New research suggests that several commonly prescribed drugs for type 2 diabetes may not be as effective at preventing death and cardiovascular diseases, such as heart attacks and stroke, as the oral anti-diabetic drug, metformin.
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A spot of regular retail therapy really does seem to help people live longer, suggests research published online in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
And it seems to benefit older men the most, the findings show.
The authors base their findings on almost 1,850 elderly (65+) Taiwanese people who were living independently at home, and included in the nationally representative Elderly Nutrition and Health Survey in Taiwan (NAHSIT Elderly), carried out in 1999-2000.
Boston, MA - A new 17 year follow-up study of 37,000 Israeli teenagers found that diabetes risk is mainly associated with increased body mass index (BMI) close to the time of diagnosis at early adulthood, while coronary heart disease risk is associated with elevated BMI both at adolescence and adulthood. The findings are published in the April 7 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Female deer do not always choose the bigger and dominant males to mate with, scientists from Queen Mary, University of London and Hartpury College have found.
The research, which was undertaken in Dublin's Phoenix Park on a herd of fallow deer, focussed on females who chose not to mate with the 'top' males.
The study, published today (6 April) in PLoS ONE found that yearling females tended to mate with a higher proportion of younger, lower ranking males while older females actively avoided mating with them.
BEER-SHEVA, ISRAEL - April 7, 2011 – A large cohort study following 37,000 teenagers for 17 years found that an elevated, yet normal range Body Mass Index (BMI) constitutes a substantial risk factor for obesity-related disorders in young adults (age 30-40).
The study showed that elevated BMI in adolescence has distinctive relationships with type 2 diabetes and coronary heart disease in young adulthood.
New research from The University of Western Ontario has discovered a substance in tangerines not only prevents obesity, but also offers protection against type 2 diabetes, and even atherosclerosis, the underlying disease responsible for most heart attacks and strokes. Murray Huff, a vascular biology scientist at the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry, along with Erin Mulvihill, a PhD student, studied the effects of a flavonoid in tangerines called Nobiletin. Their research is published in the journal Diabetes.
(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Chemical engineers at UC Santa Barbara expect that their new process to create molecular probes may eventually result in the development of new drugs to treat cancer and other illnesses.
Their work, reported in the journal Chemistry & Biology, published by Cell Press, describes a new strategy to build molecular probes to visualize, measure, and learn about the activities of enzymes, called proteases, on the surface of cancer cells.
SALT LAKE CITY – University of Utah School of Medicine researchers have found compelling evidence that Parkinson's disease is associated with an increased risk of prostate cancer and melanoma, and that this increased cancer risk also extends to close and distant relatives of individuals with Parkinson's disease. Although a link between Parkinson's disease and melanoma has been suspected before, this is the first time that an increased risk of prostate cancer has been reported in Parkinson's disease.
Frequent reports of accelerating species losses invariably raise questions about why such losses matter and why we should work to conserve biodiversity.
Biologists have traditionally responded to such questions by citing societal benefits that are often presumed to be offered by biodiversity--benefits like controlling pests and diseases, promoting the productivity of fisheries, and helping to purify air and water, among many others. Nevertheless, many of these presumed benefits are have yet to be supported by rigorous scientific data.
DURHAM, N.C. – A newly discovered hybrid gene appears to play a direct role in some stomach cancers, according to an international team of scientists led by researchers at Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore.
The hybrid gene is a fusion of two separate genes, and is one of the first described in gastric cancer, which is the most lethal malignancy worldwide after lung cancer. The disease kills an estimated 740,000 people a year, including nearly 11,000 annually in the United States.
COLUMBIA, Mo. – Public relations professionals constantly look for ways to most effectively promote their messages to the media. Sun-A Park, a researcher at the University of Missouri School of Journalism surveyed more than 300 health journalists and found that those who cover strokes and stroke prevention tend to hold negative views of corporate pharmacy media relations, while those who regularly read medical journals tend to cover more stories based on corporate press releases.
A groundbreaking clinical study of a new method for preventing premature birth in millions of women each year, published in the medical journal Ultrasound in Obstetrics & Gynecology, shows that the rate of early preterm delivery in women (< 33 weeks) can be reduced by 45 percent – simply by treating pregnant women at risk with a low-cost gel of natural progesterone during the midtrimester of pregnancy until term.
Ghosh and colleagues found that the density of the M1-fibrinogen structure was a critical characteristic. Looser structures or separate fibers formed by altered versions of M1 failed to trigger a pathological response.
"This research provides the first snapshot of the interaction between this key bacterial virulence factor and its human target at the atomic level," said Victor Nizet, M.D., professor of pediatrics and pharmacy and a co-author of the report.
April 6, 2011 – Developmental processes are increasingly well-characterized at the molecular and cell biological levels, but how more complex tissues and organs involving the coordinated action of multiple cell types in three dimensions is achieved remains something of a black box. One question of particular interest and importance is whether signaling interactions between neighboring tissues are essential to guiding organogenesis, or whether these can arise autonomously from developmental routines inherent to a given primordial tissue.
ANN ARBOR, Mich.---Biologically diverse streams are better at cleaning up pollutants than less rich waterways, and a University of Michigan ecologist says he has uncovered the long-sought mechanism that explains why this is so.