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White medical students who attend schools with greater racial and ethnic diversity among the student body are more likely to rate themselves as highly prepared to care for minority populations, according to a study in the September 10 issue of JAMA, a theme issue on medical education.

CHICAGO – Medical students express reservations about internal medicine as a career because of patient complexity, the practice environment and the lifestyle, compared with other specialties, according to a study in the September 10 issue of JAMA, a theme issue on medical education.

Dorothy A. Andriole, M.D., of Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, and colleagues conducted a study, published in the September 10 issue of JAMA, to identify factors associated with M.D.-Ph.D. program graduation among recent medical graduates. The researchers analyzed data from a nationally representative sample of 88,575 U.S. medical graduates who completed the national Association of American Medical Colleges Graduation Questionnaire from 2000-2006.

Edward Salsberg, M.P.A., of the Association of American Medical Colleges, Washington, D.C., and colleagues examined, in an article published in the September 10 issue of JAMA, the number of residents in training before and after the 1997 Balanced Budget Act (BBA). There has been concern that because Medicare is the primary source of graduate medical education (GME) funding, the BBA would discourage growth in GME.

Medical students who attend racially and ethnically diverse medical schools say they are better equipped to care for patients in a diverse society, reports a new study in the Sept. 10 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Led by the UCLA Higher Education Research Institute, the research is the first to examine the link between medical school diversity and educational benefits.

Athens, Ga. – The nation's shortage of primary care physicians has been linked to a host of poor health outcomes, and a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that salary disparities play a major role in the shortage.

Dr. Mark Ebell, a professor and assistant to the provost at the University of Georgia, compared 2007 starting salary data for various physician specialties with the percentage of medical school graduates choosing those specialties. He found a strong, direct correlation between salary and the popularity of a specialty.

A narrow region on chromosome 15 contains genetic variations strongly associated with familial lung cancer, says a study conducted by scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and other institutions in the United States and the United Kingdom.

The researchers found a more than five times higher risk of lung cancer for people who have both a family history of the disease and these genetic variations. The risk was not affected by whether the study participants smoked or didn't smoke.

The absence or inactivation of the RUNX3 gatekeeper gene paves the way for the growth and development of colon cancer, Singapore scientists report in the Sept. issue of the journal Cancer Cell. Previous studies have shown that RUNX3 plays a role in gastric, breast, lung and bladder cancers.

The inactivation of RUNX3 occurs at a very early stage of colon cancer, according to the Singapore scientists' studies with human tissue samples and animal models.

A novel way to improve survival and recovery rate after a heart attack was reported in the journal Stem Cell Research by scientists at Singapore's Institute of Medical Biology (IMB) and Bioprocessing Technology Institute (BTI) and The Netherlands' University Medical Center Utrecht.

This method, developed in laboratory research with pigs, is the first non-cell based therapeutic application of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs). It entails using secretions from stem cells.

PHILADELPHIA - Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have identified a key step in the formation – and suppression – of esophageal cancers and perhaps carcinomas of the breast, head, and neck. By studying human tissue samples, they found that Fbx4, a naturally occurring enzyme, plays a key role in stopping production of another protein called Cyclin D1, which is thought to contribute to the early stages of cancer development.

Someday doctors may be able to use a blood test to confirm within minutes, instead of hours, if a patient is having a heart attack, allowing more rapid treatment that could limit damage to heart muscle. A study led by investigators from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT reports that a new technique that measures hundreds of molecular markers in the blood can identify those released when cardiac tissue is injured by a lack of oxygen.

A healthy body stores fat in the form of so-called triglycerides in specialized fatty tissue as an energy reserve. Under certain conditions the delicate balance of the lipid metabolism gets out of control and fat is accumulated in the liver, leading to the dreaded fatty liver. This increases the risk of many metabolic diseases, such as the metabolic syndrome known as "deadly quartet". This combination of fatty liver, obesity, diabetes and hypertension is regarded as the primary cause of life-threatening vascular events such as myocardial infarction and stroke.

TORONTO, ON. – A person's gender in a leadership role is associated with their subordinate's mental and physical health according to new research out of the University of Toronto.

Pain is one of the most common symptoms of cancer patients, yet many of them do not receive adequate therapy for the pain caused by their disease or treatments, according to a study in the September 1 issue of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology*Biology*Physics, the official journal of the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology.

AMES, Iowa -- A mother's stress may contribute to her young children being overweight in low income households with sufficient food, according to a new Iowa State University study published in the September issue of Pediatrics, the professional journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The study analyzed data collected from 841 children in 425 households in the 1999-2002 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.