Body

Boston, MA — A new, large-scale study has identified six new genetic variants associated with habitual coffee drinking. The genome-wide meta-analysis, led by Harvard School of Public Health and Brigham and Women's Hospital researchers, helps explain why a given amount of coffee or caffeine has different effects on different people and provides a genetic basis for future research exploring the links between coffee and health.

In a new study, Chen-Yu Zhang's group at Nanjing University present an extremely novel finding that a plant microRNA, MIR2911, which is enriched in honeysuckle, directly targets influenza A viruses (IAV) including H1N1, H5N1 and H7N9. Drinking of honeysuckle soup can prevent IAV infection and reduce H5N1-induced mice death.

WASHINGTON, DC – October 7, 2014 -- Yogurt containing probiotic bacteria successfully protected children and pregnant women against heavy metal exposure in a recent study. Working with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Canadian and Tanzanian researchers created and distributed a special yogurt containing Lactobacillus rhamnosus bacteria and observed the outcomes against a control group. The work is published this week in mBio, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology.

In the past 20 years recreational cannabis use has grown tremendously, becoming almost as common as tobacco use among adolescents and young adults, and so has the research evidence. A major new review in the scientific journal Addiction sets out the latest information on the effects of cannabis use on mental and physical health.

The key conclusions are:

Adverse Effects of Acute Cannabis Use

A new national clinical trial found HIV drug regimens that do not include efavirenz are effective as first-line antiretroviral therapy. The finding is important for patients who are not eligible for treatment with efavirenz, including women considering becoming pregnant and patients with a history of severe psychiatric disorders.

Drug combinations based on efavirenz are the first-line HIV therapy generally recommended by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and World Health Organization guidelines.

Prenatal exposure to bisphenol A (BPA, a common chemical used in some plastics) appears to be inconsistently associated with diminished lung function and the development of persistent wheeze in children, write Adam J. Spanier, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H., of the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, and colleagues.

Asthma rates have risen in the past three decades. Environmental factors (such as tobacco smoke and airborne pollutants) have been identified as risk factors and some research has suggested that exposure to BPA may contribute.

Boston, MA—Clinicians make many patient care decisions each day, and the cumulative demand of these decisions may make inappropriate choices more likely later in the day. In primary care, doctors often prescribe unnecessary antibiotics for acute respiratory infections (ARI). Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) in Boston found that doctors appeared to "wear down" during their morning and afternoon clinic sessions, and antibiotic prescribing rates increased. These findings are published in JAMA Internal Medicine on October 6, 2014.

Two studies published in the October 2014 issue of Health Affairs by a University of Chicago health economist examine spending on oral anti-cancer drugs as well as a federal program designed to help the poor, which researchers say instead helps hospitals boost profits.

Targets to eliminate tuberculosis (TB) by 2050 are more likely to be met if new vaccines are developed for adults and adolescents instead of for infants, according to new research published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Majorities of media researchers, parents and pediatricians agree that exposure to violent media can increase aggression in children, according to a new national study.

The study found that 66 percent of researchers, 67 percent of parents and 90 percent of pediatricians agree or strongly agree that violent video games can increase aggressive behavior among children.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 6, 2014— Melanoma is the fifth most common cancer type in the United States, and it's also the deadliest form of skin cancer, causing more than 75 percent of skin-cancer deaths. If caught early enough though, it is almost always curable. Now a camera, capable of taking snapshots of the entire human body and rendering high-resolution images of a patient's skin may help doctors spot cancer early and save lives.

BUFFALO, N.Y. – It is not only prenatal drug exposure, but also conditions related to drug use that can influence negative behavior in children, according to a new study from the University at Buffalo's Research Institute on Addictions.

A new paper from the Wildlife Conservation Society, Montana State University, Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, and the U.S. Geological Survey looks at the feasibility of electrofishing to selectively remove invasive trout species from Montana streams as an alternative to using fish toxicants known as piscicides that effect all gill-breathing organisms.

Viruses can convert their DNA from solid to fluid form, which explains how viruses manage to eject DNA into the cells of their victims. This has been shown in two new studies carried out by Lund University in Sweden.

Both research studies are about the same discovery made for two different viruses, namely that viruses can convert their DNA to liquid form at the moment of infection. Thanks to this conversion, the virus can more easily transfer its DNA into the cells of its victim, which thus become infected. One of the studies investigated the herpes virus, which infects humans.

They emerge at night, while we sleep unaware, growing and spreading out as quickly as they can. And they are deadly. In a surprise finding that was recently published in Nature Communications, Weizmann Institute of Science researchers showed that nighttime is the right time for cancer to grow and spread in the body. Their findings suggest that administering certain treatments in time with the body's day-night cycle could boost their efficiency.