Body

HOUSTON - (Oct. 22, 2015) - Cesarean delivery was not associated with decrease in the at-birth fracture rates in infants with osteogenesis imperfecta, a rare bone disorder, said a consortium of researchers led by Baylor College of Medicine.

The new research, published in the journal Genetics in Medicine, is the first study to come from the Brittle Bone Disorders Consortium, a new National Institutes of Health collaborative clinical research network focused on brittle bone disorders such as osteogenesis imperfecta.

The number of people in Bangladesh dying from chronic diseases such as cancer, diabetes and hypertension--long considered diseases of the wealthy because the poor didn't tend to live long enough to develop them--increased dramatically among the nation's poorest households over a 24-year period, suggests new research from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Recent American Cancer Society (ACS) breast cancer screening guidelines consider the anxiety created by false-positive mammography an "important but not critical outcome" when deciding who should be screened. In other words, in these guidelines, the chance that mammography will create needless cancer worry is a light thumb on the scale against breast cancer screening in some populations.

Scientists behind new research into the effects of transport infrastructure on biodiversity have developed much-needed approaches to protect wildlife.

A Defra-funded study, conducted by a team from the University of Leeds led by Professor John Altringham, sets out best practice principles for assessing the impact of new roads and railways on bats, as well as the effectiveness of mitigation measures installed to help them cross safely.

The naked mole-rat is a particularly ugly or cute animal, depending on your definition. It is tubular in shape, like the tunnels it creates, hairless and wrinkled, for wiggling through those tunnels, and has long, chisel-like front teeth. It looks somewhat like a walrus in miniature. And these rodents can chew through concrete!

DETROIT - Henry Ford Hospital pulmonologist Daniel Ouellette, M.D., who during his 31-year career in medicine has seen the harmful effects of smoking on his patients, advocates for raising the smoking age to 21.

He says the move would help curb access to tobacco products at an early age and lead to reductions in smoking prevalence.

Using new, highly sensitive genomic sequencing technology, an international team of researchers has found new biological evidence to help explain why the malaria vaccine candidate RTS,S/AS01 (called RTS,S) provided only moderate protection among vaccinated children during clinical testing. The researchers, funded in part by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, found that genetic variability in the surface protein targeted by the RTS,S vaccine likely played a significant role.

An international team of biologists has made the first-ever field observations of one of the least known species of whales in the world--Omura's whales--off the coast of Madagascar.

In a paper published October 14, 2015, in the Royal Society Open Science journal, the researchers describe the whales' foraging and vocal behaviors, and habitat preferences in the shallow waters of coastal Madagascar.

CORVALLIS, Ore. - English learners are more likely to become proficient English speakers if they enter kindergarten with a strong initial grasp of academic language literacy, either in their primary language or in English, a new analysis from Oregon State University has found.

The CRISPR/Cas9 protein system, which is central part to bacterial adaptive immunity, has soared to great prominence in recent years for its enormous potential as a genome editing tool. In studying this system, scientists have found it to be akin to a Russian doll in that the unlocking of one secret reveals another secret within. Jennifer Doudna, a biochemist with Berkeley Lab's Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging (MBIB) division, who has been at the forefront of unlocking CRISPR/Cas secrets has just unlocked another.

In the study, researchers showed a protein called NLRP1 is switched on when increased dietary energy (food) intake triggers the cell to become 'unstable'. Activating the protein sets off a chain of events that instructs cells to use up their energy or fat stores to prevent excess fat accumulating.

MINNEAPOLIS - (October 22, 2015) - Most breast cancer patients with invasive lobular carcinoma could be treated with hormones alone and not with chemotherapy, according to a study by Virginia Piper Cancer Institute at Abbott Northwestern Hospital, part of Allina Health.

Researchers reviewed all consecutive cases of invasive lobular carcinoma breast cancer diagnosed at the Allina Health Laboratory from the past eight years. Included were 158 patients with invasive lobular carcinoma breast cancer who also had molecular testing with the Oncotype DX® gene expression test.

In a national sample, many pediatricians and primary care physicians reported communicating about HPV vaccination with parents in ways that likely discourage them from getting their children vaccinated.

Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Melissa B. Gilkey, PhD, assistant professor of population medicine at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute in Boston.

Cancer and Primary Care is the theme of the new issue of Family Medicine and Community Health (FMCH), http://fmch-journal.org/, an international peer reviewed medical journal with editorial offices in China and the US. The Autumn 2015 issue includes four original research articles on cancer, one systematic review on global health and two papers focusing specifically on health care in China.

Dehydration in older people could be accurately identified as part of routine blood testing according to new research from the University of East Anglia (UEA).

Older people are particularly at risk of water-loss dehydration - which is caused by not drinking enough fluid. It can lead to poor health outcomes such as disability and even death.

The best test for diagnosing dehydration, known as a serum osmolality test, is expensive and not currently viable for wide-scale NHS screening.