Body

Thanks to effective vaccination, polio is considered nearly eradicated. Each year only a few hundred people are stricken worldwide. However, scientists of the University of Bonn, together with colleagues from Gabon, are reporting alarming findings: a mutated virus that was able to resist the vaccine protection to a considerable extent was found in victims of an outbreak in the Congo in 2010. The pathogen could also potentially have infected many people in Germany. The results appear now in the magazine PNAS.

Alexandria, Va., USA – The International and American Associations for Dental Research (IADR/AADR) have published a paper titled "Projections of U.S. Edentulism Prevalence Following Five Decades of Decline." This study, by lead researcher Gary Slade, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA, follows edentulism (tooth loss) over the last hundred years and highlights the numbers of people losing teeth and requiring dentures. It is published in the OnlineFirst portion of the IADR/AADR Journal of Dental Research (JDR).

Citizens from Germany and the UK make up the bulk of the numbers, with neurological conditions, such paralysis, motor neurone disease, Parkinson's, and multiple sclerosis, accounting for almost half of the cases, the findings show.

The researchers wanted to find out more about who was opting to come to Switzerland to end their lives, and whether the availability of suicide tourism in Switzerland had prompted changes in the law on assisted suicide elsewhere.

The jury is still out on the effectiveness of meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) superbug control policies in hospitals, according to leading infectious disease experts in a Viewpoint published in The Lancet. In particular, screening and isolating infected patients—which have long been regarded as the gold standard MRSA prevention strategy and are required by law in some countries—have poor evidence for their effectiveness, say the authors.

Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) scientists have developed a strategy for finding disease-causing mutations that lurk in only a small fraction of the body's cells. Such mutations can cause significant problems, but cannot be detected with traditional methods of genetic testing, as well as newer, more costly genome sequencing technologies.

SALT LAKE CITY— Researchers at Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah have identified and characterized mutated forms of the gene that encodes BCR-ABL, the unregulated enzyme driving the blood cancer chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). According to the American Cancer Society, nearly 6,000 new cases of CML will be diagnosed in 2014.

MINNEAPOLIS – A new study suggests that colds and other minor infections may temporarily increase stroke risk in children. The study is published in the August 20, 2014, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

Increasing the amount or intensity of physical activity can cut the chances of older women developing a life-threatening irregular heartbeat, according to new research in the Journal of the American Heart Association (JAHA).

Researchers found that post-menopausal women, enrolled in the Women's Health Initiative, who were the most physically active had a 10 percent lower risk of developing atrial fibrillation (AF), compared to women with low levels of physical activity, even if they were obese. Obesity is an important risk factor for atrial fibrillation.

A new study suggests that colds and other minor infections may temporarily increase stroke risk in children. The study found that the risk of stroke was increased only within a three-day period between a child's visit to the doctor for signs of infection and having the stroke.

The study was led by researchers at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital San Francisco in collaboration with the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research.

Bottom Line: Less than 42 percent of women underwent breast reconstruction following a mastectomy for cancer, and the factors associated with foregoing reconstruction included being black, having a lower education level and being older.

Author: Monica Morrow, M.D., of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, and colleagues.

A common orb-weaving spider may grow larger and have an increased ability to reproduce when living in urban areas, according to a study published August 20, 2014 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Elizabeth Lowe from the University of Sydney, Australia and colleagues.

Paleolithic inhabitants of modern-day Spain may have eaten snails 10,000 years earlier than their Mediterranean neighbors, according to a study published August 20, 2014 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Javier Fernández-López de Pablo from Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social and colleagues.

Researchers have found a novel approach to treating cancer - using Botox. A study presented in the 20 August edition of Science Translational Medicine shows that cancer growth could be suppressed by eliminating the signals sent by nerves that are linked to cancer stem cells. The approach thus treated the cancer. The use of Botox made the treatment cheap, safe and efficient. The researchers have thus far tested the procedure on mice, and will soon start testing on humans.

TORONTO, Aug 20, 2014 – Juvenile songbirds on spring migration travel from overwintering sites in the tropics to breeding destinations thousands of kilometres away with no prior experience to guide them. Now, a new study out of York University has tracked these "student pilots" on their first long-haul flight and found significant differences between the timing of juvenile migration and that of experienced adults.

UCLA-led study has identified a protein that appears to play a key role in protecting people infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis — the bacterium that causes tuberculosis — from developing the active form of the disease. The protein, interleukin-32, was discovered to be one biomarker of adequate host defense against TB.

The discovery could help doctors identify people who are at the greatest risk for the highly contagious and potentially fatal lung disease, and it could point the way toward new treatment strategies for TB.