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High-risk prescribing and preventable drug-related complications in primary care are major concerns for health care systems internationally, responsible for up to 4 per cent of emergency hospital admissions.

Now a major study of drug prescribing has shown that intervening in primary care health practices can significantly reduce rates of high-risk prescribing of drugs.

The results of the study have been published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

WASHINGTON -- Can we say goodbye to unreliable food diaries and diet recall in exchange for a urine test that will better aid researchers in figuring out what foods might help prevent cancer?

Researchers at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center in Washington, DC, have developed a method that can quickly evaluate specific food compounds in human urine. They say their method could one day replace unreliable food logs used in population studies examining the effects of diet on cancer and will also help scientists accurately identify the most beneficial anticancer foods.

WASHINGTON, DC -- The repeated storms which battered Europe's Atlantic coastline during the winter of 2013/14 were the most energetic in almost seven decades, new research has shown.

They were part of a growing trend in stormy conditions which scientists say has the potential to dramatically change the equilibrium state of beaches along the western side of the continent, leading to permanent changes in beach gradient, coastal alignment and nearshore bar position.

Factors that can combine to produce a Zika virus outbreak are expected to be present in a number of U.S. cities during peak summer months, new research shows.

The Aedes aegypti mosquito, which is spreading the virus in much of Latin America and the Caribbean, will likely become increasingly abundant across much of the southern and eastern United States as the weather warms, according to a new study led by mosquito and disease experts at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado.

A 10-year follow-up study of more than 6,000 people who underwent heart CT scans suggests that a high coronary artery calcium score puts people at greater risk not only for heart and vascular disease but also for cancer, chronic kidney disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

A report on the study, conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and elsewhere, is published online on March 9, 2016 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology: Cardiovascular Imaging.

In the microscopic life that thrives around coral reefs, San Diego State University researchers have discovered an interplay between viruses and microbes that defies conventional wisdom. As the density of microbes rises in an ecosystem, the number of viruses infecting those microbes rises with it. It has generally been assumed that this growing population of viruses, in turn, kills more and more microbes, keeping the microbial population in check.

March 16, 2016 - Recently discovered biomarkers may provide valuable new approaches to monitoring immunosuppressive drug therapy in organ transplant recipients--with the potential for individualized therapy to reduce organ rejection and minimize side effects, according to a special article in the April issue of Therapeutic Drug Monitoring, official journal of the International Association of Therapeutic Drug Monitoring and Clinical Toxicology.

Sorghum geneticist/breeder Fred Miller (right) mentors young scientists on sorghum germplasm while in a commercial genetics nursery. Credit: Photo credit Robert Klein.

source: American Society of Agronomy

By studying an unusual group of magnetic microorganisms, scientists at UC Berkeley have uncovered a new and unexpected function for a ubiquitous protein family. Proteases are workhorse enzymes found in all living organisms that act in general cellular maintenance and communication by chewing up proteins.

In a small clinical trial led by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, researchers say that a promising single-dose dengue vaccine, developed by scientists at the National Institutes of Health, was 100 percent effective in preventing human volunteers from contracting the virus, the most prevalent mosquito-borne virus in the world.

Researchers at the University of Vermont (UVM) Vaccine Testing Center, along with collaborators at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the National Institutes of Health and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, have been working since 2008 to develop a dengue vaccine that will protect against all four dengue strains.

A clinical trial in which volunteers were infected with dengue virus six months after receiving either an experimental dengue vaccine developed by scientists from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) or a placebo injection yielded starkly contrasting results. All 21 volunteers who received the vaccine, TV003, were protected from infection, while all 20 placebo recipients developed infection.

The hepatitis B virus (HBV), which is up to 100 times more infectious than HIV, is primarily transmitted through blood or other bodily fluids. HBV infects liver cells and chronic infection can lead to serious health problems such as cirrhosis or liver cancer. According to the World Health organization, chronic hepatitis B affects nearly 240 million people worldwide, killing almost 800,000 people a year. Drugs are available to treat HBV, but they rarely cure the infection, and so the virus typically returns after the treatment ends.

Intestinal inflammation in mice can be dampened by subjecting them briefly to a diet restricted in amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, research scheduled for publication in Nature shows.

BOSTON -Approximately one out of five hospitalized adults and one out of three hospitalized children worldwide experience acute kidney injury, the sudden loss of kidney function. Many different factors, including surgery, chemotherapy or shock, can lead to acute kidney injury, but exactly why the kidneys are so vulnerable to these and other stressors has not been well understood.