Body

ROCHESTER, Minn. — Acute respiratory distress syndrome is a leading cause of respiratory failure after surgery. Patients who develop the lung disorder postoperatively are at higher risk of dying in the hospital, and those who survive the syndrome may still bear its physical effects years later. A Mayo Clinic-led study is helping physicians better identify patients most at risk, the first step toward preventing this dangerous and costly surgical complication.

Manure from dairy cows, which is commonly used as a farm soil fertilizer, contains a surprising number of newly identified antibiotic resistance genes from the cows' gut bacteria. The findings, reported in mBio® the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, hints that cow manure is a potential source of new types of antibiotic resistance genes that transfer to bacteria in the soils where food is grown.

PHILADELPHIA - When we get sick it feels natural to try to hasten our recovery by getting some extra shuteye. Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania found that this response has a definite purpose, in fruitflies: enhancing immune system response and recovery to infection. Their findings appear online in two related papers in the journal Sleep, in advance of print editions in May and June.

Bottom Line: A third of Medicare beneficiaries assigned to accountable care organizations (ACOs) in 2010 or 2011 were not assigned to the same ACO in both years and much of the specialty care received was provided outside the patients' assigned ACO, suggesting challenges to achieving organizational accountability in Medicare.

Author: J. Michael McWilliams, M.D., Ph.D., of Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, and colleagues.

Bottom Line: Mammograms with false-positive results were associated with increased short-term anxiety for women, and more women with false-positive results reported that they were more likely to undergo future breast cancer screening.

Author: Anna N.A. Tosteson, Sc.D., of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, Lebanon, N.H., and colleagues.

Background: A portion of women who undergo routine mammogram screening will experience false-positive results and require further evaluation to rule out breast cancer.

There appears to be an increased prevalence of celiac disease among children with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).

Recurrent abdominal pain affects 10 percent to 15 percent of school-aged children. The prevalence of celiac disease is as high as 1 percent in European countries and patients can present with a wide spectrum of symptoms, including abdominal pain, although the disease is often asymptomatic.

On Earth Week--and in fact, every week now--trees in mountains across the western United States are dying, thanks to an infestation of bark beetles that reproduce in the trees' inner bark.

Some species of the beetles, such as the mountain pine beetle, attack and kill live trees. Others live in dead, weakened or dying hosts.

In Colorado alone, the mountain pine beetle has caused the deaths of more than 3.4 million acres of pine trees.

Cancer researchers have discovered a new 'dustman' role for a molecule that helps a drug kill cancer cells according to a study*, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), today (Monday).

The new findings point to a possible test that could identify patients who would be most responsive to a new class of cancer drugs and also those who might develop resistance, as well as suggesting new approaches to discovering more effective drugs.

The process of metastasis – a tumor's ability to spread to other parts of the body – is still poorly understood. It is not easy to determine whether metastasis began early or late in the development of the primary tumor or whether individual metastatic sites were seeded directly from the original tumor or from an intermediate site. Now a research team has developed a simple assay that can reveal the evolutionary relationships among various tumor sites within a patient, information that may someday help with treatment planning.

Scientists have shown new genetic evidence that could strengthen the link between the role of dietary fats with colon cancer progression.

The study, led by Arizona State University researcher and physician Dr. Raymond DuBois, M.D., Ph.D., has identified a molecular culprit, called peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor delta (PPAR delta), which, when deleted in a mouse model of colon cancer, stopped key steps required for the initiation and progression of tumor growth.

For the first time, researchers have studied the Black Death bacterium's entire family tree to fully understand how some of the family members evolve to become harmful.

Contrary to popular belief, the team found pathogenic members of this bacterial family do not share a recent common disease-causing ancestor, but instead, have followed parallel evolutionary paths to become harmful.

PITTSBURGH, April 21, 2014 – Malfunctions in the molecular "proofreading" machinery, which repairs structural errors in DNA caused by ultraviolet (UV) light damage, help explain why people who have the disease xeroderma pigmentosum (XP) are at an extremely high risk for developing skin cancer, according to researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI). Their findings will be published this week in the early online version of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Scientists are facing a number of barriers as they try to develop circuits that are microscopic in size, including how to reliably control the current that flows through a circuit that is the width of a single molecule.

Alexander Shestopalov, an assistant professor of chemical engineering at the University of Rochester, has done just that, thereby taking us one step closer to nanoscale circuitry.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A small gene that is embedded in a larger, well-known gene is the true leukemia-promoting force usually attributed to the larger gene, according to a new study by researchers at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC – James).

The findings are published in the journal Science Signaling.

Using computer simulations to predict which drug candidates offer the greatest potential has thus far not been very reliable, because both small drug-like molecules and the amino acids of proteins vary so much in their chemistry. Uppsala researchers have now cunningly managed to develop a method that has proven to be precise, reliable and general.