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Lifestyle advice given by doctors to men diagnosed with infertility should be radically overhauled according to research published today (Wednesday).

Current guidelines from the National Institute for Clinical Excellence1 advise doctors to warn infertile men about the dangers of smoking, alcohol consumption and recreational drug use, as well as the risks of being overweight and wearing tight underwear.

A simple and rapid test done near the patient that does not need laboratories, electricity, or highly trained staff (known as a point-of-care test) can effectively diagnose syphilis in pregnant women and has been adopted in six low- and middle-income countries thus preventing many stillbirths and deaths in newborn babies according to a report from international researchers published in this week's PLoS Medicine.

An Essay by Susan Ellenberg from the University of Pennsylvania describes alternative approaches to the evaluation of clinical trials, with the objectives both of preventing undue risks to participants and protecting the integrity of data. Writing in this week's PLoS Medicine, the author outlines the importance of methods for ensuring independence of those involved in analysis of interim data, and for ensuring that early stopping guidelines are clearly laid out before a trial starts.

Conducting more clinical trials in developing countries is of benefit because these populations are underrepresented in research, but doing trials in resource poor settings has many challenges. Research sites in developing countries benefit from working with externally sponsored clinical trials including increased capacity development and investment, but locally led research is also challenged by complex trial regulations and administrative burdens. These are some of the conclusions of an Essay by Trudie Lang and Sisira Siribaddana published in this week's PLoS Medicine.

A cost-effectiveness analysis conducted by Edwine Barasa of the Kenya Medical Research Institute Centre for Geographic Medicine Research, Nairobi, Kenya and colleagues estimates that a complex intervention aimed at improving quality of care for sick children in district hospitals would be affordable and cost effective in Kenya. The intervention consists of a package of care delivered in the form of evidence-based clinical practice guidelines dissemination, health worker training, job aids, follow-up supervision, and local facilitation by a nurse or diploma level clinician.

In African women, an anti-AIDS treatment regimen that includes the drug nevirapine is as effective as a treatment regimen with the more expensive drugs, lopinavir/ritonavir, according to a study by a team of international researchers published in this week's PLoS Medicine.

This finding is important as it confirms the recommendations from the World Health Organization that an increasingly common nevirapine-based treatment regimen is an affordable and effective option for the initial treatment of HIV in resource-limited settings.

Boston, MA—According to new research from Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), an anti-AIDS treatment regimen, which includes the WHO-recommended drug nevirapine, is just as effective at suppressing the HIV virus as lopinavir/ritonavir, which is more expensive. The study is published in the June 12 issue of PLoS Medicine.

Pregnant women are benefiting from new rapid tests for syphilis in six countries thanks to influential research by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

The study, published today in PLoS Medicine, was so successful that it resulted in China, Peru, Brazil, Zambia, Uganda and Tanzania introducing the tests to help save the lives of unborn children before the research was published, demonstrating the value of including policymakers throughout the process.

In a paper published in PLoS ONE, scientists at the University of Illinois released their findings on what microscopy techniques are needed to identify the shape and texture of pollen grains. Understanding pollen morphology is important to classifying ancient vegetation.

Because pollen morphologies often align quite closely to taxonomic groupings, understanding the appearance of ancient pollen allows scientists to better understand prehistoric flora in the context of modern-day ancestors.

San Diego, CA, and Washington, DC, June 12, 2012 -- A first-time joint publication by the American Journal of Preventive Medicine (www.ajpmonline.org) and the American Journal of Public Health (www.ajph.org) highlights how the two sectors of public health and primary medicine intersect and the work ahead to achieve true integration.

CHICAGO – Among six large integrated health care systems between 1996 and 2010 there was a substantial increase in the use of advanced diagnostic imaging, including approximately a tripling of the use of computed tomography and nearly a quadrupling of the use of magnetic resonance imaging, as well as a substantial increase in estimated radiation exposure, according to a study in the June 13 issue of JAMA.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Parents of infants who survive bacterial meningitis caused by group B Streptococcus might have to live with the effects of the disease on their children long after they're discharged from the hospital.

A new study in the journal Pediatrics finds that even though mortality rates of children infected with GBS meningitis have decreased in the past 25 years, just under half of children who survive the disease will suffer impairment as a result of the disease.

José Onuchic has become an expert at connecting the dots, but finding connections merely implied by the dots … well, that's quite a trick.

The Rice University biophysicist and his team have created a tool to do just that for proteins and, in the process, have advanced the art of predicting their form and function.

In between the vertebrae of the human spine are 23 Oreo-sized, cartilage-filled discs that hold the vertebrae together and allow for spine movement.

While the discs are critical for movement, they can become the source of back pain when they degenerate or herniate – a major health problem that affects 85% of Americans and drains the U.S. economy to the tune of $100 billion every year.

Bethesda, MD—Just as Gotham City uses the Bat Signal to call for Batman's aid, a new tool developed by scientists from the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute in La Jolla, California, should serve as the cellular equivalent for children with glycosylation disorders, sometimes called "CDG syndromes." In a new report appearing online in The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org), scientists describe how they used a green fluorescent protein to identify the presence of genes—known and unknown—associated with a wide