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Healthcare consumers, benefits managers, and even government officials are using the internet to buy unapproved prescription drugs illegally, according to a report to be published in the International Journal of Electronic Healthcare.

Popularized by the 2005 movie "March of the Penguins," emperor penguins could be headed toward extinction in at least part of their range before the end of the century, according to a paper by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) researchers published January 26, 2009, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

New NA Inhibitor Offers Long-Lasting Protection Against Influenza Virus

A recent study suggests that a derivative of a new potent neuraminidase (NA) inhibitor offers long-lasting protection against various strains of influenza viruses A and B, including the avian influenza subtype N1 and current drug-resistant strains. The researchers from Daiichi Sankyo Co. Ltd., Tokyo, Japan report their findings in the January 2009 issue of the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy.

For the first time, UCLA researchers have reprogrammed human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells into the cells that eventually become eggs and sperm, possibly opening the door for new treatments for infertility using patient-specific cells.

The iPS cells were coaxed into forming germ line precursor cells which include genetic material that may be passed on to a child. The study appears today in the early online edition of the peer-reviewed journal Stem Cells.

A paper co-authored by Beatrice Golomb, MD, PhD, associate professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and director of UC San Diego's Statin Study group cites nearly 900 studies on the adverse effects of HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors (statins), a class of drugs widely used to treat high cholesterol.

Ecologists have developed a new model to predict the impact of climate change on the dengue fever-carrying mosquito Aedes aegypti in Australia – information that could help limit its spread.

According to the study, published in the new issue of the British Ecological Society's journal Functional Ecology, climate change and evolutionary change could act together to accelerate and expand the mosquito's range. But human behaviour – in the form of storing water to cope with climate change – is likely to have an even greater impact.

Land plants' ability to sprout upward through the air, unsupported except by their own woody tissues, has long been considered one of the characteristics separating them from aquatic plants, which rely on water to support them.

Now lignin, one of the chemical underpinnings vital to the self-supporting nature of land plants – and thought unique to them – has been found in marine algae by a team of researchers including scientists at UBC and Stanford University.

Large-scale data mining of gene networks in fruit flies has led researchers to a sensitive and specific diagnostic biomarker for human renal cell carcinoma, the most common type of kidney cancer. In the journal Science, published early online January 22, a team based at the University of Chicago shows that the biomarker known as SPOP is produced by 99 percent of clear cell renal cell carcinomas but not by normal kidney tissue.

GOLDEN, CO (January 27, 2009) Medicare patients treated at top-rated hospitals nationwide across the most common Medicare diagnoses and procedures are 27 percent less likely to die, on average, than those admitted to all other hospitals, according to a study released today by HealthGrades, the leading independent healthcare ratings organization. Patients who undergo surgery at these high-performing hospitals also have an average eight percent lower risk of complications during their stay.

Waltham, MA—A paramount topic at the moment is value in health care: What should we pay for and how much? Resources aren't unlimited, and desires or demands for health care should be balanced against various realities--including the effectiveness of care or the desire for other goods and services. Especially in a depressed economy, questions about value in health care may well be at the center of coming health reform debates.

CHESTNUT HILL, MA (January 27, 2009) – For nearly a century, scientists have been trying to unravel the many mysteries of superconductivity, where materials conduct electricity with zero resistance.

Among the many questions: the existence of the pseudogap, a phase that up until now was found in materials as they were cooled to temperatures above the superconducting temperature – the phase where materials superconduct.

Many studies have shown that breastfeeding appears to reduce the chance of children developing asthma. But a newly published study led by a University of Alberta professor has found that eating fast food more than once or twice a week negated the beneficial effects that breastfeeding has in protecting children from the respiratory disease.

A new and comprehensive analysis confirms that the evolutionary relationships among animals are not as simple as previously thought. The traditional idea that animal evolution has followed a trajectory from simple to complex—from sponge to chordate—meets a dramatic exception in the metazoan tree of life. New work suggests that the so-called "lower" metazoans (including Placozoa, corals, and jellyfish) evolved in parallel to "higher" animals (all other metazoans, from flatworms to chordates).

Levels of near-perfect adherence to life saving antiretroviral drugs among African HIV patients should be understood as a means of preserving key social relationships, says a new study published in the open-access journal PLoS Medicine. In Sub-Saharan Africa, adherence to these anti-HIV drugs improves patients' health, which is also a strong predictor of adherence success in developed countries. But for individuals living in extreme poverty, adhering to antiretroviral medicine regimens also helps them protect the relationships they rely upon to survive.

Stating that neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) not only promote poverty but also destabilize communities, former Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson and Sabin Vaccine Institute President Peter Hotez call upon the public-health and foreign-policy communities to embrace medical diplomacy and NTD control as a means to combat terrorism in an article published January 27 in the open-access journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases.