Body

Historically, pubic hair used to be removed for religious or cultural reasons, but in recent decades it has become fashionable to shave it off, with men also increasingly following the trend, say the authors.

Molluscum contagiosum is a pox virus, which is relatively common in children and people whose immune systems are compromised by illness or drugs. But it can also be passed on through sex, and over the past decade the number of sexually transmitted cases has risen.

Stingrays living in one of the world's most famous and heavily visited ecotourism sites — Stingray City/Sandbar in the Cayman Islands — have profoundly changed their ways, raising questions about the impact of so-called "interactive ecotourism" on marine wildlife, reports a new study published March 18 in the journal PLOS ONE.

A Chinese herb used in remedies for common ailments such as eczema, acne, liver symptoms, arthritis, and chronic pain remains a worldwide health threat due to its availability online. Approximately 20 years ago, a cohort of young female patients in Belgium presented with a rapidly progressive kidney disease.

Physicians traced the cause of the epidemic to a weight-loss clinic that had treated the women with a Chinese herb containing aristolochic acid (AA). Today, renal disease caused by AA is referred to as aristolochic acid nephropathy, or AAN.

Scientists from King's College London are warning that millions of people may be exposed to risk of developing kidney failure and bladder cancer by taking herbal medicines that are widely available in Asia. The medicines, used for a wide range of conditions including slimming, asthma and arthritis, are derived from a botanical compound containing aristolochic acids. These products are now banned in the USA and many European countries but the herbs containing this toxic acid can still be bought in China and other countries in Asia and are also available worldwide over the internet.

Boston, MA – There is wide variation in the rate of cesarean sections performed at different hospitals across the U.S. and one explanation has been that hospitals with higher c-section rates serve greater numbers of women at high risk for the procedure.

Buried for 100,000 years at Xujiayao in the Nihewan Basin of northern China, the recovered skull pieces of an early human exhibit a now-rare congenital deformation that indicates inbreeding might well have been common among our ancestors, new research from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Washington University in St. Louis suggests.

Following the American Heart Association's Life's Simple 7 steps to reduce your risk for heart disease can also help prevent cancer, according to new research in the American Heart Association journal Circulation.

Location, location, location. A new Johns Hopkins Children's Center study shows the real-estate mantra also holds true when it comes to choosing correct catheter placement in children.

The research findings, described online March 18 in JAMA Pediatrics, show that catheters in children inserted in a vessel in the arm or leg and not threaded into a large vein near the heart are nearly four times as likely to dislodge, cause vein inflammation or dangerous blood clots as are catheters advanced into major vessels near the heart.

The frequency of vena cava filter (VCF) use to prevent migration of blood clots to the lungs in patients with acute venous thromboembolism (VTE) appears to vary widely and be associated with which hospital provides the patient care, according to a study of California hospitals published Online First by JAMA Internal Medicine, a JAMA Network publication.

A study that compared the benefits and harms of the frequency of screening mammography to age, breast density and postmenopausal use of hormone therapy (HT) suggests that woman ages 50 to 74 years who undergo biennial screenings have a similar risk of advanced-stage disease and a lower cumulative risk of false-positive results than those who get mammograms annually, according to a report published Online First by JAMA Internal Medicine, a JAMA Network publication.

Very low birth weight infants, those weighing less than 3.25 pounds, account for half of infant deaths in the United States each year, yet a new study released in today's issue of JAMA-Pediatrics documents that these critically ill infants do not receive optimal nursing care, which can lead to hospital-acquired infections that double their death rate and may result in long-term developmental issues affecting the quality of their lives as adults.

Inflammation is the body's natural defense mechanism against invading organisms and tissue injury. In acute inflammation, the pathogen or inflammatory mediators are cleared away and homeostasis is reached, however in chronic inflammatory states, this resolving response is impaired, leading to chronic inflammation and tissue damage. It is now widely believed that an impaired resolution of inflammation is a major contributing factor to the progression of a number of devastating diseases such as atherosclerosis, arthritis, and neurodegenerative diseases, in addition to cancer.

By examining the frequency of extreme storm surges in the past, previous research has shown that there was an increasing tendency for storm hurricane surges when the climate was warmer. But how much worse will it get as temperatures rise in the future? How many extreme storm surges like that from Hurricane Katrina, which hit the U.S. coast in 2005, will there be as a result of global warming? New research from the Niels Bohr Institute show that there will be a tenfold increase in frequency if the climate becomes two degrees Celcius warmer.

Some diseases are caused by single gene mutations. Current techniques for identifying the disease-causing gene in a patient produce hundreds of potential gene candidates, making it difficult for scientists to pinpoint the single causative gene. Now, a team of researchers led by Rockefeller University scientists have created a map of gene "shortcuts" to simplify the hunt for disease-causing genes.

Microbes from the human mouth are telling Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists something about periodontitis and more after they cracked the genetic code of bacteria linked to the condition.