Body

Taking the breast cancer drug anastrozole for five years reduced the chances of post-menopausal women at high risk of breast cancer developing the disease by 53% compared with women who took a placebo, according to a study published in the Lancet* today.

The results of the IBIS II trial, funded by Cancer Research UK and led by Queen Mary University of London, could offer a new option for preventing breast cancer in high risk post-menopausal women which is more effective than tamoxifen and has fewer side-effects.

Life-threatening blood clots occur so rarely in children that the condition, known as venous thromboembolism (VTE), is often not on pediatricians' mental radar screens — an absence that can lead to woefully delayed recognition and treatment.

Now findings of a Johns Hopkins Children's Center study, published online Dec. 12 in The Journal of Pediatrics, may help clinicians determine which hospitalized children are at greatest risk of VTE and require vigilant monitoring or preemptive treatment with anticlotting medications.

A new analysis has found no evidence that children aged 6 to 11 years seeking a deceased donor lung transplant are disadvantaged in the current US lung allocation system. The findings, which are published in the American Journal of Transplantation, help inform ongoing discussions regarding potential changes to the nation's lung allocation policy.

Philadelphia, PA, December 12, 2013 – Researchers have developed a new assay for rapid and sensitive detection of Chlamydia trachomatis, the most common sexually transmitted infection (STI) in humans. This procedure takes less than 20 minutes and can be easily performed at the point of care (POC) during the patient's visit, reports The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics.

Interplay between genes and the environment has been pondered at least since the phrase "nature versus nurture" was coined in the mid-1800s.

But until the arrival of modern genomic sequencing tools, it was hard to measure the extent that the environment had on a species' genetic makeup.

Wealthy capital cities vary greatly in their dependence on the global food market. The Australian capital Canberra produces the majority of its most common food in its regional hinterland, while Tokyo primarily ensures its food security through import. The Copenhagen hinterland produces less than half of the consumption of the most common foods. For the first time, researchers have mapped the food systems of capital cities, an essential insight for future food security if population growth, climate change and political instability will affect the open market.

A new report launched today by the International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF) shows that osteoporosis is a serious problem throughout the Asia Pacific, with the number of fracture sufferers to rise dramatically in the coming decades. By 2050, more than half of the world's hip fractures will occur in Asia. The press conference kicked off the IOF Regionals 4th Asia-Pacific Osteoporosis Meeting, being held in Hong Kong from December 12.

Bone cancer in dogs is affected by a variety of genetic risk factors. Researchers from Uppsala University, Sweden, and the Broad Institute show this in a new study published in Genome Biology.

A new guideline has provided an updated definition of severe asthma along with new recommendations for treating the condition.

Produced by a joint task force of the European Respiratory Society and the American Thoracic Society, the guideline is published online today (12 December 2013) in the European Respiratory Journal.

One of the first studies to use recently released data from the UK Biobank has provided the strongest evidence yet for a link between fathers' diabetes and low birth weight. The research shows that your dad can influence your size at birth and that diabetes genes may explain some of this effect.

The study is unprecedented in its size, using 250,000 adults from the UK, in a resource which will help scientists analyse large data sets to answer questions on human health.

A new test has the potential to help physicians identify patients with the most lethal forms of triple-negative breast cancer, a disease which requires aggressive and innovative treatment.

The test, described in the Dec. 11 issue of PLOS ONE, was able to distinguish between patients with a good or poor prognosis, even within groups of patients already stratified by existing tests such as MammaPrint and Oncotype, as well as to extend its predictions to patients with more advanced or difficult-to-treat cancers.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Indigenous use of fire for hunting is an unlikely contributor to long-term carbon emissions, but it is an effective environmental management and recovery tool against agribusiness deforestation, a new study from Indiana University and Brazil's Oswaldo Cruz Foundation has found.

HOUSTON -- One drug attacks tumor cells directly, the other treats the immune system by taking the brakes off T cell response. Together, they put half of the patients with relapsed follicular lymphoma into complete remission in a phase II clinical trial at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

Rockville, Md. — Holiday travelers will be relieved to know that security threats are rarely encountered at airport checkpoints. But according to a new study published in the Journal of Vision, the low frequency at which trained airport screeners find threats reduces the chances targets will be found.

BOSTON (December 11, 2013) — In a study of older mice, wolfberries appear to interact with the influenza vaccine to offer additional protection against the flu virus. The research, led by scientists at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (USDA HNRCA) at Tufts University, suggests the wolfberry may increase the activity of dendritic cells, which play an important role in the ability of the immune system to defend against viral infections. The results were published online ahead of print today by the Journal of Nutrition.