Health News

The Human Microbiome: Ecological Forces Structure Your Body's Personal Mix Of Microbes

Date: Jul-19-2013
Environmental conditions have a much stronger influence on the mix of microbes living in various parts of your body than does competition between species. Instead of excluding each other, microbes that fiercely compete for similar resources are more likely to cohabit the same individual. This phenomenon was discovered in a recent study of the human microbiome - the vast collection of our resident bacteria, fungi, and other tiny organisms. The findings were published in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)...

Sexually Active East Asian-Canadian Adolescents More Likely To Engage In High-Risk Sexual Behaviours

Date: Jul-19-2013
A new study by University of British Columbia researchers shows that although 90 per cent of East Asian adolescents in British Columbia are not sexually active, those who are may engage in high-risk sexual behaviours. "Most East Asian-Canadian adolescents have not had sex, but among those who have, one in four used alcohol or drugs before sex last time, and one-third have had two or more partners," says Yuko Homma, lead author and a post-doctoral research fellow with UBC School of Nursing. "Nearly half the girls had not used a condom...

No Place To Hide: Evolutionary Forensics

Date: Jul-19-2013
The rapid molecular evolution of hepatitis C virus (HCV) has been used to help incriminate the source of an outbreak in two Spanish hospitals in the late nineties. The evolutionary techniques used, described in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Biology, also helped separate those who were infected by the person in question from those infected elsewhere during the same time period. In the days before deep sequencing became a cheap option scientists used partial sequencing of HCV to help convict an anesthetist of infecting 275 patients with this virus...

Not jesting: humans really do have "bird brains"

Date: Jul-19-2013
The term "bird brain" could be accurate for humans after all, as researchers reveal that the human brain has similar wiring to that of a bird, according to a study published in the journal Frontiers In Computational Neuroscience. Researchers from Imperial College London in the UK have developed the first brain map of a typical bird. The map shows how different regions of the brain are connected in order to process information. To create the map, the research team analyzed 34 studies of the anatomy of a pigeon's brain. They focused on the area of "hub nodes...

Visit gym or take a pill? Drug mimics exercise

Date: Jul-19-2013
Science gets a lethargic cheer from lazy people around the world this week, as a study published in Nature magazine reveals that we may one day be able to take a compound that produces similar effects in the body as exercise. The study comes from researchers at the Scripps Institute in Jupiter, FL, who injected overweight mice with a compound they created. As reported in the New York Times, the results show that the researchers' compound increased activation of Rev-erb, a protein involved in controlling circadian rhythms and biological clocks...

Vegetarians, vegans and elderly at higher risk of B12 deficiency

Date: Jul-19-2013
Vegetarians, vegans and the elderly are at high risk of developing vitamin B12 deficiency through changes in their diets, according to a review of scientific studies published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Researchers from The United Graduate School of Agricultural Sciences of Tottori University and the Department of Nutrition of the Junior College of Tokyo in Japan reviewed nearly 100 scientific studies analyzing vitamin B12...

Food Choice During Times Of Stress Driven By Habits, Not Cravings

Date: Jul-19-2013
Putting a new spin on the concept of "stress eating," research presented at the 2013 Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) Annual Meeting & Expo® found that people who eat during times of stress typically seek the foods they eat out of habit - regardless of how healthy or unhealthy that food is. The research co-authored and presented by David Neal, Ph.D., a psychologist and founding partner at Empirica Research, contradicts the conventional wisdom that people who are stressed-out turn to high-calorie, low-nutrient comfort food...

Molecular Relative Of P53 Tumor Suppressor Protein Also Helps Cancer Cells Thrive

Date: Jul-19-2013
They say you can pick your friends, but not your family. The same may hold true for related proteins. The protein TAp73 is a relative of the well-known, tumor-suppressor protein p53. It shares extensive common gene sequences with p53 and, as suggested by some previous studies, it may function similar to p53 to prevent tumor formation...

Study Examines Effects Of Aural Atresia On Speech Development, Learning

Date: Jul-18-2013
Daniel R. Jensen, M.D., of the Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, and colleagues examined the effects of aural atresia (AA, a congenital absence or stenosis of the external auditory canal with middle ear anomalies and almost always accompanied by a malformed or absent external ear) on speech development and learning. In the researchers' review of patient records, 74 patients met the criteria: 48 with right-sided AA, 19 with left-sided AA and seven with bilateral AA...

Smokers Who Try E-Cigarettes To Quit Are Younger And More Motivated To Quit

Date: Jul-18-2013
New research from the American Journal of Public Health finds that smokers who use e-cigarettes as a tool to quit tend to be younger and more motivated to quit smoking. A Hawaii-based survey analyzed responses from self-identified smokers who had consumed at least three cigarettes a day and at least 100 cigarettes in their lifetime. The survey asked participants if they had ever used e-cigarettes to quit smoking and captured additional demographic information...