Body

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Diseases from a mutation in one genome are complicated enough, but some illnesses arise from errant interactions between two genomes: the DNA in the nucleus and in the mitochondria. Scientists want to know more about how such genomic disconnects cause disease. In a step in that direction, scientists at Brown University and Indiana University have traced one such incompatibility in fruit flies down to the level of individual nucleotide mutations and describe how the genetic double whammy makes the flies sick.

Obesity kills, giving rise to a host of fatal diseases. This much is well known. But when it comes to seniors, a slew of prominent research has reported an "obesity paradox" that says, at age 65 and older, having an elevated BMI won't shorten your lifespan, and may even extend it. A new study takes another look at the numbers, finding the earlier research flawed. The paradox was a mirage: As obese Americans grow older, in fact, their risk of death climbs.

Athens, Ga. – When Li Tan approached his colleagues at the University of Georgia with some unusual data he had collected, they initially seemed convinced that his experiment had become contaminated; what he was seeing simply didn't make any sense.

Tan was examining some of the sugars, proteins and polymers that make up plant cell walls, which provide the structural support and protection that allow plants to grow. Yet his samples contained a mixture of sugars that should not be present in the same structure.

OAKLAND, Calif., February 5, 2013 – Community-based efforts to change the environment are proving to be an effective way of encouraging more physical activity and nutrition among school-age children, according to findings announced today from Kaiser Permanente.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- A team of biologists from Indiana University and Brown University believes it has discovered the mechanism by which interacting mutations in mitochondrial and nuclear DNA produce an incompatible genotype that reduces reproductive fitness and delays development in fruit flies.

The cancer death rate for men declined faster among African Americans than among whites in the latest time period, narrowing the racial disparity in overall cancer death rates, according to a new report from the American Cancer Society. But while gaps are closing for some cancers, such as lung and other smoking-related cancers and for prostate cancer, the racial disparity has widened for colorectal cancer and female breast cancer, cancers that are most affected by screening and treatment.

Among older women, getting a mammogram every two years was just as beneficial as getting a mammogram annually, and led to significantly fewer false positive results, according to a study led by UC San Francisco.

The national study of more than 140,000 women between the ages of 66 and 89 appears online February 5, 2013, in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

The UK dog population is estimated to be around ten million, with dogs producing approximately 1,000 tonnes of excrement each day. New research has shown that dogs act as a major source of the parasite egg, Toxocara, which can potentially contaminate the public environment and infect humans.

How, when and where a pathogen is transmitted between two individuals in a population is crucial in understanding and predicting how a disease will spread. New research has laid the foundation for a new generation of zoonotic disease spreading models, which could allow for more targeted prevention strategies.

By using novel complexity sciences tools the study, published in Physical Review Letters, outlines a predictive model of a spatial epidemic spread in a population of territorial animals.

Researchers from CSIC's Aula Dei Experimental Station in Zaragoza, Spain have confirmed that the frequency of intense rainfall has been decreasing in the Ebro basin since 1955.

Despite what it may seem, intense rain is becoming rarer in the Ebro basin according to two studies carried out by Spanish researchers from the Department of Soil and Water of CSIC's Aula Dei Experimental Station in Zaragoza. Their results have been published in the 'Journal of Hydrology' and the 'Hydrology and Earth System Sciences' journal.

A study conducted by University of Granada and Virgen de las Nieves U.H. researchers has revealed that in Andalusian public hospitals radiotherapy is provided to lung cancer patients with a frequency 25 % below that established by clinical protocols. Failure to provide such treatment results in a total of 3,000 survival-day loss for all lung cancer patients.

CINCINNATI – Early laboratory tests are the first to successfully use an experimental molecular therapy to block a hard-to-target part of a protein complex linked to several types of invasive cancer.

Scientists report online Feb. 4 in PNAS Early Edition the rational design of a small-molecule inhibitor they call Y16. In laboratory tests, the inhibitor helped stop the spread of cultured human breast cancer cells, especially when it was used with another compound known as Rhosin/G04.

A study conducted at the University of Granada has revealed that there is a direct relationship between exposure to pesticides (Persistent Organic Pollutants, CPOs) in food, air and water and prevalence of type 2 diabetes in adults, regardless of age, gender and body mass index. These substances tend to concentrate in body fat, and they might be one of the reasons why obese people are more likely to develop diabetes, since the more fat the higher the COP concentrations in the body.

The vast majority – approximately 80 percent – of our DNA does not code for proteins, yet it gets transcribed into RNA. These RNA molecules are called non-coding and fulfill multiple tasks in the cell. Alongside a well-studied group of small RNAs, there is also a class of so-called long non-coding RNAs consisting of more than 200 nucleotides.

Here's another reason why you should include olive oil in your diet: A new research report published in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology suggests that at least one compound in olive oil significantly reduces intestinal ischemia (restricted blood supply) and the resulting reperfusion injury (tissue damage caused when blood supply returns).