Health Problems News

Chronic wasting disease (CWD) did not cross the species barrier to infect cynomolgus macaque monkeys during a lengthy investigation by National Institutes of Health scientists exploring risks to humans. CWD is a type of brain-damaging and fatal prion disease found in deer, elk and moose; in humans, prion diseases can take more than a decade

Preterm labor, a common pregnancy complication, has long been a mystery to scientists. But a new study from UC San Francisco shows it may sometimes happen when the fetal immune system “wakes up” too early and begins to reject the mother, causing the uterus to start contracting. The researchers think the fetal immune system becomes

It’s DNA, but not as we know it. In a world first, Australian researchers have identified a new DNA structure — called the i-motif — inside cells. A twisted ‘knot’ of DNA, the i-motif has never before been directly seen inside living cells. The new findings, from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, are published

Parents and adults spend a lot of time worrying about the influence of friends and peers when it comes to teen substance use – drinking alcohol, binge drinking, marijuana use and other illicit drugs. Is it all about an adolescent’s environment, their friends, peers and family, or is there a genetic component that drives their

A new study in medical students finds that summer, not winter, is the season when people are most likely to have higher levels of circulating stress hormones. These non-intuitive findings contradict traditional concepts of the taxing physical toll of winter and the relaxed ease of summer. Researchers will present their findings today at the American

What if human brain tissue implanted into a pig transferred some of the donor’s self-awareness and memories? Such a scenario, out of reach for now, is becoming more and more conceivable, according to a group of scientists, ethicists, and philosophers who called Wednesday for a debate on the ethics of storing and using human brain

Black beats red as the colour of choice when it comes to finding new love, according to new research based on the hit TV series First Dates, which shows that single people wear more of the darker hue when meeting a potential partner for the first time. The study builds on previous research into the

Researchers from the University of Surrey, Instituto Universitario in Portugal and University of Padua in Italy, studied whether heterosexual, homosexual and lesbian men and women believe their voice is an indicator of their sexual orientation to others and their desire for it to be disclosed. Surveying 241 men and women (heterosexual, homosexual and lesbian) researchers

Blades made from human thigh bones were far superior to cassowary daggers, study finds. Some people just have the best job. Anthropologists at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire got to play around with awesome daggers as part of a new study they’ve just published in the journal Royal Society Open Science. The team was researching

(HealthDay)—Evening preference and a later breakfast are associated with elevated body mass index (BMI) in adults with type 2 diabetes, according to a study published online April 13 in Diabetic Medicine. Hataikarn Nimitphong, M.D., from Mahidol University in Bangkok, and colleagues examined the correlations among meal timing, morning-evening preference, and BMI in 210 non-shift workers

(HealthDay)—For patients with peripheral artery disease (PAD), a home-based exercise intervention does not improve walking ability over nine months compared with usual care, according to a study published in the April 24 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Mary M. McDermott, M.D., from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago,

Mobile health applications (apps) for improving diagnostic decision-making often lack clinical evaluation, but one app that has undergone testing by researchers is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention PTT Advisor. In a recently published study in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, researchers from Baylor College of Medicine and the CDC evaluated

Gun deaths have fallen in California over a 16-year period ending in 2015, driven largely by a decline in gang violence and falling homicide rates among black and Hispanic male victims, a recent study of firearm violence has found. Researchers at the University of California, Davis published their findings in the May issue of the

Many people of African heritage are protected against malaria by inheriting a particular version of a gene, a large-scale study has shown. Another variation of the same gene can have the opposite effect of raising susceptibility to malaria – but it reduces the risk of other common childhood diseases, the study found. The findings give

Donor age does not appear to influence the functionality of stem cells derived from adult body tissues, concludes a new review. The analysis of research on induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) finds that not only are typical signs of aging reversed in iPSCs, but cells derived from both older and younger donors show the same

Slides, swings, seesaws, a ring toss, and selfie booth after selfie booth filled with everything from fake money to bubbles, balloons and cascading confetti. Beautycon was one big playground for the 20,000 attendees who streamed to New York’s Jacob K. Javits Convention Center this past weekend — a crowd that ran the gamut from Paris Hilton

Hospitals in the UK are increasingly likely to recognise that a patient has dementia after they’ve been admitted for a different reason, finds a new UCL-led study, but it is still only recognised in under two-thirds of people. This is the first study to identify an improvement in dementia diagnosis in hospitals over time, and

Washington State University researchers have developed a low-cost, portable laboratory on a phone that works nearly as well as clinical laboratories to detect common viral and bacterial infections. The work could lead to faster and lower-cost lab results for fast-moving viral and bacterial epidemics, especially in rural or lower-resource regions where laboratory equipment and medical

A cross-like shape helps the electrodes of implantable neurostimulation devices to deliver more charge to specific areas of the nervous system, possibly prolonging device life span, says research published in March in Scientific Reports. The shape, called “fractal,” would be particularly useful for stimulating smaller areas, such as deep brain structures or the retina, since

A new RAND Corporation paper finds that artificial intelligence has the potential to upend the foundations of nuclear deterrence by the year 2040. While AI-controlled doomsday machines are considered unlikely, the hazards of artificial intelligence for nuclear security lie instead in its potential to encourage humans to take potentially apocalyptic risks, according to the paper.