Body

Cincinnati, OH, July 19, 2012 – Because whooping cough (pertussis) is almost as contagious as measles (affecting ~12-17 individuals with each case), clinicians are required to report cases of this bacterial respiratory tract infection to the state's department of public health. In 2010, California had the highest number of cases of whooping cough in 60 years. A new study scheduled for publication in The Journal of Pediatrics describes the 2010 whooping cough epidemic and details strategies to decrease the incidence of this infection.

Giving children with egg allergies increasingly higher doses of the very food they are allergic to can eliminate or ease reactions in most of them, according to results from a federally funded study conducted at Johns Hopkins Children's Center and four other U.S. institutions.

Giving children and adolescents with egg allergy small but increasing daily doses of egg white powder holds the possibility of developing into a way to enable some of them to eat egg-containing foods without having allergic reactions, according to a study supported by the National Institutes of Health. The study results will appear online in the July 19th issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Researchers have developed a new metric to measure obesity, called A Body Shape Index, or ABSI, that combines the existing metrics of Body Mass Index (BMI) and waist circumference and shows a better correlation with death rate than do either of these individual measures. The full results are reported July 18 in the open access journal PLoS ONE, and the work was led by Nir Krakauer of City College of New York.

Women with high job strain are 67% more likely to experience a heart attack and 38% more likely to have a cardiovascular event than their counterparts in low strain jobs, according to a study published July 18 in the open access journal PLoS ONE. The researchers, led by Dr. Michelle A. Albert of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, did not find any correlation between job insecurity and long-term cardiovascular disease risk.

Unique arm morphology in Neandertals was likely caused by scraping activities such as hide preparation, not spear thrusting as previously theorized, according to research published July 18 in the open access journal PLoS ONE.

STANFORD, Calif. — Imagine listening to a child plinking out a rudimentary tune on the piano. He uses only one octave and one hand — notes he can't reach are skipped. You can pick out the basic melody, but just barely. But you have an inkling of what the full piece could sound like.

Frequent antenatal screening has allowed doctors to detect and treat malaria in its early stages on the border of Thailand and Myanmar, dramatically reducing the number of deaths amongst pregnant women.

In an analysis of 25 years' worth of data, in 50,981 women, from antenatal clinics at the Shoklo Malaria Research Unit, researchers found that the number of deaths from Plasmodium falciparum malaria fell from an estimated 1,000 deaths per 100,000 pregnant women before the introduction of screening to zero in 2005.

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – Doctors currently have only one recommendation for people allergic to eggs: avoid eggs completely. But researchers at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine recently found promise in doing just the opposite. Eating small amounts of egg every day for many months lowered the threshold for allergic reactions in 75 percent of egg-allergic children; 28 percent were able to incorporate egg into their regular diets after two years on the treatment.

A team of researchers from Mount Sinai School of Medicine and four other institutions have found that young children with egg allergies can benefit from treatment with oral immunotherapy. The study titled, "Oral Immunotherapy for Treatment of Egg Allergy in Children," appears online in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday, July 19.

Harvard researchers are unlocking the evolutionary secrets of one of the world's most recognizable groups of mushrooms, and to do it, they're using one of the most comprehensive fungal "family trees" ever created.

MINNEAPOLIS – A new guideline released by the American Academy of Neurology recommends several treatments for people with Huntington's disease who experience chorea—jerky, random, uncontrollable movements that can make everyday activities challenging. The guideline is published in the July 18, 2012, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

MINNEAPOLIS – Higher levels of a certain fat in the blood called ceramides may increase a person's risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, according to a study published in the July 18, 2012, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

"Our study identifies this biomarker as a potential new target for treating or preventing Alzheimer's disease," said study author Michelle M. Mielke, PhD, an epidemiologist with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. Mielke was with Johns Hopkins University at the time of the research.

Two species of single-cell parasites have co-opted "ready-made" genes from their hosts that in turn help them exploit their hosts, according to a new study by University of British Columbia and University of Ottawa researchers.

Part of a group of parasitic microbes called microsporidia, Encephalitozoon hellem and Encephalitozoon romaleae are related to fungi and are commonly found in the intestines of vertebrates. In humans, they are associated with people with immune deficiencies.

PORTLAND, Ore. — Researchers at Oregon Health & Science University School of Dentistry have discovered that TDP-43, a protein strongly linked to ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) and other neurodegenerative diseases, appears to activate a variety of different molecular pathways when genetically manipulated. The findings have implications for understanding and possibly treating ALS and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.