Body

Advanced metastatic melanoma is a disease that has proven difficult to eradicate. Despite the success of melanoma-targeting drugs, tumors inevitably become drug resistant and return, more aggressive than before. In the current issue of the journal Cancer Cell, however, researchers at The Wistar Institute describe how they increase the effectiveness of anti-melanoma drugs by combining anticancer therapies with diabetes drugs.

Toronto – If policy-makers want to do something about falling birth rates, they may want to take a look at improving how people are treated at work when they step outside of traditional family roles at home.

New studies show that middle-class men who take on non-traditional caregiving roles are treated worse at work than men who stick closer to traditional gender norms in the family. Women without children and mothers with non-traditional caregiving arrangements are treated worst of all.

New Rochelle, NY, June 11, 2013—The lifetime risk for cancer is greater than 1 in 3 for women in the U.S., but most women do not make the lifestyle choices recommended by the American Cancer Society to reduce that risk and prevent cancer. A multifaceted new survey determined how women view diet and exercise in relationship to cancer and whether they believe they are engaging in healthy behaviors, and whether their diet and exercise choices really meet the minimum recommendations.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Telephone-based counseling, when combined with physician advice, can help breast cancer survivors become more physically active, which can improve quality of life and lessen the side effects of cancer treatment, according to new research from The Miriam Hospital.

Researchers say women who received exercise advice from their surgeon or oncologist, followed by three months of telephone support, reported 30 more minutes of physical activity per week than patients who received exercise advice and follow-up calls about their general health.

Physicians and researchers from Sherbrooke, Montreal and Quebec City have conducted a study that has led to the discovery of a gene that causes multiple intestinal atresia (MIA), a rare and life-threatening hereditary disorder that affects newborns. In addition to exploring novel therapeutic treatments for children with the disease, the discovery of the gene TTC7A will make it possible to develop a prenatal diagnostic test and a screening test for parents who are carriers. The Centre hospitalier universitaire de Sherbrooke (CHUS) should offer the tests.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Mothers in low-income countries may not understand why their babies are hospitalized after delivery, putting sick newborns at higher risk of health problems and death after being released from the hospital, a new study shows.

The heart's regular rhythm is crucial to the delivery of oxygenated blood and nutrients to all the organs of the body. It is regulated by a bundle of cells called "the pacemaker," which use electrical signals to set the pace of the heart. Dysfunction in this mechanism can lead to an irregular heartbeat, known as arrhythmia, and often necessitates the implantation of an artificial pacemaker.

A study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has for the first time found that a mother's higher exposure to some common environmental contaminants was associated with more frequent and vigorous fetal motor activity. Some chemicals were also associated with fewer changes in fetal heart rate, which normally parallel fetal movements. The study of 50 pregnant women found detectable levels of organochlorines in all of the women participating in the study—including DDT, PCBs and other pesticides that have been banned from use for more than 30 years.

EAST LANSING, Mich. --- At least among mice, females have innate protection from certain digestive conditions, according to a new Michigan State University study.

While it's tricky to draw conclusions for human health, the findings could eventually help scientists better understand and treat the 1.4 million Americans suffering from inflammatory bowel diseases, or IBD.

The latest episode in the American Chemical Society's (ACS') award-winning Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions podcast series describes bacteria that are "addicted" to caffeine in a way that promises practical uses ranging from decontamination of wastewater to bioproduction of medications for asthma.

Infants as young as two months old already exhibit growth patterns that can predict the child's weight by age 5, according to researchers at Case Western Reserve University's Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing and Tennessee State University.

"Almost from birth, we quickly saw this growth pattern emerge in our curves and growth charts for weight over height," said Susan Ludington, the study's lead investigator and the Carl W. and Margaret David Walter Professor of Pediatric Nursing at Case Western Reserve.

Spanish and US scientists have successfully identified animal species that can transmit more diseases to humans by using mathematical tools similar to those applied to the study of social networks like Facebook or Twitter. Their research—recently published in the prestigious journal PNAS—describes how parasite-primate interactions transmit diseases like malaria, yellow fever or AIDS to humans. Their findings could make an important contribution to predicting the animal species most likely to cause future pandemics.

Drug development for a range of conditions could be improved with stem cell technology that helps doctors predict the safety and the effectiveness of potential treatments.

Medical Research Council scientists at the University of Edinburgh have been able to generate cells in the laboratory that reach the gold standard required by the pharmaceutical industry to test drug safety.

The researchers used stem cell technology to generate liver cells – which help our bodies to process drugs.

Daejeon, Republic of Korea, June 11, 2013 -- Today's technological innovation enables smartphone users to diagnose serious diseases such as diabetes or lung cancer quickly and effectively by simply breathing into a small gadget, a nanofiber breathing sensor, mounted on the phones.

The skin colour of humans ranges from pale pinkish-white to very dark brown and relates largely to the amount of melanin produced by specialized cells in the body. The synthesis of melanin is under the influence of a bewildering array of genes, each of which naturally occurs in a variety of different forms or alleles, thus accounting for the wide variety of skin colours found in our species. But how precisely the variation is brought about is still unknown.

Nine genes account for pigmentation in the fruit fly