Body

Research published this week in PLoS Medicine concludes that at least 125.2 million women at risk of malaria become pregnant each year.

As the Prince Mahidol Award Conference on Health Information kicks off in Bangkok, Thailand, and the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, gets underway this week, eight global health agencies call for a concerted global effort to collect better health data.

The international humanitarian medical aid organization Médecins Sans Frontières /Doctors Without Borders (MSF) supports a wide network of medical laboratories in resource-constrained countries. In a Health in Action article in this week's PLoS Medicine, Derryck Klarkowski and Juan Daniel Orozco of MSF discuss how the organization has addressed the issue of maintaining quality control for laboratory testing.

Funding: The authors received no specific funding to write this paper.

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

In the decade since the Human Genome Project produced the first map of DNA sequences in the human genome, scientists throughout the world have combed through genome data to identify genes and gene variants that cause human disease. A new study suggests that researchers may need to broaden their search farther afield to pinpoint rare but powerful disease-causing mutations.

Putting function before form, members of the Perissodinus genus of fish have developed a hugely lopsided jaw that provides a distinct feeding advantage. Research published in the open access journal BMC Biology describes how these scale-eating fish, called cichlids, develop mouths directed either to the left or the right – enabling them to feed on the opposite side of their prey.

Sodium is essential for myriad biological processes including fluid balance and muscle contraction. However, too much sodium can have harmful effects such as increasing blood pressure. Consequently, reducing sodium intake is an important health message. Because processed foods contribute the majority of dietary sodium, reducing their sodium content and overall sodium consumption are often emphasized as public health goals. There is a wide range of sodium content among processed foods, however, which makes it difficult to monitor sodium consumption.

Physical activity appears to be associated with a reduced risk or slower progression of several age-related conditions as well as improvements in overall health in older age, according to a commentary and four articles published in the January 25 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Newborns of women who smoked during pregnancy show signs of circulatory dysfunction in the first few weeks of life that get worse throughout the first year, Swedish researchers reported in Hypertension: Journal of the American Heart Association.

The blood pressure response to tilting the infants upright during sleep — a test of how the body copes with repositioning — was dramatically different in infants born to smoking mothers compared to those born to nonsmoking parents.

BOSTON—In a newly published clinical trial, patients with metastatic prostate cancer who received a vaccine of harmless poxviruses engineered to spur an immune system attack on prostate tumor cells lived substantially longer than patients who received a placebo vaccine, report researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and affiliated organizations. The findings will be published by the Journal of Clinical Oncology on its Web site and later in a print edition.

Scientists have identified a gene family that plays a key role in one of the earliest stages of development in which an embryo distinguishes its left side from the right and determines how organs should be positioned within the body. The finding in mice likely will lead to a better understanding of how certain birth defects occur in humans.

The study is published in the January 24, 2010, advance online issue of the journal "Nature Cell Biology."

COLUMBIA, Mo. – With the help of effective drug therapies, HIV patients are living longer, healthier lives. Now, researchers want to improve these drug therapies and develop alternative preventative strategies, such as vaginal gels and creams that contain the same or related compounds used in treatments for people infected with HIV. A University of Missouri researcher is developing a compound that is more potent and longer-lasting than current HIV therapies.

The links between autoimmune diseases, infections, genetics and the environment are complex and mysterious. Why are people who live near airports more susceptible to autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and lupus? How do hormones in meat trigger the onset of a disease?

In a study to be published this week, a research team is challenging a prevailing belief about the behavior of a human protein linked to the formation of cancer, possibly breathing new life into the search for therapies that will inhibit that protein from "turning on" genes involved in abnormal cell proliferation.

LIVERMORE, Calif. - The age old reminder to always eat your greens isn't just for kids anymore.

Not only are the vitamins and minerals good for you, but eating greens could also save your life, according to a recent study led by the National Nuclear Security Administration's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists.

Researchers Graham Bench and Ken Turteltaub found that giving someone a small dose of chlorophyll (Chla) or chlorophyllin (CHL) - found in green leafy vegetables such as spinach, broccoli and kale - could reverse the effects of aflatoxin poisoning.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. —Researchers at MIT and Rockefeller University have successfully grown hepatitis C virus in otherwise healthy liver cells in the laboratory, an advance that could allow scientists to develop and test new treatments for the disease.