Body

A new study finds that children with congenital heart disease and ADHD can take stimulant medications without fear of significant cardiovascular side effects.

When cells from the connective tissue collide, they repel one another - this phenomenon was discovered more than 50 years ago. It is only now, however, that researchers at the University of Basel have discovered the molecular basis for this process, as they report in the journal Developmental Cell. Their findings could have important implications for cancer research.

Cancer risk has been found to increase with height in both Swedish men and women, according to research presented today at the 54th Annual European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology Meeting. This long-term study is the largest carried out on the association between height and cancer in both genders.

Severe asthma can have a devastating effect on sufferers, affecting their ability to work or go to school and to lead normal lives. It is difficult to treat because it is not a single disease entity. Now, for the first time, a group of European researchers has succeeded in defining three distinct types of severe asthma by analysing sputum samples from a group of patients.

High circulating levels of cardiovascular hormones/peptides in cancer patients are linked to shorter survival, regardless of disease type and stage of progression, reveals research published online in the journal Heart.

These chemicals, known as biomarkers, are apparent in the absence of any clinical signs of heart disease or infection, and before the start of anti-cancer treatment, some of which is known to damage heart tissue, say the researchers.

Patients with advanced gastrointestinal neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) have limited treatment options and there are few oncologists who are specialized in this relatively rare disease. But now results from a multi-center randomized international trial of an innovative treatment show a marked improvement in the length of time patients with mid-gut NETs live without the disease getting worse (progression-free survival, or PFS), researchers reported to the 2015 European Cancer Congress.

Recent research suggests cooking with spices and herbs could close the 1,000 mg gap between the amount of sodium Americans consume on a daily basis, and the amount recommended by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

Stanford University School of Medicine scientists successfully defeated a dangerous intestinal pathogen, Clostridium difficile, with a drug targeting its toxins rather than its life.

By not aiming to kill the pathogen with antibiotics, scientists were able to avoid wiping out sizeable numbers of beneficial gut microbes. And while their study was performed in mice, the drug used has already been tested in clinical trials to treat other, unrelated conditions. So the researchers believe it could be moved rapidly into human trials for the treatment of C. difficile, as well.

Sex is rarely the cause of a heart attack, and most heart disease patients are safe to resume sexual activity after a heart attack, according to a research letter published today in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Researchers have identified for the first time the triple mechanism that stops chromosome separation in response to situations that compromise the integrity of the genetic information. The loss of this response capacity is characteristic of cancerous cells.

Periodontitis is a risk factor for heart disease. Now a team of researchers has shown that a periodontal pathogen causes changes in gene expression that boost inflammation and atherosclerosis in aortic smooth muscle cells. The research is published ahead of print in Infection and Immunity, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology.

Those of you who spend hours at the gym with the aim of burning as many calories as possible may be disappointed to learn that all the while your nervous system is subconsciously working against you. Researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on September 10 have found that our nervous systems are remarkably adept in changing the way we move so as to expend the least amount of energy possible. In other words, humans are wired for laziness.

Researchers from Lund University in Sweden have shown that well-developed eyes come at a surprising cost to other organ systems. The study involving Mexican cavefish shows that the visual system can require between 5% and 15% of an animal's total energy budget.

Like the hairs they resemble, cilia come in all lengths, from short to long. But unlike the hair on our heads, the length of sensory cilia on nerve cells in our noses is of far more than merely cosmetic significance. A team of researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania found a location-dependent pattern in cilia length in the mouse nasal cavity that affects sensitivity to odors. The discovery may also have important implications for the study of sight and touch. Their work was published this week online in Current Biology ahead of print.

Cocoa flavanols are plant-derived bioactives from the cacao bean and in a study published in Age, two groups of 22 young (<35 years of age) and 20 older (50-80 years of age) healthy men consumed either a flavanol-containing drink, or a flavanol-free control drink, twice a day for two weeks. The researchers then measured the effect of flavanols on hallmarks of cardiovascular aging, such as arterial stiffness (as measured by pulse wave velocity), blood pressure and flow-mediated vasodilation (the extent to which blood vessels dilate in response to nitric oxide).