Body

Without a huge improvement in living conditions, a cure, or a vaccine, rheumatic heart disease (RHD) will continue to blight low-income and middle-income countries. Raising community awareness of the condition, emphasising that untreated sore throat caused by group A streptococcal (GAS) infection can lead to acute rheumatic fever (ARF)/RHD, is a huge part of the battle.

A paper in the RHD special issue of Global Heart, the journal of the World Heart Federation, analyses the burden of disease and suggests that numbers published to date (ranging from at least 233,000 deaths per year upwards) could be substantial underestimates for a variety of reasons, most commonly lack of high quality (or in some cases any) data from high-prevalence countries and regions.

Diagnosing and treating sore (strep) throat (primary prevention) in children and adolescents to prevent such cases developing into acute rheumatic fever (ARF) and rheumatic heart disease (RHD) should be a cornerstone in any overall RHD strategy.

Mortality rates in the first 90 days following hip replacement surgery have halved, according to a study led by the University of Bristol on behalf of the National Joint Registry for England, Wales and Northern Ireland (NJR) and published in The Lancet.

A team of researchers led by Professor Ashley Blom from the University of Bristol have analysed data on death after hip replacement for the NJR as one of a programme of in-depth studies.

How using echocardiography is increasing detection rates of rheumatic heart disease (RHD) many-fold is the subject of one of the papers in the RHD special issue of Global Heart, the journal of the World Heart Federation, and written by Dr Anita Saxena, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India; Dr Liesl Zühlke, University of Cape Town and Red Cross War Memorial Children's Hospital, Cape Town, South Africa; and Dr Nigel Wilson, Starship Hospital, Auckland, New Zealand.

Washington, DC (September 26, 2013) — The short-term risks associated with kidney donation are relatively modest, but because many donors have additional medical conditions, it is important to evaluate their ongoing health. That's the conclusion of a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN).

Certain diseases such as cystic fibrosis and muscular dystrophy are linked to genetic mutations that damage the important biological process of rearranging gene sequences in pre-messenger RNA, a procedure called RNA splicing.

These conditions are difficult to prevent because scientists are still grasping to understand how the splicing process works. Now, researchers from Brandeis University and the University of Massachusetts Medical School have teamed up to unravel a major component in understanding the process of RNA splicing.

Like the plastic caps at the end of shoelaces, telomeres protect — in their case — the interior-gene containing parts of chromosomes that carry a cell's instructional material. Cancer cells are known to have short telomeres, but just how short they are from cancer cell to cancer cell may be a determining factor in a prostate cancer patient's prognosis, according to a study led by Johns Hopkins scientists.

Female promiscuity—something that occurs in a majority of species, including humans—results in the ejaculates from two or more males overlapping within her reproductive tract. When this happens, sperm compete for fertilization of the female's eggs. In addition, the female has the opportunity to bias fertilization of her eggs in favor of one male's sperm over others.

SANTA MONICA, CA -- A new urine test for prostate cancer that measures minute fragments of RNA is now commercially available to men nationwide through the University of Michigan MLabs. The new test—Mi-Prostate Score (MiPS)—improves the utility of the PSA blood test, increases physicians' ability to pick out high-risk prostate tumors from low-risk tumors in patients, and may help tens of thousands of men avoid unnecessary biopsies.

Singapore, 27 September 2013 – Species living in rainforest fragments could be far more likely to disappear than was previously thought, says an international team of scientists.

In a study spanning two decades, the researchers witnessed the near-complete extinction of native small mammals on forest islands created by a large hydroelectric reservoir in Thailand.

"It was like ecological Armageddon," said Luke Gibson from the National University of Singapore, who led the study. "Nobody imagined we'd see such catastrophic local extinctions."

Imagine mucus -- which most people find unpleasant -- actually helping your body maintain its equilibrium, prevent inflammation, and reduce food allergy problems.

Assessing the risk posed to aquatic organisms by the discharge of certain steroids and pharmaceutical products into waterways is often based on a belief that as the compounds degrade, the ecological risks naturally decline.

But there's growing sentiment that once in the environment, some of these bioactive organic compounds may transform in a way that makes their presumed impact less certain.

Researchers at Institut Hospital del Mar d'Investigacions Mèdiques (IMIM) in Barcelona, in collaboration with the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York and other U.S. Institutions, have found that intestinal mucus not only acts as a physical barrier against commensal bacteria and dietary antigens, but also prevents the onset of inflammatory reactions against these agents. This fundamental property of mucus was unknown until now and its discovery could potentially improve the life of people suffering from inflammatory bowel disease.

Scientists routinely seek to reprogram bacteria to produce proteins for drugs, biofuels and more, but they have struggled to get those bugs to follow orders. But a hidden feature of the genetic code, it turns out, could get bugs with the program. The feature controls how much of the desired protein bacteria produce, a team from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University reported in the September 26 online issue of Science.