Public Health

In trying to understand the role of prostaglandins – a family of fatty compounds key to the cardiovascular system – in blood pressure maintenance, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and colleagues discovered that mice that lack the receptor for one type of prostaglandin have lower blood pressure and less atherosclerosis than their non-mutant brethren.  The results indicate that the normal role for the type of prostaglandin studied, PG F2-alphais to increase blood pressure and accelerate atherosclerosis, at least in rodents, and suggest that targeting this…

More restaurants and vending machines offer healthy choices these days, so why do Americans' waistlines continue to expand? A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research shows that some efforts to control eating may backfire. Consumers may feel they have fulfilled a healthy eating goal even if they choose an unhealthy food, and the presence of a healthy option among food choices may draw their attention to the least-healthy choice available, according to authors Keith Wilcox (City University of New York), Beth Vallen (Loyola College), Lauren Block (City University of New York), and Gavan J…

In Sierra Leone mothers use caustic soda to home-make soap, and children often exchange it for water and drink it. During 2008 alone, 249 children have been admitted in the surgical pediatric unit of the Emergency center in Goderich, near Freetown - a number twice higher than that recorded in 2007. Patients who ingested caustic soda are subjected to periodic esophageal dilatation, which is the only way to give them the hope of autonomous nutrition and thus a life. Emergency is an independent, neutral and non-political Italian organization, which provides free, high-quality medical and…

My mailbox has an automated spam filter, but often some smarter messages seep through and end in there; since, however, I already receive hundreds of emails a day, I am not too happy to entertain myself with ones I do not need: so I have developed a sort of instinct to automatically ignore messages which are likely to be spam. Wrong! My brain is indeed a neural network, but its defect is I trust it too much. Minutes ago I received a message I was about to ignore without even opening it: the red flags were the unknown, uncommon name of the sender (a Becky Meisels), and the words "Gates…

Drugs and radiotherapy given for cancer can cause unpleasant side effects such as nausea and vomiting, mouth sores, dermatitis, and menopausal symptoms. Around a third of patients with cancer use complementary therapies, including homeopathic medicines, to try to reduce these side effects. In a systematic review of randomised controlled trials, Cochrane Researchers examined recent evidence for the safety and effectiveness of homeopathic medicines used in this way. The review included eight studies involving a total of 664 participants. One study with 256 participants found that skin…

Three recent African trials support male circumcision for reducing the risk of contracting HIV in heterosexual men. After including new data from these trials in their review, Cochrane Researchers have changed their previous conclusions that there was insufficient evidence to recommend circumcision as an intervention to prevent HIV infection in heterosexual men. "Research on the effectiveness of male circumcision for preventing HIV in heterosexual men is conclusive. No further trials are required to establish that HIV infection rates are reduced in heterosexual men for at least the first two…

It is a fact of science that people who consume fewer calories than they burn will lose weight.  It is 100 percent effective.   But it is equally well-known that some people cannot do that and neuroscience has yet to find a reasonable explanation for it. For those who truly cannot lose weight by a disciplined approach to diet and exercise, surgery is a last resort but Nick Nicholson, M.D., weight loss surgeon on the medical staff at Baylor Regional Medical Center at Plano,  says outside the usual benefits, surgery can actually improve other health conditions.  Here are 5…

Can we really design an insecticide that gets around the evolution of resistance? Check out this paper in PLoS biology today on how to make an evolution-proof insecticide against malaria-bearing mosquitos. The trick, argue the authors, is to design a pesticide that kills only older mosquitos, avoiding strong selection for resistance: Our argument derives from the following observations. First, female mosquitoes convert a blood meal into eggs and oviposit in appropriate water bodies before seeking the next blood meal. This gonotrophic cycle takes 2–4 d [41,42]. Females contact insecticides…

Acupuncture cannot be shown to have any positive effect on hot flashes during the menopause, says the conclusion of a systematic review of literature by three groups in Daejon, Busan (South Korea) and Exeter (UK), published in the current edition of the peer-reviewed journal Climacteric. Many women are concerned by the unfavourable publicity given to HRT use, but still have to deal with the symptoms which can occur during and after the menopause. A significant minority of women look for alternatives to HRT to deal with these symptoms. Often these alternatives are untested, and it can be…

It’s the same story over and over: he enters a new environment, wastes it, and grabs what he needs from his surroundings to make a clever escape. But this time there’s less mullet and more microscope. Parasites like Plasmodium hijack your own enzymes to leave a dying cell, like opportunistic MacGyvers stuffing useful proteins into their microscopic man-purses. Plasmodium protozoans are the cause of malaria. In their final vertebrate host, a protozoan infects a red blood cell to replicate itself. After replication, the daughter protozoa use an enzyme called calpain to digest protein bonds in…