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ST. LOUIS -- Saint Louis University researchers have found that a type of compound that disrupts the process that causes fibrosis (scarring) in the lungs and liver also shows promise in preventing and treating fibrosis in yet another organ, the pancreas. The research was conducted in an animal model.

The Hawaiian Islands have long been thought to support just one endemic land mammal in the archipelago's brief geologic history, the Hawaiian hoary bat. But new fossil evidence indicates that a second, very different species of bat lived alongside the hoary bat for thousands of years before going extinct shortly after humans arrived on the islands. The research, published this week in the journal American Museum Novitates, describes the mysterious bat, named Synemporion keana, whose remains were first discovered in a lava tube more than 30 years ago.

PORTLAND, Ore. - Researchers at Oregon Health & Science University are challenging the convention that tetanus and diphtheria vaccine boosters need to be administered every 10 years. Their paper in Clinical Infectious Diseases recommends current adult vaccination schedule should be revisited.

Scientists have documented for the first time how competition among different malaria parasite strains in human hosts could influence the spread of drug resistance.

"We found that when hosts are co-infected with drug-resistant and drug-sensitive strains, both strains are competitively suppressed," says Mary Bushman, lead author of the study and a PhD candidate in Emory University's Population Biology, Ecology and Evolution Graduate Program. "Anti-malarial therapy, by clearing drug-sensitive parasites from mixed infections, may result in competitive release of resistant strains."

AMHERST, Mass. - Edward Calabrese, the University of Massachusetts Amherst environmental toxicologist who has been an outspoken critic of the current linear no-threshold (LNT) approach to risk assessment for radiation and toxic chemicals, now proposes a new approach integrating LNT with hormetic dose-response models. The new strategy, applied to chronic animal bioassays, would reconcile previously conflicting methods to offer "significant improvements" and maximize public health benefits, he and co-authors say. Details appear in the current issue of Health Physics.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - A fungal disease that poses a serious threat to cacao plants - the source of chocolate - reproduces clonally, Purdue University researchers find.

The fungus Moniliophthora roreri causes frosty pod rot, a disease that has decimated cacao plantations through much of the Americas. Because M. roreri belongs to a group of fungi that produces mushrooms - the fruit of fungal sex - many researchers and cacao breeders believed the fungus reproduced sexually.

Cricket batsmen who bat the 'wrong' way have a stunning advantage according to new research published in the scientific journal Sports Medicine. Batsmen who adopt a reversed stance (right-handed people who bat left-handed, and left-handers who bat right-handed) are far more likely to reach the first-class and international level, with professional batsmen being seven times more likely to adopt a reversed stance than the rest of the population.

A study published in the journal Global Ecology and Conservation may help field conservationists better understand the potential for human activities to disturb endangered giant pandas in native habitats. Using pandas located at the San Diego Zoo, conservation scientists worked with animal care specialists to determine pandas' range of hearing sensitivity, discovering that they can detect sound into the ultrasonic range.

SALT LAKE CITY - Inheriting a mutation in the APC gene leads to a nearly 100% lifetime risk of colorectal cancer. While colon cancer can be kept at bay by removing the large intestine, these patients also have up to a 15% risk of getting cancer in the small intestine, which is the leading cause of cancer death in this patient group.

Exposure to antibiotics within the first 6 months of life compared with no exposure among nearly 40,000 children was not associated with a significant difference in weight gain through age 7, according to a study appearing in the March 22/29 issue of JAMA.

In a study appearing in the March 22/29 issue of JAMA, Deborah W. Neklason, Ph.D., N. Jewel Samadder, M.D., M.S., of the Huntsman Cancer Institute, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, and colleagues randomly assigned 92 patients with familial adenomatous polyposis to the drugs sulindac twice daily and erlotinib daily (n = 46) or placebo (n = 46) for 6 months.

New research looks into the paradox that women who sunbathe are likely to live longer than those who avoid the sun, even though sunbathers are at an increased risk of developing skin cancer.

An analysis of information on 29,518 Swedish women who were followed for 20 years revealed that longer life expectancy among women with active sun exposure habits was related to a decrease in heart disease and noncancer/non-heart disease deaths, causing the relative contribution of death due to cancer to increase.

BOSTON and ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Think your DNA is all human? Think again. And a new discovery suggests it's even less human than scientists previously thought.

Nineteen new pieces of non-human DNA -- left by viruses that first infected our ancestors hundreds of thousands of years ago -- have just been found, lurking between our own genes.

Bethesda, MD (March 22, 2016) -- While early antibiotic use has been associated with a number of rare long-term health consequences, new research links antibiotics to one of the most important and growing public health problems worldwide -- obesity.

An innovative cancer treatment made of luminescent chemotherapy-filled beads injected into tumors through the wrist is now available for patients with inoperable and difficult-to-treat liver cancer. The Mount Sinai Hospital (MSH) has become the first in the country to offer the minimally invasive treatment using the M1 LUMI™ Bead loaded with doxorubicin, a chemotherapy agent.