A study released today by the University of Minnesota’s “Project EAT” (Eating Among Teens) shows startling results of 2,500 female teenagers studied over a five-year period. The study found that high school-aged females’ use of diet pills nearly doubled from 7.5 to 14.2 percent. By the ages of 19 and 20, 20 percent of females surveyed used diet pills.
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Researchers at the University of Warwick are examining a way of using bacteria to manufacture a new suite of potential anti-cancer drugs that are difficult to create synthetically on a lab bench. The bacterium Streptomyces coelicolor naturally produce antibiotics called prodiginines.
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Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine say that how fast the amount of PSA (prostate-specific antigen) in a man’s blood increases, or PSA velocity (PSAV), is an accurate gauge of tumor aggression and danger, even when PSA levels are so low as to not warrant a biopsy.
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Chemistry researchers at UBC Okanagan — in the heart of B.C.’s wine country — have embarked on North America’s first large-scale examination of how contaminants such as unwanted yeasts and forest fire smoke can affect the aroma of wines.
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Patients with Type 2 diabetes and periodontal disease who receive periodontal therapy see levels of oxidative stress, a condition in which antioxidant levels are lower than normal, reduced to the same levels as nondiabetic patients, according to a new study that appeared in the November issue of the Journal of Periodontology (JOP).
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Radiation is a brutal and in many cases necessary part of cancer therapy. A small fraction of patients develop severe late radiation toxicity, months or years after their treatment. A new study now suggests that in the future scientists might be able to tell who is at higher risk for such late toxicity and adjust treatments accordingly.
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By living in a well-to-do neighborhood, poor people increase their risk of death, according to a new study by Stanford University School of Medicine researchers to be published in the December issue of the American Journal of Public Health.
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The major cause of blindness in this country is the death of photoreceptors — rods and cones — in the retina, a disease called macular degeneration. A possible new therapy involves inserting photoswitches into surviving retinal cells, giving them the gift of sight. NIH’s nanomedicine initiative just awarded UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkekley National Laboratory scientists $6 million to pursue this technique in mice.
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Women testing negative for the two inherited breast cancer genes are still at increased risk of developing the disease, suggests research published ahead of print in the Journal of Medical Genetics.
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The Hinode (formerly Solar-B) satellite, a joint Japan/NASA/PPARC mission launched on 22nd September 2006, has reported its first observations of the Sun with its suite of scientific instruments. The satellite was renamed “Hinode” which is Japanese for Sunrise, which is most appropriate since Hinode will watch at close hand massively explosive solar flares erupting from the Sun’s surface and rising into interstellar space.
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