Body

The first single gene cause of increased sensitivity to the hormone insulin has been discovered by a team of Oxford University researchers.

The opposite condition – insulin resistance – is a common feature of type 2 diabetes, so finding this cause of insulin sensitivity could offer new opportunities for pursuing novel treatments for diabetes.

Although mutations in the PTEN gene cause a rare condition with increased risk of cancer, the biological pathways the gene is involved in could offer promising targets for new drugs.

BOSTON – In the medical world, where decisions invariably involve risk and uncertainty, two Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center physicians note that experts generally base their recommendations on the outcome of death, which is "readily determined, easily quantified, concrete."

"There is more to life than death," Pamela Hartzband, MD, and Jerome Groopman, MD, write in the Sept. 12 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine. "Basing decisions on the outcome of death ignores vital dimensions of life that are not easily quantified."

Researchers have identified a new species of African monkey, locally known as the lesula, described in the Sep. 12 issue of the open access journal PLOS ONE. This is only the second new species of African monkey discovered in the last 28 years.

The first lesula found was a young captive animal seen in 2007 in a school director's compound in the town of Opala in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The young monkey bore a resemblance to the owl faced monkey, but its coloration was unlike that of any other known species.

Sex and disgust are basic, evolutionary relevant functions that are often construed as paradoxical. In general the stimuli involved in sexual encounters are, at least out of context strongly perceived to hold high disgust qualities.

Saliva, sweat, semen and body odors are among the strongest disgust elicitors. This results in the intriguing question of how people succeed in having pleasurable sex at all.

A hands-on project to educate high schoolers about appropriate antibiotic use was highly effective, promoting more sophisticated understandings of bacteria and antibiotics and increasing understanding of the dangers of antibiotic resistance, and was even enjoyable, as reported Sep. 12 in the open access journal PLOS ONE.

The Borderea chouardii plant, which is critically endangered and is found only on two adjacent cliff sides in the Pyrenees, employs a unique and risky doubly mutualistic reproductive strategy with local ants, according to research published Sep. 12 in the open access journal PLOS ONE.

Initially cooperative societies devolve toward corruption, but introducing small "payments" in conjunction with punishment can lead to stable, righteous societies, according to a modeling study published Sep. 12 in the open access journal PLOS ONE.

Newspaper coverage of biomedical research leans heavily toward reports of initial findings, which are frequently attenuated or refuted by later studies, leading to disproportionate media coverage of potentially misleading early results, according to a report published Sep. 12 in the open access journal PLOS ONE.

A new Johns Hopkins study has unraveled the changes in a key cardiac protein that can lead to heart muscle malfunction and precipitate heart failure.

Abstinence from smoking seems to affect teens differently than adults in a couple ways, but a new study provides evidence that most of the psychological difficulties of quitting are as strong for relatively new, young smokers as they are for adults who have been smoking much longer.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA—September 12, 2012— New research from an international team of HIV/AIDS experts has reaffirmed the effectiveness of Truvada—the first and only medication approved by the FDA for HIV prevention. Led by Gladstone Investigator Robert Grant, MD, MPH and Peter Anderson, PharmD, at the University of Colorado, the research provides the first estimate of the drug concentration levels needed for Truvada to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS—expanding our understanding of Truvada's potency and opening the door to new dosing strategies.

A common bacteria ever-present on the human skin and previously considered harmless, may, in fact, be the culprit behind chronic sinusitis, a painful, recurring swelling of the sinuses that strikes more than one in ten Americans each year, according to a study by scientists at the University of California, San Francisco.

Baltimore, MD – September 12, 2012 – In the largest study of its kind, living donors who had a kidney removed through a single port in the navel report higher satisfaction in several key categories, compared to donors who underwent traditional multiple-port laparoscopic removal.

CHICAGO --- A medical school committee is weighing whether to hire a promising young neuroscientist. Will she have a brilliant future as a researcher, publish in top journals and nab abundant research funds?

If only there were a crystal ball. Wait, now there is!

A new Northwestern Medicine study published Sept. 13 in Nature offers the first formula that accurately predicts a young scientist's success up to 10 years into the future and could be useful for hiring and funding decisions.

Menachem Shoham, PhD, associate professor of biochemistry at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, has discovered novel antivirulence drugs that, without killing the bacteria, render Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) and Streptococcus pyogenes, commonly referred to as strep, harmless by preventing the production of toxins that cause disease. The promising discovery was presented this week at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in San Francisco.