Body

Today, the Prevention Research Center for Healthy Neighborhoods of Case Western Reserve University release new health data from Cleveland neighborhood groups on three of the most pressing public health concerns: obesity, hypertension, and diabetes.

The three data briefs – statistical public health publications – group Cleveland neighborhoods and provide prevalence estimates for diabetes, hypertension awareness and obesity using five years of local survey data. Previously, these measures were only available for the city of Cleveland.

Breast cancer represents about a fifth of all cancers diagnosed in women. The reasons for the rapid progression of the disease remain relatively poorly understood but recent work in the group of Veronika Sexl at the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna has pointed the finger strongly at loss or inactivation of the transcription factor STAT1. The results are published in the current issue of the journal Oncotarget.

The domestication of chickens has given rise to rapid and extensive changes in genome function. A research team at Linköping University in Sweden has established that the changes are heritable, although they do not affect the DNA structure.

The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced it is revising safety information on the labels of some statins (cholesterol lowering drugs).

Statins are a class of drugs that work in the liver to prevent the formation of cholesterol. They are most effective at lowering the LDL (bad) cholesterol, but also have modest effects on lowering triglycerides (blood fats) and raising HDL (good) cholesterol. High cholesterol is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease and stroke.

The FDA changes to the statin labels include:

WASHINGTON, Feb. 29, 2012 — The latest episode in the American Chemical Society's (ACS) award-winning "Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions" podcast series describes how the seeds of the "miracle tree" can be used to produce clean drinking water.

New figures published today (Wednesday) estimate that there will be nearly 1.3 million deaths from cancer in 2012 in the European Union (EU) – 717,398 men and 565,703 women. Although the actual numbers have increased, the rate (age-standardised per 100,000 population) of people who die from the disease continues to decline.

Parents may be misinformed during prenatal scans on whether their twins are identical or non-identical, say UCL researchers in a new commentary piece published today (29 February) in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.

Determining if same-sex twins are identical or non-identical (from one egg or two; monozygotic or dizygotic) is not always straight forward, say the researchers. They looked at data from the Gemini study, a birth cohort of 2402 families with twins born in England and Wales in 2007.

One in ten students now claim to know someone who is using prostitution to pay for university fees, a medical student writing for the Student BMJ claims.

Although the numbers are still small, this figure as a percentage, is two and a half times larger than 10 years ago when just 4% of students claimed to know a peer placing themselves in the sex trade. This figure rose to 6% in 2006 and now stands at just under 10%.

Clean delivery kits combined with clean delivery practices could lead to substantial reductions in neonatal mortality in infants born at home, according to a study published in this week's PLoS Medicine.

For mental health to gain significant attention, and funding from policymakers globally, it is not enough to convince people that it has a high disease burden but also that there are deliverable and cost-effective interventions – according to South African researchers writing in this week's PLoS Medicine.

The ability to detect and respond to magnetic fields is not usually associated with living things. Yet some organisms, including some bacteria and various migratory animals, do respond to magnetic fields. In migratory animals like fish, birds, and turtles, this behavior involves small magnetic particles in the nervous system. However, how these particles form and what they are actually doing is not fully understood.

Some disease-causing parasites are known to favor one sex over the other in their host species, and such differences between the sexes have generally been attributed to differences in immune responses or behavior. But in a new article, published February 28 in the magazine section of the online, open-access journal PLoS Biology, David Duneau from Cornell University and Dieter Ebert from the University of Basel now propose that all sorts of characteristics that differ between the sexes of the host species can influence a parasite's adaptation.

Researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and Harvard Medical School have developed a method for inducing magnetic sensitivity in an organism that is not naturally magnetic—yeast. Their technology could potentially be used to magnetize a variety of different cell types in medical, industrial and research applications. The research findings appear in today's issue of PLoS Biology.

Providing clean delivery kits and improving birthing practices could halve the number of neonatal deaths following home births in South Asia, according to research funded by the Wellcome Trust.

Around half a million babies die in the first month of life from sepsis and around a third of these infections are transmitted at the time of birth. In South Asia, more than half of deliveries occur at home, most without skilled birth attendance. Maintaining clean delivery practices at home can be challenging for mothers and their birthing companions.

The quest for treatments for motor neurone disease, spinal cord injury and strokes could be helped by new research that shows how key cells are produced.

Scientists at the University of Edinburgh have been able to manipulate the production of motor neurones – which control all muscle activity – in zebrafish.

Zebrafish are important in helping scientists understand how motor neurones are produced, because unlike mammals, they are able to create new motor neurones as adults.