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The use of phone and internet between patients and healthcare providers is an effective way to reduce risk factors for coronary heart disease and the risk of further events after a heart attack, according to new research published today in the June issue of the European Journal of Cardiovascular Prevention & Rehabilitation.(1) The study's senior investigator, Professor Ben Freedman from the Department of Cardiology at Concord Repatriation General Hospital, Sydney, Australia, says that the provision of "telehealth" models could help increase the uptake of coronary prevention activ

SEATTLE— Taking popular cholesterol-lowering statin drugs, such as Lipitor® (atorvastatin), does not lower the risk of pneumonia. That's the new finding from a study of more than 3,000 Group Health patients published online on June 16 in advance of the British Medical Journal's June 20 print issue.

Stressful life events are strongly associated with a person's risk for major depression, but a certain gene variation long thought to increase risk in conjunction with stressful life events actually may have no effect, according to researchers funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), part of the National Institutes of Health. The study, published in the June 17, 2009, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, challenges a widely accepted approach to studying risk factors for depression.

A preliminary study suggests that a therapy for severe sepsis or septic shock that included the use of an antibiotic-based "hemoperfusion" device to remove toxic products of bacteria from the blood in addition to conventional treatment resulted in a reduced risk of death and appeared to improve blood circulation and reduce organ dysfunction, according to a report appearing in the June 17 issue of JAMA.

Contrary to a previous report, an analysis of 14 previous studies does not find an association between a serotonin transporter gene variation, stressful life events, and an increased risk of major depression, according to an article in the June 17 issue of JAMA. The authors did find that the number of stressful life events is associated with depression.

The ways we deal with death are finding a new life online, according to research being published by a Kansas State University journalism professor and her colleague.

"You're accustomed to clipping an obituary from the newspaper and putting it in the family Bible, but with online obituary services you can e-mail them to anyone you know," said Bonnie Bressers, associate professor of journalism and mass communications at K-State.

DURHAM, N.C. -- Children born without thymus glands have given Duke University Medical Center researchers a rare opportunity to watch as a new immune system develops its population of infection-fighting T-cells.

Doctors who ignore the socioeconomic status of patients when evaluating their risk for heart disease are missing a crucial element that might result in inadequate treatment, according to a University of Rochester Medical Center study published in the June 2009 American Heart Journal.

Scientists have documented thousands of examples of same-sex sexual behavior in non-human animals and have put forth many intriguing theories to explain why such behaviors are so prevalent. However, not much attention has been devoted to the evolutionary consequences of same-sex interactions. Now, a paper published by Cell Press online June 16th in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, highlights the importance of not just focusing on the origins of same-sex sexual behaviors but identifying the influence of such behaviors as agents of evolutionary change.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. – Same-sex behavior is a nearly universal phenomenon in the animal kingdom, common across species, from worms to frogs to birds, concludes a new review of existing research.

Treating children with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) usually involves the same steroids-based medication prescribed to adults. But such treatments can have negative side effects for kids and teens dealing with IBD.

In their lab experiments, the researchers embedded arrays of spatially ordered magnetic iron oxide nanostructures within each polymer microsphere, enabling its colors to be switched on and off simply by changing the microsphere's orientation – or more precisely the orientation of the array. Furthermore, the new system has the advantage of producing bistable color states, required for making rewritable displays.

MONTREAL, CANADA, JUNE 16, 2009 – Data published in the June issue of the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease demonstrated that minimally-invasive biospectroscopy was able to identify changes in oxidative stress (OS) levels in blood plasma, which may prove to be a useful biomarker in the early detection of Alzheimer's disease. There is currently no accepted laboratory test for diagnosing Alzheimer's disease.

Nanoparticles specially engineered by University of Central Florida Assistant Professor J. Manuel Perez and his colleagues could someday target and destroy tumors, sparing patients from toxic, whole-body chemotherapies.

Perez and his team used a drug called Taxol for their cell culture studies, recently published in the journal Small, because it is one of the most widely used chemotherapeutic drugs. Taxol normally causes many negative side effects because it travels throughout the body and damages healthy tissue as well as cancer cells.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Partially hydrogenated vegetable oils in processed foods contain trans fatty acids that interfere with the regulation of blood flow. A new report reveals a new way in which these "trans fats" gum up the cellular machinery that keeps blood moving through arteries and veins.

In the August 2009 issue of the international journal Atherosclerosis, University of Illinois emeritus veterinary biosciences professor Fred Kummerow reports for the first time that trans fats interfere with more than one key enzyme in the regulation of blood flow.