Body

Major depression and coronary artery disease are only related throughout an individual's lifetime, but studying how the two interact over time and in twin pairs paints a more complex picture of the associations between the conditions, according to a report in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

Almost half of Bangladeshi women with young children experience violence from their husbands, and their children appear to have a higher risk of respiratory infections and diarrhea, according to a report in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

A phase I clinical trial enrolled its first patient only two days after U.S. Food and Drug Administration clearance of the experimental drug for a first-in-human cancer trial. Investigators from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center and pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca have reported their work in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Entire populations of North American fish already are being affected by several emerging diseases, a problem that threatens to increase in the future with climate change and other stresses on aquatic ecosystems. This is according to a noted U.S. Geological Survey researcher giving an invited talk on the subject today at the Wildlife Disease Association conference in Blaine, Wash.

Here's a question. How many gumballs of different sizes can fit in one of those containers at the mall so as to reward a well-spent quarter? It's hard to believe that most people never consider it even when guessing the number of candies in a bowl at Halloween.

But physicists at the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center at New York University recently developed a new way to help answer the question. They say the solution is found in how the particles pack in terms of many neighboring gumballs a single gumball can randomly touch within a given container.

If the federal government implements a 2007 legal interpretation of the Endangered Species Act, the likely result will be a reduction in the number of species listed for protection, scientists say.

Researchers analyzed potential effects of a legal memorandum issued in March 2007 by the Department of the Interior, which, among other points, advised the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that only an endangered species' current range need factor into whether the species is listed for protection.

Trends among medical professionals have favored some treatments for younger men diagnosed with prostate cancer, but a new study by scientists at The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research and North Shore-LIJ Health System have found that age doesn't make a difference in the long-term therapeutic outcome.

Louis Potters, MD, chairman of radiation medicine at North Shore University Hospital and LIJ Medical Center, and his colleagues identified 2,119 consecutive prostate cancer patients treated between 1992 and 2005, and narrowed their selection to men under 60 years old.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota and National Institutes of Health have identified a new function for the protein missing in childhood muscular dystrophy.

Grand Rapids, Mich. (August 3, 2009) – A new diagnostic tool developed by Van Andel Research Institute (VARI) scientists has shown promising results when used with patients of pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest forms of cancer due to the difficulty of diagnosing it in its early stages. The method, which studies carbohydrate structures in the bloodstream, could lead to the development of blood tests that can detect cancer more effectively.

SAN FRANCISCO, August 3, 2009 — The world’s top lung cancer specialists, medical professionals and researchers are convening this week in San Francisco, CA for the 13th World Conference on Lung Cancer (WCLC), organized by the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC). As non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is one of the most common types of lung cancer affecting a heterogeneous population, researchers have focused on multi-modality treatment regimens to improve patient outcomes.

Brain scientists and cardiac surgeons at Johns Hopkins have evidence from 227 heart bypass surgery patients that long-term memory losses and cognitive problems they experience are due to the underlying coronary artery disease itself and not ill after-effects from having used a heart-lung machine.

Researchers say their latest findings explain study results presented last year, which showed that the heart-lung machines – used to pump blood and supply the body with oxygen while the heart is stopped during surgery – did not cause postoperative long-term brain deficits.

An international team of researchers has identified a new method for selectively killing metastatic melanoma cells. Melanoma is a cancer that is highly resistant to current treatment strategies.

Recent research has uncovered an unexpected vulnerability in deadly melanoma cells that, when exploited, can cause the cancer cells to turn against themselves. The study, published by Cell Press in the August issue of the journal Cancer Cell, identifies a new target for development of future therapeutics aimed at selectively eliminating this aggressive skin cancer which is characterized by a notoriously high rate of metastasis and treatment-resistance.

SAN DIEGO – (August 3, 2009) La Jolla Institute for Allergy & Immunology researchers studying an enzyme believed to play a role in allergy onset, instead have discovered its previously unknown role as a tumor suppressor that may be important in myeloproliferative diseases and some types of lymphoma and leukemia. Myeloproliferative diseases are a group of disorders characterized by an overproduction of blood cells by the bone marrow and include chronic myeloid leukemia. Lymphoma and leukemia are cancers of the blood.

Flasks, beakers and hot plates may soon be a thing of the past in chemistry labs. Instead of handling a few experiments on a bench top, scientists may simply pop a microchip into a computer and instantly run thousands of chemical reactions, with results — literally shrinking the lab down to the size of a thumbnail.