Body

The number of new cases of men suffering from metastatic prostate cancer has risen significantly in a decade's time, and is 72 percent greater in the year 2013 compared to 2004. This increase is especially worrying among men aged between 55 and 69 years old - the age group thought to benefit most from prostate cancer screening and early definitive treatment. These are some of the findings of a study published in Springer Nature's journal Prostate Cancer and Prostatic Diseases.

Adding sulphonylureas (SUs) to metformin remains a commonly used strategy for treating type 2 diabetes, but individual SUs differ and may confer different risks of abnormally low blood sugar, or hypoglycemia. SUs -- which include newer generation agents such as gliclazide, glipizide, glimepiride, and glibenclamide--stimulate the production of insulin in the pancreas and increase the effectiveness of insulin in the body.

Obesity is a well-known risk factor for osteoarthritis, but its effects on cartilage repair are unknown. In a recent study in a mouse model of cartilage repair, a high fat diet and increased body weight did not negatively impair cartilage repair, and it could even accelerate it.

According to an analysis of publicly available data from 186 countries, direct medical costs of surgery put an estimated 43.9 per cent of the world's population at risk of financial catastrophe and between 30.8 and 57.0 per cent at risk of falling below national and international poverty lines.

Direct medical expenditures on surgery will push approximately 30 million individuals into financial catastrophe and 11 million below their country's poverty line every year.

Dublin, Ireland, Tuesday July 19, 2016 - An international consensus demands human impacts on the environment "sustain", "maintain", "conserve", "protect", "safeguard", and "secure" it, keeping it within "safe ecological limits". But, a new Trinity College Dublin-led study that assembled an international team of environmental scientists shows that policy makers have little idea what these terms mean or how to connect them to a wealth of ecological data and ideas.

The lay press and thousands of nutritional products warn of oxygen radicals or oxidative stress and suggest taking so-called antioxidants to prevent or cure disease. Professor Pietro Ghezzi at the Brighton and Sussex Medical School and Professor Harald Schmidt at the University of Maastricht have analyzed the evidence behind this. The result is a clear warning: do not take these supplements unless a clear deficiency is diagnosed by a healthcare professional.

The ability to switch disease-causing genes on and off remains a dream for many physicians, research scientists and patients. Research teams from across the world are busy turning this dream into a reality, incuding a team of researchers from Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg. Led by Dr. Mazahir T. Hasan, and working under the auspices of the NeuroCure Cluster of Excellence, the team has successfully programmed a virus to transport the necessary genetic material to affected tissue and nerve cells inside the body.

Scientists have shed light on why life on Earth took millions of years to recover from the greatest mass extinction of all time.

The study provides fresh insight into how Earth's oceans became starved of oxygen in the wake of the event 252 million years ago, delaying the recovery of life by five million years.

Findings from the study are helping scientists to better understand how environmental change can have disastrous consequences for life on Earth.

Ants employ a few simple and flexible rules to ensure that moving a colony to a new nest does not end in chaos, especially if this is done over some distance. So says Thomas O'Shea-Wheller of the University of Bristol in the UK, lead author of an article in Springer's journal The Science of Nature. His study indicates that when it comes to giving directions, ants have it down to a fine art.

Patients suffering from liver cirrhosis often die of life-threatening bacterial infections. In these patients the immune cells are unable to eliminate the bacterial infections. Scientist at the University of Bonn and TU Munich have now discovered that type I IFN released by immune cells due to increased migration of gut bacteria into the cirrhotic liver incapacitate the immune system. Based on their findings, such life-threatening infections can be contained by strengthening the immune response alone -- without antibiotics. The results have now appeared in the journal Gut.

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- A new study of nearly 22,000 fossils finds that ancient plankton communities began changing in important ways as much as 400,000 years before massive die-offs ensued during the first of Earth's five great extinctions.

The research, published July 18 in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, focused on large zooplankton called graptolites. It suggests that the effects of environmental degradation can be subtle until they reach a tipping point, at which dramatic declines in population begin.

WASHINGTON, July 19, 2016 -- For those striving to build muscle, protein is essential. While this is obvious to many athletes and gym-goers, the biological and chemical processes between drinking a protein shake and getting "swole" may not be so clear. Reactions has you covered -- find out how much protein is recommended for athletes and what makes muscles grow in our latest video: https://youtu.be/L5-tKciXEG8.

Hamilton, ON July 19, 2016 -- The first steps towards developing a vaccine against an insidious sexual transmitted infection (STI) have been accomplished by researchers at McMaster University.

Researchers at the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research at McMaster have developed the first widely protective vaccine against chlamydia, a common STI that is mostly asymptomatic but impacts 113 million people around the world each year and can result in infertility.

It's a problem veterinarians see all the time, but there are few treatments. Feline herpes virus 1 (FHV-1) is a frequent cause of eye infections in cats, but the drugs available to treat these infections must be applied multiple times a day and there is scant scientific evidence to support their use.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Look into any nutrient-rich pond almost anywhere in the world and you will find Daphnia pulex, a tiny crustacean (also called a water flea) that is a source of food for fish and fascination for scientists. A new study, reported in the journal Molecular Ecology, offers insights into this creature's ability to disperse and its remarkable success in the wild.