Body

Weight gain in children after they have their tonsils removed (adenotonsillectomy) occurs primarily in children who are smaller and younger at the time of the surgery, and weight gain was not linked with increased rates of obesity.

About 500,000 children in the United States have their tonsils removed each year. The childhood obesity rate prompted reevaluation of the question of weight gain after adenotonsillectomy.

New Rochelle, NY, April 17, 2014—The development of stem cell therapies to cure a variety of diseases depends on the ability to characterize stem cell populations based on cell surface markers. Researchers from the Finnish Red Cross have discovered a new marker that is highly expressed in a type of stem cells derived from human umbilical cord blood, which they describe in an article in BioResearch Open Access.

Le Bonheur Children's Hospital Pediatrician-in-Chief Jon McCullers, MD, was recently invited to submit a review in the April issue of Nature Reviews Microbiology, one of the world's foremost scientific publications. Dr. McCullers, a world-renowned infectious disease specialist, and chair of the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, analyzed the epidemiology and microbiology of co-infections during the 1918, 1957 and 1968 pandemics, as well as more recent 2009 novel H1N1 pandemic.

A Northwestern University synthetic biology team has created a new technology for modifying human cells to create programmable therapeutics that could travel the body and selectively target cancer and other sites of disease.

Engineering cell-based, biological devices that monitor and modify human physiology is a promising frontier in clinical synthetic biology. However, no existing technology enabled bioengineers to build such devices that sense a patient's physiological state and respond in a customized fashion.

In the April issue of Experimental Biology and Medicine a multidisciplinary research team led by Drs. Rex Gaskins and Paul Kenis in the Institute of Genomic Biology (IGB) on the campus of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign describe their recent work on subcellular redox homeostasis. Intracellular reduction-oxidation reactions underlie a variety of cell functions including energy metabolism, signaling, and transcriptional processes.

MANHASSET, NY – In a review published in the April issue of Immunity, Kevin J. Tracey, MD, president of The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, says it's time to take a fresh look at the medical community's approach to treating sepsis, which kills millions worldwide every year, including more than 200,000 Americans.

CHICAGO, IL, April 17, 2014-- Colic affects about one in five infants in the United States annually and accounts for numerous pediatric visits during the first several months after birth.

In a time of global climate change and rapidly disappearing habitat critical to the survival of countless endangered species, there is a heightened sense of urgency to confirm the return of animals thought to be extinct, or to confirm the presence of newly discovered species. Field biologists traditionally collect specimens to distinguish the animals — or to confirm that they do indeed exist in the wild.

TEMPE, Ariz. – In a time of global climate change and rapidly disappearing habitat critical to the survival of countless endangered species, there is a heightened sense of urgency to confirm the return of animals thought to be extinct, or to confirm the presence of newly discovered species. Field biologists traditionally collect specimens to distinguish the animals — or to confirm that they do indeed exist in the wild.

MAYWOOD, Il. (April 17, 2014) – Doctors who treat patients with a severe and progressive respiratory disease called lymphangioleiomyomatosis (LAM) can face an agonizing treatment decision.

The drug sirolimus can slow progression of the disease and help relieve shortness of breath. But some patients eventually may need lung transplants, and sirolimus can cause potentially fatal complications following transplantation.

It's estimated that as many as 10 million older Americans suffer from depression, often brought on by feelings of loneliness and isolation.

However, new research – a project that followed the lives of thousands of retired older Americans for six years – found that Internet use among the elderly can reduce the chances of depression by more than 30 percent.

A new modeling study suggests that fish consumption advisories for expecting mothers are ineffective in reducing infant exposure to long-lived contaminants like persistent organic pollutants (POPs).

The study, performed by a team of researchers including University of Toronto Scarborough PhD student Matt Binnington and Professor Frank Wania, looks at how different levels of environmental contamination, a mother's compliance with advisories, and the behavior of chemicals in the body influenced exposure in her children.

Occurring in about one per eight hundred births, Down syndrome - or trisomy 21 - is the most frequent genetic cause of intellectual disability. It results from a chromosomal abnormality where cells of affected individuals contain a third copy of chromosome 21 (1% of the human genome).

NEW YORK – April 17, 2014 – EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit organization that focuses on conservation and global public health issues, published a comprehensive review today examining the current state of knowledge of the deadly Ebola and Marburg virus. The review calls for improved global surveillance strategies to combat the emergence of infectious diseases such as the recent outbreak of Ebola in West Africa that has claimed the lives of 122 people in the countries of Guinea and Liberia.

Scientists studying the most common form of inherited mental disability—a genetic disease called "Fragile X syndrome"—have uncovered new details about the cellular processes responsible for the condition that could lead to the development of therapies to restore some of the capabilities lost in affected individuals.