Body

Individuals who had taken a type of drug commonly used to treat Type 2 diabetes showed abnormalities in the pancreas, including cell proliferation, that may be associated with an increased risk of neuroendocrine tumors, according to a new study by researchers from UCLA and the University of Florida. Their findings were published online March 22 in the journal Diabetes.

A new UCLA-led study suggests a way to predict when a woman will have her final menstrual period. The findings, published in the April issue of the peer-reviewed Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, could help women and physicians gauge the onset of menopause-related bone loss, which generally begins a year prior to the last period.

German researchers Alexander Riedel (Natural History Museum Karlsruhe) and Michael Balke (Zoological State Collection Munich), know this well, being experts for faunas of remote tropical countries such as the wilderness of New Guinea.

DETROIT – While the number of people – especially women – who have a minimally invasive procedure to remove kidney stones has risen in recent years, so has the rate of complications related to the surgery, according to a published study by Henry Ford Hospital.

The research, from Khurshid R. Ghani, M.D., of Henry Ford Hospital's Vattikuti Urology Institute, appears in the current issue of Journal of Urology.

Researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center and colleagues at the University of Florida studied health care providers to determine the factors associated with disparities in Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination among girls, ages 9 to 17, from low-income families. They found that physician vaccination strategies and the type of practice play a role in whether or not girls were vaccinated.

The study results were published in the Feb. 1 issue of Cancer.

University of Montreal researchers have discovered a novel molecular mechanism that can potentially slows the aging process and may prevent the progression of some cancers. In the March 23 online edition of the prestigious journal Aging Cell, scientists from the University of Montreal explain how they found that the antidiabetic drug metformin reduces the production of inflammatory cytokines that normally activate the immune system, but if overproduced can lead to pathological inflammation, a condition that both damages tissues in aging and favors tumor growth.

The sequencing and assembly of the genome of the mountain pine beetle, Dendroctonus ponderosae, is published online this week in Genome Biology. The species is native to North America, where it is currently wreaking havoc in an area of forest ten times larger than previous outbreaks. This paper determines genes that may be involved in colonizing the trees, such as enzymes for degrading plant cell walls, and identifies potential sex chromosomes in the beetle.

DNA barcode sequencing without the amplification of DNA by PCR beats the problem of false positives which can inflate estimates of biodiversity, finds a study published in BioMed Central and BGI Shenzhen's open access journal GigaScience. This method tested on a bulk 'squashome' of mixed insect samples is also able rapidly and cost-effectively estimate biomass.

March 27th, 2013, Hong Kong, China – GigaScience (a BGI and BioMed Central open access journal) announces the publication of an article that presents a new method for assessing and understanding biodiversity that uses a DNA-soup made from crushed-up insects and next generation sequencing technology. This bulk-collected insect goo has the potential to rapidly and cost-effectively reveal the diversity and make-up of both known and unknown species collected in a particular time and place.

Overweight and obese women are more likely to require specialist medical care during their pregnancy due to the increased risk of adverse neonatal and maternal outcomes, finds a new study published today (27 March) in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.

Research: Association between maternal serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D level and pregnancy and neonatal outcomes: systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies

Editorial: Vitamin D sufficiency in pregnancy

There is a link between vitamin D insufficiency and adverse health outcomes such as gestational diabetes and preeclampsia in mothers-to-be and low birth weight in newborns, suggests a paper published on bmj.com today.

Researchers from Lund University and the University of Oxford have been able to provide one answer as to why males in many species still provide paternal care, even when their offspring may not belong to them. The study finds that, when the conditions are right, sticking around despite being 'cuckolded' actually turns out to be the most successful evolutionary strategy. The study, by Charlie Cornwallis and colleagues, is published 26 March in the open access journal PLOS Biology.

It's been more than fifty years since scientists discovered that the single-celled organism Tetrahymena thermophila has seven sexes. But in all that time, they've never known how each cell's sex, or "mating type," is determined; now they do. The new findings are published 26 March in the open access journal PLOS Biology.

In England, hospital is still the most common place for patients with cancer to die but an increase in home and hospice deaths since 2005 suggests that the National End of Life Care Programme (a Programme to promote the rollout of national end-of-life care initiatives) has helped more people to die at their preferred place of death, according to a UK study funded by the National Institute for Health Research Health Services and Delivery Research (NIHR HS&DR) Programme, published in this week's PLOS Medicine.

Scientists are getting closer to a Chagas disease vaccine, something many believed impossible only 10 years ago. Research from the Sealy Center for Vaccine Development at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston has resulted in a safe vaccine candidate that is simple to produce and shows a greater than 90 percent protection rate against chronic infection in mice.