avalanche of information also includes the totality of one's genetic mutations and as such arrives with both promise and threats associated with its use.

PHILADELPHIA -- Long the bane of picky eaters everywhere, broccoli's taste is not just a matter of having a cultured palate; some people can easily taste a bitter compound in the vegetable that others have difficulty detecting. Now a team of Penn researchers has helped uncover the evolutionary history of one of the genes responsible for this trait. Beyond showing the ancient origins of the gene, the researchers discovered something unexpected: something other than taste must have driven its evolution.

Thousands of video game players have helped significantly advance our understanding of the genetic basis of diseases such as Alzheimer's, diabetes and cancer over the past year. They are the users of a web-based video game developed by Dr. Jérôme Waldispuhl of the McGill School of Computer Science and collaborator Mathieu Blanchette. Phylo is designed to allow casual game players to contribute to scientific research by arranging multiple sequences of coloured blocks that represent human DNA.

Studies of a protein that fruit flies use to sense heat and chemicals may someday provide solutions to human pain and the control of disease-spreading mosquitoes.

In the current issue of Nature, biologist Paul Garrity of the National Center for Behavioral Genomics at Brandeis University and his team, spearheaded by KyeongJin Kang and Vince Panzano in the Garrity lab, discover how fruit flies distinguish the warmth of a summer day from the pungency of wasabi by using TRPA1, a protein whose human relative is critical for pain and inflammation.

A new study has shown previously unseen details of an anthrax bacteriophage — a virus that infects anthrax bacteria — revealing for the first time how it infects its host, and providing an initial blueprint for how the phage might someday be modified into a tool for the detection and destruction of anthrax and other potential bioterror agents.

Tiger Woods's phenomenal talent won him a ton of golf tournaments. But an article published in the latest issue of the Journal of Political Economy shows he has something else going for him: his superstar status hobbles the competition.

According to research by Northwestern University economist Jennifer Brown, when Woods played in a tournament during his heyday, the other golfers' scores were substantially worse compared to tournaments where Woods did not play. Instead of raising their game to play the superstar, golfers facing Woods tended to wilt.

It is now possible to use dental X-rays to predict who is at risk of fractures, reveals a new study from researchers at the Sahlgrenska Academy reported in the journal Nature Reviews Endocrinology.

In a previous study, researchers from the University of Gothenburg's Sahlgrenska Academy and Region Västra Götaland demonstrated that a sparse bone structure in the trabecular bone in the lower jaw is linked to a greater chance of having previously had fractures in other parts of the body.

X-rays investigates bone structure