Body

Boston, Mass. (July 28, 2008) — Micromanagers may generate resentment in an office setting, but they get results in your body. New data indicate that a dividing cell takes micromanagement to the extreme, tagging more than 14,000 different sites on its proteins with phosphate, a molecule that typically serves as a signal for a variety of biological processes.

MADISON — Though bacteria are everywhere — from the air we breathe and the food we eat to our guts and skin — the vast majority are innocuous or even beneficial, and only a handful pose any threat to us. What distinguishes a welcome microbial guest from an unwanted intruder?

Research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison suggests the answer lies not with the bacteria, but with the host.

PITTSBURGH, July 28 – Consuming large quantities of fish loaded with omega-3 fatty acids may explain low levels of heart disease in Japan, according to a study led by the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health slated for the Aug. 5 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology and available online at 5 p.m. ET, today. The study also found that third- and fourth-generation Japanese Americans had similar or even higher levels of atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries – a major risk factor for heart disease, compared to white Americans.

KNOXVILLE -- What began with an off-the-cuff curiosity eventually led Joe Williams to hang from the limbs of a tree 80 feet above the soil of northeastern Australia.

The things Williams, a University of Tennessee, Knoxville, researcher found there may help explain the amazing diversity in the world's flowering plants, a question that has puzzled scientists from the time of Charles Darwin to today.

A national analysis of physician office and emergency department records shows that the types of skin infections caused by community-acquired MRSA doubled in the eight-year study period, with the highest rates seen among children and in urban emergency rooms.

The study, conducted at the University of California, San Francisco, examined annual data from the National Center for Health Statistics of patient visits for skin and soft-tissue infections from 1997 to 2005. The results appear in the July 28, 2008 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Women with gestational diabetes are at greater risk of developing type 2 diabetes, with almost 20% of women developing the condition within 9 years of pregnancy, found a large, population-based study of 659,000 women published in CMAJ.

Chicago, Ill. – July 28, 2008 - A recent study published by the International Journal of Eating Disorders reveals that university undergraduate women who actively participate in sports and exercise-related activities tend to have higher rates of attitudes and behaviors related to eating disorders compared to those who do not regularly exercise. The researchers concluded that women who have higher anxiety about their sport or exercise-related performance were even more likely to experience eating disorder symptoms and body dissatisfaction.

Washington, DC — State and local officials have taken steps to begin monitoring the manufacture and storage of nanomaterials, a major step for a cutting-edge technology that has yet to be regulated by the federal government.

NEW YORK (July 28, 2008) -- Clinical research at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center is helping bring the advantages of robotic surgery, including reduced pain and quicker recovery, to kidney cancer patients.

ST. PAUL, Minn. – Commonly used cholesterol-fighting drugs called statins may protect against dementia and memory loss, according to a study published in the July 29, 2008, issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

"After accounting for other key predictors of dementia, we found that statin users were about half as likely to develop dementia as those who did not take them," said study author Mary N. Haan, DrPH, with the University of Michigan School of Public Health in Ann Arbor.

Asking patients to monitor their own medications can be fatal, as exemplified by the recent death of actor Heath Ledger. In the first large-scale study of home medication consumption, sociologists at the University of California, San Diego have found a 3,196 percent increase in fatal domestic medication errors involving alcohol and/or street drugs.

Drinking more sugar-sweetened beverages or eating fewer fruits and vegetables both may be associated with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes, whereas eating a low-fat diet does not appear to be associated with any change in diabetes risk, according to three reports in the July 28 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

In addition to limiting calories, overweight and obese women may need to exercise 55 minutes a day for five days per week to sustain a weight loss of 10 percent over two years, according to a report in the July 28 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Hearing loss may be more prevalent in American adults than previously reported, according to a study in the July 28 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Boston, MA—Researchers from Boston University's Slone Epidemiology Center have found that regular consumption of sugar-sweetened soft drinks and fruit drinks is associated with an increased risk for type 2 diabetes in African-American women. These findings appear in the July 28 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.