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Hidden dental root tip infections are very common: as many as one in four Finns suffers from at least one. Such infections are usually detected by chance from X-rays.

"Acute coronary syndrome is 2.7 times more common among patients with untreated teeth in need of root canal treatment than among patients without this issue," says researcher John Liljestrand.

A new review published by a joint scientific working group of the International Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (IFCC) and the International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF) finds that current evidence continues to support the potential for bone turnover markers (BTMs) to provide clinically useful information for monitoring osteoporosis treatment. (1)

The IFCC-IOF Working Group for the Standardization of Bone Marker Assays concluded that:

It may be counterintuitive, but the more positive online reviews a product gets may actually lead to a net negative profit for the retailer. That's the conclusion of new research by a team of marketing experts from a Dutch and a German university that will be published in the September 2016 issue of the Journal of Retailing.

Instilling trust among first-time customers has been a problem for online retailers since the dawn of e-commerce. Now research shows that sometimes the simplest of fixes can reassure would-be buyers.

A child's home address may be enough information to identify children and families at risk for more severe cases of asthma due to social and economic hardships. In fact, the home address could guide risk assessment starting the moment a family arrives and registers in the hospital or at the doctor's office.

AUGUSTA, Ga. (Aug. 2, 2016) - Scientists have engineered a sort of biological barbell that can get inside cancer cells and do damage to two proteins that work independently and together to enable cancer's survival and spread.

Their therapeutic strategy includes a molecule on either end called an aptamer that targets, in this case, prostate cancer. Sandwiched in between are two smaller molecules, called siRNAs, that, once delivered inside the cell, can destroy the messenger RNA making those proteins.

August 2, 2016 - The high levels of caffeine in energy drinks may lead to cardiac complications, suggests a case report in the July/August Journal of Addiction Medicine, the official journal of the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM). The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer.

Subtle and short-lived differences in ocean salinity or temperature function as physical barriers for phytoplankton, and result in a patchy distribution of the oceans' most important food resource. The new research from the Center for Macroecology, Evolution and Climate at the University of Copenhagen may help explain the large biodiversity in the sea.

Female orgasm seems to be a happy afterthought of our evolutionary past when it helped stimulate ovulation, a new study of mammals shows.

The role of female orgasm, which plays no obvious role in human reproduction, has intrigued scholars as far back as Aristotle. Numerous theories have tried to explain the origins of the trait, but most have concentrated on its role in human and primate biology.

Existing models for measuring health impacts of the human diet are limiting our capacity to solve obesity and its related health problems, claim two of the world's leading nutritional scientists in their newest research.

Researchers have identified 788 biomarkers in blood that could be used to develop an early stage cancer screening test for the general population.

The study, led by the University of Sheffield, is the first to create a comprehensive list of relevant cancer blood biomarkers that have been researched in the last five years. The study also groups them by molecular function and records the technologies that can be used to detect them.

Should we be warning consumers about over-consumption of meat as well as sugar?

That's the question being raised by a team of researchers from the University of Adelaide, who say meat in the modern diet offers surplus energy, and is contributing to the prevalence of global obesity.

Breaking up the rainforest into small 'forest islands' means more species are being forced to live on the forest edge, prompting a decline in species sensitive to changes in light, moisture and temperature.

A new, epidemic strain of C. difficile is proving alarmingly deadly, and new research from the University of Virginia School of Medicine not only explains why but also suggests a way to stop it.

Griffith University tropical disease researchers have joined together with a host of international laboratories to advance drug discovery for major topical diseases through the creation and testing of the Malaria Box.

In a paper published this week in the top journal PLoS Pathogens, the global team present findings on a panel of 400 chemical compounds -- dubbed the "Malaria Box" -- with potential application as therapeutic starting points for diseases like malaria, trypanosomiasis and toxoplasmosis.