Body

Among 54 low- to middle-income countries, a mother's shorter height is associated with a higher rate of death for her children and a greater likelihood of these children being underweight and having a reduced rate of growth, according to a study in the April 21 issue of JAMA.

Adult ICU patients who received tracheotomy 6 to 8 days vs. 13 to 15 days after mechanical ventilation did not have a significant reduction in the risk of ventilator-associated pneumonia, according to a study in the April 21 issue of JAMA.

High dietary fiber intake was associated with a lower risk of colorectal cancer when researchers used data from food diaries but not when they used data obtained from food frequency questionnaires, according to a study published online April 20 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Previous studies have examined the issue of dietary fiber and risk of colorectal cancer, but the results have been inconsistent, particularly in studies that used food-frequency questionnaires (FFQs).

Boston, MA—Mothers shorter than 4 feet, 9 inches in low- to middle-income countries had about a 40 percent higher risk of their children dying within the first five years of life than mothers who were 5 feet, 3 inches or taller according to a new study from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). The risk was higher—almost 60 percent—in the first 30 days after birth. It is the most comprehensive study to date to show that a mother's short stature is associated with poor health in her offspring.

ATLANTA – Added sugars in processed foods and beverages may increase cardiovascular disease risk factors, according to a study by Emory University researchers.

The study, published in the April 20, 2010, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), analyzed U.S. government nutritional data and blood lipid levels in more than 6,000 adult men and women between 1999 and 2006. The study subjects were divided into five groups according to the amount of added sugar and caloric sweeteners they consumed daily.

WASHINGTON — A decrease in breast density, or the proportion of fibroglandular tissue depicted on the mammogram image, over a number of years is associated with decreased risk of breast cancer, researchers from the Mayo Clinic campus in Minnesota report at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) 101st Annual Meeting 2010.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Levels of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) may be elevated in the blood of women within 17 months prior to their breast cancer diagnosis, according to findings presented at the American Association for Cancer Research 101st Annual Meeting 2010, held here April 17-21.

The goal of the study led by Christopher Li, M.D., Ph.D., an associate member of the Epidemiology Program at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, was to discover and validate blood markers that could potentially be used for the early detection of breast cancer.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Reported mid-life increase in body mass index (BMI) may lead to substantially higher risk of postmenopausal breast cancer, according to results of a prospective cohort study presented at the American Association for Cancer Research 101st Annual Meeting 2010, held here April 17-21.

Washington, DC – By examining tissue removed during breast reduction surgery in healthy women, researchers at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Center have found a molecule they say identified women who had atypical hyperplasia, a potentially precancerous condition in which cells are abnormally increased.

Washington, DC – Most cancers arise from the epithelium, the tissue that lines the body and the organs, but sarcomas come from connective tissue cells, like the bones. At Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, research have engaged in a full-court press to develop new therapies to treat osteosarcoma and Ewing's sarcoma, the two most common bone tumors in children, adolescents and young adults.

An Agricultural Research Service (ARS ) scientist may have found a way to cut the amount of ammonia produced by cattle. To do it, he's using a key ingredient of the brewer's art: hops.

Cattle, deer, sheep, goats and other ruminant animals depend on a slew of naturally occurring bacteria to aid digestion of grass and other fibrous plants in the first of their four stomach chambers, known as the rumen.

New research identifies a molecular mechanism that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) appears to utilize for generating random fluctuations called "noise" in its gene expression. The study, published by Cell Press in the April 20th issue of the Biophysical Journal, pinpoints the likely source of HIV gene-expression noise and provides intriguing insight into the role of this noise in driving HIV's fate decision between active replication and latency.

A new study shows that when it comes to networks of protein fibers, individual fibers play a substantial role in effectively strengthening an entire network of fibers. The research, published by Cell Press in the April 20th issue of the Biophysical Journal, describes a mechanism that explains how individual fibrin fibers subjected to significant strain can respond by stiffening to resist stretch and helping to equitably distribute the strain load across the network.

Understanding how mixtures of proteins assemble and how to manipulate them in the laboratory has many exciting biomedical applications, such as providing scaffolds for the engineering of tissues that can replace diseased or damaged human tissues. Now, research published by Cell Press in the April 20th issue of Biophysical Journal, reveals new information about the kinetics of protein assembly and demonstrates how to manipulate conditions in order to provide different distributions of protein fiber lengths.

Scientists studying a cunning parasite that has commandeered the cells of almost half the world's human population have begun to zero in on the molecular signals that must be severed to free the organism's cellular hostages.

While Toxoplasma gondii is not as widely known by the public as some of its more notorious parasitic brethren, it has been hijacking the cells of human and animal hosts for eons and is particularly dangerous to those with compromised and/or underdeveloped immune systems.