Health News

New findings from South Africa lead researchers to call for worldwide recording of smoking in death registries

Date: Aug-24-2013
Researchers have called for official death registries in all countries to record whether the dead person was a smoker, in a research Article published in The Lancet. New analyses of nearly half a million death records in South Africa - the first, and so far the only, country to record smoking on death registration forms - show that the death rate from tobacco is more than twice as great in the coloured (mixed ancestry) as in the white population...

Some primates protected from Ebola, even after disease symptoms appear

Date: Aug-24-2013
Scientists have successfully treated the deadly Ebola virus in infected animals following onset of disease symptoms, according to a report published online in Science Translational Medicine. The results show promise for developing therapies against the virus, which causes hemorrhagic fever with human case fatality rates as high as 90 percent. According to first author James Pettitt of the U.S...

Surprise finding may change how virulent, painful infections are viewed

Date: Aug-24-2013
The pain of invasive skin infections caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, and possibly other serious, painful infections, appear to be induced by the invading bacteria themselves, and not by the body's immune response as previously thought, report scientists at Boston Children's Hospital. What's more, their research demonstrates that once the pain neurons "sense" the bacteria, they suppress the immune system, potentially helping the bacteria become more virulent...

Outbreak in Panama brought Latin America's first human cases of eastern equine encephalitis

Date: Aug-24-2013
In the summer of 2010, the eastern Panamanian province of Darien experienced a phenomenon that had never been seen before in Latin America: a human outbreak of eastern equine encephalitis. The mosquito-borne virus that causes the disease is found all over the Americas, and infects horses throughout its range. Human infections are diagnosed every year in North America and are taken quite seriously; they carry a 50 percent chance of mortality, and can result in lifelong neurological damage. But 2010 marked a dramatic change in the way the virus behaved in Latin America...

Researchers support disclosure of results of Alzheimer's test study results to participants; suggest guidance and counseling

Date: Aug-24-2013
A leading group of Alzheimer's researchers contends that, as biomarkers to detect signals of the disease improve at providing clinically meaningful information, researchers will need guidance on how to constructively disclose test results and track how disclosure impacts both patients and the data collected in research studies. A survey conducted by a group including experts from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania found that a majority of Alzheimer's researchers supported disclosure of results to study participants. The study is published online in Neurology...

Immune response to stress 'has effect on mood'

Date: Aug-24-2013
Scientists say they have discovered that mood is influenced by cells from the immune system, which are called to the brain in response to stress, according to a study published in The Journal of Neuroscience. Researchers from Ohio State University conducted a mouse study in order to find out how stress can lead to changes in mood. The study authors say the findings could help with the development of new drugs for the treatment of mood disorders. For the study, mice were subjected to stress equal to a person's response to stress in everyday life...

DNA from our mothers 'influences aging process'

Date: Aug-24-2013
Scientists say that the process through which we age is determined not only by the changes we go through in our lifetime, but also by the genes we get from our mothers, according to a study published in the journal Nature. Researchers from Karolinska Institute and the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Aging, say that the aging process appears to be very dependent on the power plant of each cell in the body - the mitochondrion...

Personality affects fertility rates, study shows

Date: Aug-24-2013
A remarkable new study published in the European Journal of Personality looks at effects of personality on how likely a person is to have children. So if you are an extravert, look out. You may be the most fertile Using survey and birth registry data for men and women born between 1927 to 1968 in Norway, researchers from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) combined personality surveys to examine the connections between fertility and personality for both men and women. They used questionnaire data from over 7,000 individuals...

What is peppermint?

Date: Aug-24-2013
Peppermint (Mentha piperita) is a sterile, hybrid plant, created from the blending of watermint (Mentha aquatica) and spearmint (Mentha spicata). Peppermint is used for adding flavor or fragrance to several foods, cosmetics, soaps, toothpastes, mouthwashes, and other products - it is also popular for medicinal purposes. Peppermint leaves can be used dried or fresh in teas. Indigenous to Europe, peppermint today is cultivated all over the world...

Investigators discover new gene-expression mechanism - a minor thing of major importance

Date: Aug-24-2013
A rare, small RNA turns a gene-splicing machine into a switch that controls the expression of hundreds of human genes. Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and professor of Biochemistry Gideon Dreyfuss, PhD, and his team from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, discovered an entirely new aspect of the gene-splicing process that produces messenger RNA (mRNA)...