Body

October 8, 2015 CHAPEL HILL, NC - Despite decades of study, schizophrenia has remained stubbornly difficult to diagnose in its earliest stage - between the appearance of symptoms and the development of the disorder. Now, a new analysis led by researchers at the UNC School of Medicine and the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) identified illogical thoughts as most predictive of schizophrenia risk. Surprisingly, perceptual disturbances - the forerunners of hallucinations - are not predictive, even though full-blown hallucinations are common features of schizophrenia.

In an editorial in the weekly science journal Nature, LSTM's Director, Professor Janet Hemingway, looks at how the last 15 years of control measures have led to massive reductions in disease prevalence in Africa since 2000. The article comes as a study by Bhatt et al featured in the same edition provides the first authoritative, data-driven models to estimate the relative impact of the different interventions employed. At the same time Professor Hemingway warns of the problems that growing insecticide and drug resistance could mean to those efforts.

A new study from the University of Turku, Finland, shows that intracellular receptor signalling sustains cancer cells that have detached from the surrounding tissue. When the signalling is prevented, the cells cannot spread to other parts of the body. This significant research result influences how cancer research is directed in the future.

Scientists at the University of York, using clinical specimens from charity Breast Cancer Now's Tissue Bank, have conducted new research into a specific sodium channel that indicates the presence of cancer cells and affects tumour growth rates.

Led by Dr Will Brackenbury, a Medical Research Council Fellow in York's Department of Biology, a team studied a particular protein, or sodium channel, known as Nav1.5.

Great Neck, NY - Patients with metastatic melanoma who undergo surgery to remove lesions that have spread into the abdomen live more than twice as long as those treated with drug therapy alone, according to novel new research by a North Shore-LIJ Health System cancer surgeon.

Amsterdam, October 8, 2015 - Quiet areas should be sectioned off in the oceans to give us a better picture of the impact human generated noise is having on marine animals, according to a new study published in Marine Pollution Bulletin. By assigning zones through which ships cannot travel, researchers will be able to compare the behavior of animals in these quiet zones to those living in noisier areas, helping decide the best way to protect marine life from harmful noise.

BETHESDA, MD - Researchers have identified a common genetic variant strongly associated with chromosome gains and losses during the early stages of human embryonic development. These errors in cell division, which are almost always fatal to the embryo, are thought to be a major cause of early pregnancy loss in humans and contribute to failure of in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments. The findings were presented at the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) 2015 Annual Meeting in Baltimore.

The State of Connecticut's Department of Social Services, with its state evaluator UConn's Center on Aging, successfully transitioned more than 2,200 older and disabled Connecticut residents from nursing homes and other institutions to their own home or a community setting between 2008 and 2014, as part of the federal "Money Follows the Person Rebalancing Demonstration."

Cigarette smoking and heavy alcohol use cause epigenetic changes to DNA that reflect accelerated biological aging in distinct, measurable ways, according to research presented at the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) 2015 Annual Meeting in Baltimore.

One of biology's long-standing puzzles is how so many similar species can co-exist in nature. Do they really all fulfill a different role? Massive data on beetles now provide strong evidence for the idea that evolution can drive species into groups of look-a-likes that are functionally similar, according to a study by an international consortium of scientists led by Wageningen University, Netherlands.

Why elephants rarely get cancer is a mystery that has stumped scientists for decades. A study led by researchers at Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah and Arizona State University, and including researchers from the Ringling Bros. Center for Elephant Conservation, may have found the answer.

Philadelphia, PA, October 8, 2015 - Investigators interested in celiac disease, a chronic gastrointestinal disorder caused by an immunologic response to the ingestion of gluten, have wondered why only 2% to 5% of genetically susceptible individuals develop the disease. Attention has focused on whether environmental determinants, including gut microorganisms, contribute to the development of celiac disease.

Invasive Salmonella infections in sub-Saharan Africa are a major cause of child illness and deaths, a new body of research into this usually overlooked infectious disease has revealed.

In the West, Salmonella is commonly thought of as a bacterium responsible for relatively benign cases of food poisoning. However, a supplement to the leading infectious diseases journal Clinical Infectious Diseases published today now exposes the unacceptable toll of sickness and death caused by invasive Salmonella infections in sub-Saharan Africa.

Washington, DC--The Endocrine Society today issued a Clinical Practice Guideline (CPG) on identifying women who are candidates for treatment of menopausal symptoms and selecting the best treatment options for each individual.

The CPG, entitled "Treatment of Symptoms of the Menopause: An Endocrine Society Clinical Practice Guideline," was published online and will appear in the November 2015 print issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism (JCEM), a publication of the Endocrine Society.

Estimates suggest that biomedical research consumes almost a quarter of a trillion US dollars every year, yet according to some studies up to 85 per cent is avoidably wasted.

Examples of waste include the non-publication of research, failure to share data and instances where the results of research are untranslatable to the benefit of patients or the efficiency of health care delivery.