Body

CHICAGO (December 11, 2012) – The prevention and control of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) can help reduce patient morbidity and mortality, but a common prevention effort for patients with hard to treat infections known as contact precautions, can have positive and negative impacts on patient care.

Charlottesville, VA (December 11, 2012). Neurosurgeons at All Children's Hospital/Johns Hopkins Medicine (St. Petersburg, FL) and the University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine (Tampa, FL) recently achieved excellent physical and aesthetic results in an infant born with extreme macrocephaly due to hydrocephalus. This was accomplished with routine implantation of a ventriculoperitoneal shunt followed by a new operation to stabilize and reduce the size of the baby's head. Both surgeries were performed during the infant's first week of life.

For the first time, researchers sequenced DNA molecules without the need for the standard pre-sequencing workflow known as library preparation.

Using this approach, the researchers generated sequence data using considerably less DNA than is required using standard methods, even down to less than one nanogram of DNA; 500 times less DNA than is needed by standard practices.

Researchers from the UK and Australia have uncovered a new element of the honeybee's genetic makeup, which may help to explain why bees are so sensitive to environmental changes.

LA JOLLA, CA----When it's dark, and we start to fall asleep, most of us think we're tired because our bodies need rest. Yet circadian rhythms affect our bodies not just on a global scale, but at the level of individual organs, and even genes.

Now, scientists at the Salk Institute have determined the specific genetic switches that sync liver activity to the circadian cycle. Their finding gives further insight into the mechanisms behind health-threatening conditions such as high blood sugar and high cholesterol.

For each 10 percent rise in the number of residents with a four-year college degree, the average overall employment rate in United States metropolitan areas rose by 2 percent between 1980 and the year 2000.

That employment rate rose higher for women (2.2 percent) vs. men (1.9 percent) and benefited some of the least educated the most dramatically.

For instance, every 10 percent rise in an area's four-year college degree attainment boosted the employment rate for women with either a high school diploma or even less education by 3.2 percent.

December 10, 2012, New York, NY – Tumor metastasis, the ability of cancer cells to migrate from their tissue of origin and colonize elsewhere in the body, accounts for over 90% of cancer deaths. When patients die from cancer, it is usually caused by distant metastases established by malignant cells that split off from the primary cancer and began growing in new settings.

In order to widen the narrowed airways in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), tiotropium bromide (tiotropium in brief) is one of the drugs available that can be prescribed for inhalation. The German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) has examined whether tiotropium offers a perceptible advantage to patients compared to a dummy medication (placebo) and to other COPD drugs. In addition, the two currently marketed types of inhaler (HandiHaler and Respimat) for tiotropium (trade name: Spiriva®) were compared.

KNOXVILLE – Epigenetics – how gene expression is regulated by temporary switches, called epi-marks – appears to be a critical and overlooked factor contributing to the long-standing puzzle of why homosexuality occurs.

According to the study, published online today in The Quarterly Review of Biology, sex-specific epi-marks, which normally do not pass between generations and are thus "erased," can lead to homosexuality when they escape erasure and are transmitted from father to daughter or mother to son.

San Diego, CA, December 11, 2012 – The average American child from age 8 to 18 watches about 4.5 hours of TV each day. Seventy percent have a TV in the bedroom and about one-third of youth aged 6-19 is considered obese. Previous studies have shown that TV viewing time during childhood and adolescence continues into adulthood, resulting in overweight and elevated total cholesterol.

The SARS epidemic of 2002-2003 was short-lived, but a novel type of human coronavirus that is alarming public health authorities can infect cells from humans and bats alike, a fact that could make the animals a continuing source of infection, according to a study to be published in in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, on December 11. The new coronavirus, called hCoV-EMC, is blamed for five deaths and several other cases of severe disease originating in countries in the Middle East.

Imagine not being able to touch a touch-screen device. Tablets and smartphones—with all their educational, entertaining and social benefits—would be useless.

Researchers at Georgia Tech are trying to open the world of tablets to children whose limited mobility makes it difficult for them to perform the common pinch and swipe gestures required to control the devices.

Researchers at the Moffitt Cancer Center have found that delayed tumor growth and enhanced survival of mice bearing melanoma were possible by blocking the reconstitution of myeloid-derived suppressor cells and Tregs (suppressors of anti-tumor activity) after total body irradiation had eliminated them. Blocking myeloid-derived suppressor cells and regulatory T-cell reconstitution improved adoptive T-cell therapy, an immunotherapy designed to suppress tumor activity.

The study appears in the December issue of The Journal of Immunology.

Young patients with an aggressive form of leukemia who are likely to relapse after chemotherapy treatment can significantly reduce those odds by receiving additional courses of chemotherapy, suggest the findings of a clinical trial led by investigators at Dana-Farber/Children's Hospital Cancer Center in Boston.

ATLANTA – December 10, 2012—A new American Cancer Society study finds a strong inverse association between caffeinated coffee intake and oral/pharyngeal cancer mortality. The authors say people who drank more than four cups of caffeinated coffee per day were at about half the risk of death of these often fatal cancers compared to those who only occasionally or who never drank coffee. The study is published online in the American Journal of Epidemiology. The authors say more research is needed to elucidate the biologic mechanisms that could be at work.