Body

SEATTLE – Women who suffer from migraines may take at least some comfort in a recent, first-of-its-kind study that suggests a history of such headaches is associated with a significantly lower risk of breast cancer. Christopher I. Li, M.D., Ph.D., and colleagues at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center report these findings in the November issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention.

November 6, 2008, Cambridge, UK –Discussion of a man's background, attitude, and sexual history isn't just the fodder of Sex and The City episodes – in the future, it could also be a way of evaluating his risk of diabetes.

New research has found that XDR-TB is increasingly common and more deadly than previously known. Extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB) is a growing public health threat that is only just beginning to be understood by medical and public health officials.

ATLANTA— November 6, 2008—A new American Cancer Society study finds that recent progress in closing the gap in overall cancer mortality between African Americans and whites may be due primarily to smoking-related cancers, and that cancer mortality differences related to screening and treatment may still be increasing. The study, appearing in the November issue of Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention, is the first to analyze racial and ethnic differences between the two broad categories of disease.

A probiotic bacterium, Lactobacillus plantarum 299, has been used to out-compete the dangerous bacteria that cause respiratory illness in ventilated patients. Research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Critical Care describes how applying a bacterial solution in place of normal antiseptics is effective in preventing the most common cause of ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP).

Fenfluramine, the appetite suppressant drug banned in the US in 1997 due to fears over its links to heart conditions, has been shown to have serious long-term effects. In a report published today in the open access journal BMC Medicine, researchers have shown that people who stopped using fenfluramine eleven years ago had damaged heart valves up to seven years later.

Researchers have carried out the largest study of differences between human and chimpanzee genomes, identifying regions that have been duplicated or lost during evolution of the two lineages. The study, published in Genome Research, is the first to compare many human and chimpanzee genomes in the same fashion.

BERKELEY, CA -- A link between the immune system and the self-cleaning system by which biological cells rid themselves of obsolete or toxic parts may one day yield new weapons in the fight against tuberculosis and other deadly infectious diseases. Scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have discovered proteins residing in both systems that point to "cross-talk" between them.

Philadelphia, Penn. – November 05, 2008 – Breast cancer stem cells are known to be involved in therapy resistance and the recurrence of cancerous tumors. A new study appearing in Clinical and Translational Science shows the mechanisms governing stem cell expansion in breast cancer (called Notch activity), and finds that therapy targeting a protein called cyclin D1 may block the expansion of cancerous stem cells.

Hospitals are supposed to be havens for healing, but the numbers tell a different story. Too many people are infected by illnesses they acquire after they've been admitted, and hospital-related infections continue to be the number-two killer of hospitalized Americans after heart disease.

Now, a radical new high-tech software program developed by Tel Aviv University researchers to fight these infections is now catching on faster than the flu.

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- A statistical model commonly used to predict the risk of breast cancer in women was not accurate when used to evaluate women with atypical hyperplasia, according to a new Mayo Clinic study published in the Oct. 14, 2008, issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Atypical hyperplasia (atypia) describes breast tissue with an increased growth of abnormal cells that might become cancerous.

Hospitals are supposed to be havens for healing, but the numbers tell a different story. Too many people are infected by illnesses they acquire after they've been admitted, and hospital-related infections continue to be the number-two killer of hospitalized Americans after heart disease.

Now, a radical new high-tech software program developed by Tel Aviv University researchers to fight these infections is now catching on faster than the flu.

For the first time, scientists have decoded the complete DNA of a cancer patient and traced her disease - acute myelogenous leukemia - to its genetic roots. A large research team at the Genome Sequencing Center and the Siteman Cancer Center at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis sequenced the genome of the patient - a woman in her 50s who ultimately died of her disease - and the genome of her leukemia cells, to identify genetic changes unique to her cancer.

The study is reported in the Nov. 6 issue of the journal Nature.

A protein found in the virulent avian influenza virus strain called H5N1 forms tiny tubules in which it "hides" the pieces of double-stranded RNA formed during viral infection, which otherwise would prompt an antiviral immune response from infected cells, said Baylor College of Medicine researchers in an online report in the journal Nature.

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – Education has found its way onto the soccer fields of North Carolina – in the form of a social experiment that may have all the right ingredients to change the direction of Latino health in the United States.