Body

PORTLAND, Ore. – Scientists at Oregon Health & Science University and the Portland VA Medical Center have developed a drug that may represent one of the world's best hopes for treating and preventing malaria — a disease that kills more than one million people each year.

The scientists have described the drug, and its effectiveness against mice infected with malaria, in the March 20 issue of Science Translational Medicine, an interdisciplinary journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

You may have heard of couples that strive for exact equality when it comes to chores, i.e. I scrub a dish, you scrub a dish, I change a diaper, you change a diaper.

But new research finds that keeping score with chores isn't the best path to a high-quality relationship. Instead the data points to two items that should have a permanent place on a father's to-do list:

(CHICAGO) – Infections, as the news has shown time and again, can be deadly. Periprothesthetic joint infection (PJI) is the infection of grave concern to the orthopedic community, especially in its growingly common antibiotic-resistant form. This all-too-common infection can be found deep inside the joint prosthesis following joint replacement surgery.

CHICAGO – Anatomic differences between male and female knees have resulted in the creation and regular use of gender-specific implants. However, a new study presented today at the 2013 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) finds that a specialized prosthesis may not improve overall outcomes in female total knee replacement (TKR) patients.

CHICAGO — Ninety-eight percent of total knee replacement (TKR) patients who were working before surgery returned to work after surgery, and of those patients, 89 percent returned to their previous position, according to new research presented today at the 2013 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS). Another related study highlights the life-restoring outcomes of total hip replacement (THR).

A study at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) found that a surgical procedure known as the "docking technique" to repair a torn elbow ligament in teenage athletes yielded favorable results. The outcomes were better than those in previously published reports on reconstruction of the ulnar collateral ligament (UCL), also known as Tommy John surgery, in this age group and may be attributed to technique-specific factors, according to the study authors.

Parents may plead, cajole or entice their children to try new foods, but some kids just won't budge. Now, new research from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill reveals that the reason these kids fear new foods has less to do with what's on their plate and more to do with their genes.

The work, led by Myles Faith, an associate professor of nutrition at UNC's Gillings School of Global Public Health, adds to the growing body of knowledge that genes play a significant role in children's eating behavior, including the tendency to avoid new foods.

Long-term follow-up of a phase II study from KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme and Oxford University researchers in Kenya shows that the efficacy of a malaria vaccine candidate, RTS,S, wanes over time and varies with exposure to the malaria parasite.

The findings will help to inform which populations are likely to benefit most from the vaccine candidate. They also have important implications for the design of future clinical trials of this and other vaccine candidates and highlight the importance of long-term follow-up studies for assessing vaccine efficacy.

(Boston) – Research from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) shows that improving vitamin D status by increasing its level in the blood could have a number of non-skeletal health benefits. The study, published online in PLOS ONE, reveals for the first time that improvement in the vitamin D status of healthy adults significantly impacts genes involved with a number of biologic pathways associated with cancer, cardiovascular disease (CVD), infectious diseases and autoimmune diseases.

For the first time, researchers have shown that poorly controlled maternal diabetes has an adverse effect on methylation of the maternal imprinting gene Peg3, contributing to impaired development in offspring.

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have shown that a new imaging dye, designed and developed at UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center, is an effective agent in detecting and mapping cancers that have reached the lymph nodes. The radioactive dye called Technetium Tc-99m tilmanocept, successfully identified cancerous lymph nodes and did a better job of marking cancers than the current standard dye. Results of the Phase III clinical trial published online today in the Annals of Surgical Oncology.

In the wake of last week's meetings at the UN on the definition of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a group of international scientists have published a call in the journal Nature today, arguing for a set of six SDGs that link poverty eradication to protection of Earth's life support. The researchers argue that in the face of increasing pressure on the planet's ability to support life, adherence to out-dated definitions of sustainable development threaten to reverse progress made in developing countries over past decades.

In the early 1950's, a 66-year-old woman, sick with colon cancer, received a blood transfusion. Then, unexpectedly, she suffered a severe rejection of the transfused blood. Reporting on her case, the French medical journal Revue D'Hématologie identified her as, simply, "Patient Vel."

After a previous transfusion, it turns out, Mrs. Vel had developed a potent antibody against some unknown molecule found on the red blood cells of most people in the world—but not found on her own red blood cells.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – An obesity intervention taught by teen mentors in Appalachian elementary schools resulted in weight loss, lower blood pressure and healthy lifestyle changes among the younger students learning the curriculum, according to a new study.

In contrast, children taught the same lessons by adults in a traditional classroom saw no changes in their health outcomes.

A group of researchers from 16 institutions around the world has identified a new class of anti-malarial compounds that target multiple stages of the malaria parasite's life cycle (http://www.niaid.nih.gov/topics/malaria/pages/lifecycle.aspx). These compounds could potentially be developed into drugs that treat and prevent malaria infection.