Body

A new score for predicting a person's risk of heart disease performs better than the existing test and should be recommended for use in the United Kingdom by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), say researchers in a paper published on bmj.com today.

But NICE currently recommends that doctors use a modified version of the long established score (known as the Anderson Framingham model) to identify who should be offered statin treatment to reduce their risk of heart disease over the next 10 years.

A study comparing how two common dietary oil supplements affect body composition suggests that both oils, by themselves, can lower body fat in obese, postmenopausal women with Type 2 diabetes.

New research may help doctors pinpoint when patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) are becoming dangerously ill. The findings may also point the way to interventions that could sustain the lives of IPF patients until life-saving transplants could be performed.

“Nearly 600 genes were differentially expressed between IPF patients who had accelerated disease and those who were stable” said lead author Kazuhisa Konishi, M.D., of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

Surgical teams at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, INTEGRIS Baptist Medical Center in Oklahoma City and Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit successfully completed the first eight-way, multihospital, domino kidney transplant. The transplant involved eight donors — 3 men and 5 women along with eight organ recipients — 3 men and 5 women. "All Johns Hopkins patients are in good condition and are recovering as anticipated," according to Robert A. Montgomery, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Johns Hopkins Comprehensive Transplant Center.

Research led by the German Institute of Human Nutrition (DIfE) has identified a new gene associated with diabetes, together with a mechanism that makes obese mice less susceptible to diabetes. A genomic fragment that occurs naturally in some mouse strains diminishes the activity of the risk gene Zfp69. The researchers also found that the corresponding human gene (ZNF642) is especially active in overweight individuals with diabetes.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A 700-mile security wall under construction along the United States' border with Mexico could significantly alter the movement and "connectivity" of wildlife, biologists say, and the animals' potential isolation is a threat to populations of some species.

However, technology and alterations to the design could dramatically improve the potential for animals to move more freely between the two countries, the scientists added.

Results of their study are being published in the journal Conservation Biology.

Infants and young children treated with heart drugs get the wrong dose or end up on the wrong end of medication errors more often than older children, according to research led by the Johns Hopkins Children's Center to be published July 6 in Pediatrics.

While the researchers found the highest number of errors among infants under the age of 1, they say children of all ages are vulnerable to such mistakes because health-care providers can manually miscalculate weight-sensitive doses and can misinterpret safe age ranges of adult drugs used off-label in children.

Individuals with higher mid-life Body Mass Index (BMI) in the 1960s have been found to have lower memory and thinking skills and a sharper decline in these abilities in old age, compared to those with lower BMI in mid-life.

Injections of THC, the active principle of cannabis, eliminate dependence on opiates (morphine, heroin) in rats deprived of their mothers at birth. This has been shown by a study carried out by Valérie Daugé and her team at the Laboratory for Physiopathology of Diseases of the Central Nervous System (UPMC / CNRS / INSERM) in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology. The findings could lead to therapeutic alternatives to existing substitution treatments.

MAYWOOD, Il. - African Americans are more likely than other races to die from breast, prostate and ovarian cancers, but this disparity is not due to poverty or inferior healthcare, a first-of-its-kind study has found.

Researchers followed more than 19,000 patients who were enrolled in cancer clinical trials conducted by the Southwest Oncology Group, a National Cancer Institute-funded clinical trials national cooperative. Patients of all races received the same advanced treatments by the same doctors.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — An analysis of almost 20,000 patient records from the Southwest Oncology Group's database of clinical trials finds, for the first time, that African-American breast, ovarian, and prostate cancer patients tend to die earlier than patients of other races even when they get identical medical treatment and other confounding socioeconomic factors are controlled for. The finding points to biological or host genetic factors as the potential source of the survival gap.

This release is available in http://chinese..org/zh/emb_releases/2009-07/jaaj-rsf070609.php">Chinese.

Infants who received two or three primary doses of the 7-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV-7) both had a decreased rate of carrying pneumococcal microorganisms that can cause pneumonia and other infections, compared to infants who were not vaccinated, according to a study in the July 8 issue of JAMA.

Persons with higher levels of adiponectin, a protein that is produced by fat cells and that has anti-inflammatory and insulin-sensitizing properties, have an associated lower risk of type 2 diabetes, according to an analysis of previous studies, reported in the July 8 issue of JAMA.

Some studies have suggested several mechanisms through which adiponectin may decrease the risk of type 2 diabetes, although the strength and consistency of the relation between plasma adiponectin and risk of type 2 diabetes has been unclear, according to background information in the article.

An international team of scientists has developed salt-tolerant plants using a new type of genetic modification (GM), bringing salt-tolerant cereal crops a step closer to reality.

The research team – based at the University of Adelaide's Waite Campus in Australia – has used a new GM technique to contain salt in parts of the plant where it does less damage.

Salinity affects agriculture worldwide, which means the results of this research could impact on world food production and security.

Children given an oral syrup containing the naturally occurring sweetener xylitol may be less likely to develop decay in their baby teeth, according to a report in the July issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.