Body

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Here's an anatomical packing list for making that historic trip from water to land circa 370 million years ago: Lungs? Check. Legs? Check. Patches of highly vascular bone in the skin? In a new paper, scientists propose why many of the earliest four-legged creatures that dared breathe on land carried bony skin features.

Many athletes with asthma may not be using the best treatment for their condition and could be putting their long term health at risk, according to a roundup by journalist Sophie Arie published by the BMJ today.

The article will feature on the BMJ's new Olympics portal, an online resource to keep doctors up to date with sports medicine content from across the BMJ Group. The portal will be open until the end of the Olympic and Para-Olympic games at www.bmj.com/olympics.

SAN DIEGO— Coronary artery disease continues to be a major cause of death in the U.S., killing hundreds of thousands of people per year. However, this disease burden isn't evenly divided between the sexes; significantly more men than women are diagnosed with coronary artery disease each year. The reasons behind this difference aren't well defined. Though some studies have shown that men's hearts become more constricted than women's during exercise, letting less blood flow through, women are more likely than men to have symptoms of heart trouble after emotional upsets.

San Diego, CA— Chocolate, considered by some to be the "food of the gods," has been part of the human diet for at least 4,000 years; its origin thought to be in the region surrounding the Amazon basin. Introduced to the Western world by Christopher Columbus after his fourth voyage to the New World in 1502, chocolate is now enjoyed worldwide. Researchers estimate that the typical American consumes over 10 pounds of chocolate annually, with those living on the west coast eating the most. Wouldn't it be great if only chocolate were considered healthy?

Pregnant women whose waters break late in preterm pregnancy but before they are in labor—the medical term for this situation is preterm prelabor rupture of the membranes—are best managed by monitoring and waiting until they deliver spontaneously rather than by inducing labor according to a study by Dutch researchers published in this week's PLoS Medicine.

Although there has been a steady increase in medical research from low- and middle- income countries in recent decades, there are still many countries that lack anything resembling a health research strategy, according to international experts writing in this week's PLoS Medicine.

"Journals, professional associations, clinical guideline developers, and others need to worry not just that disclosure provides a band-aid to the real problem of the [conflict of interest] itself, but that any attempt to stem the trouble through disclosure policies may actually be worsening the problem," say the editors of PLoS Medicine writing in an editorial that discusses the response to a paper published in the Journal last month, which examined the financial conflicts of interest of members of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) responsible for updating the Diagnostic and

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A single gene that promotes initial development of the most common form of lung cancer and its lethal metastases has been identified by researchers at Mayo Clinic in Florida. Their study suggests other forms of cancer may also be driven by this gene, matrix metalloproteinase-10 (MMP-10).

Scientists funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) have discovered that maize crops emit chemical signals which attract growth-promoting microbes to live amongst their roots. This is the first chemical signal that has been shown to attract beneficial bacteria to the maize root environment.

CHICAGO – Patients with infective endocarditis involving implanted cardiac devices experience a high rate of complications such as valve infections, heart failure, and persistent bacteremia, and high in-hospital and 1-year mortality rates, particularly if there is valve involvement, according to a study in the April 25 issue of JAMA.

New research confirms that the controversial decision by Warren Buffet – the 81-year-old CEO of Berkshire Hathaway – to undergo a blood test screening for prostate cancer despite his age is hardly unusual. Despite recommendations in 2008 from the United States Preventive Services Task Force against testing for prostate cancer in men aged 75 years or older, almost half of men in that age group continue to get screening tests.

San Diego—Researchers at the University of California-San Diego School of Medicine have shown that G protein-coupled receptor expression may predict the prognosis of patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Their findings may identify new ways to treat such patients. The UCSD researchers, led by Paul A. Insel, M.D., Professor of Pharmacology and Medicine, will present their findings on April 24.

San Diego, CA — Oregano, the common pizza and pasta seasoning herb, has long been known to possess a variety of beneficial health effects, but a new study by researchers at Long Island University (LIU) indicates that an ingredient of this spice could potentially be used to treat prostate cancer, the second leading cause of cancer death in American men.

A research collaboration between the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and Children's Hospital Boston has created a microfluidic device that can harvest rare circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from blood to enable their expansion in culture for analysis. These cells, which have detached from a primary cancer site and often create a secondary—or metastasized—tumor, hold an extraordinary amount of information regarding patient-specific drug sensitivity, cancer progression, and patient response to therapy.

SAN DIEGO, April 24, 2012—A preliminary 16-person study suggests that eating pistachios may help alter levels of potentially beneficial bacteria in the gut, a finding that holds promise for supporting digestive health(1). The research, presented as an abstract this week at the Experimental Biology conference, is the first study of pistachios and almonds and their modulating role on the gut microbiota composition.