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One third of stunting and a quarter of deaths among under 3s in poor countries could be prevented

If existing maternal and child nutrition interventions were implemented in poor countries, cases of stunting among under 3s could be reduced by a third, and deaths by up to a quarter, according to new research being published today.

24 Jan 2008

Northwestern Memorial trial may wean kidney transplant patients off antirejection drugs

After a transplant surgery, anti-rejection drugs for the organ recipient are a must, but with prolonged use can have serious side effects, including infections, heart disease and cancer.

24 Jan 2008

No high quality studies on reducing MRSA infection in nursing homes for elderly people

Nursing homes for older people provide environments where bacteria such as meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) are likely to thrive.

24 Jan 2008

Nitrogen fixation process in plants to combat drought in various species of legumes

The regulation of the biological fixation of nitrogen in hydric stress conditions varies with the different species of legume plants studied.

24 Jan 2008

New method enables design, production of extremely novel drugs

A new chemical synthesis method based on a catalyst worth many times the price of gold and providing a far more efficient and economical method than traditional ones for designing and manufacturing extremely novel pharmaceutical compounds is described by its University at Buffalo developers in a review article in the current issue of Nature.

24 Jan 2008

The decline of modern day fertility

Researchers at the University of Sheffield have shown that mothers are choosing to have fewer children in order to give their children the best start in life, but by doing so are going against millenia of human evolution.

24 Jan 2008

Less education may lead to delayed awareness of Alzheimer's onset

A review of epidemiological data has found evidence that people who spend fewer years in school may experience a slight but statistically significant delay in the realization that they're having cognitive problems that could be Alzheimer's disease.

24 Jan 2008

Intensive education can help patients with acute low-back pain

People with low-back pain who were given an additional individual two and a half-hour education session with a trained specialist on top of their usual care did better than those given normal care alone.

24 Jan 2008

Health insurance co-payments deter mammography use

When faced with even a modest health insurance co-payment for a mammogram, significantly fewer women receive these potentially life-saving breast cancer screenings, according to a new study by Brown University and Harvard Medical School researchers.

24 Jan 2008

Few strategies exist to prevent MRSA spread in nursing homes

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureu (MRSA) is making news as a dangerous, sometimes fatal disease for hospital patients, and in recent cases, students.

24 Jan 2008

Experimental procedure induces tolerance to mismatched kidney transplants

Four of five patients participating in a trial of an experimental protocol designed to induce immune tolerance to HLA-mismatched kidney transplants have been able to discontinue immunosuppressive drugs.

24 Jan 2008

Engineers use blood's hydrodynamics to manipulate stem, cancer cells

A tiny, implantable device has pulled adult stem cells out of a living rat with a far greater purity than any present technique.

24 Jan 2008

Candidate malaria vaccine shows promise

A small clinical trial conducted by an international team of researchers in Mali has found that a candidate malaria vaccine was safe and elicited strong immune responses in the 40 Malian adults who received it.

24 Jan 2008

Does mood matter?

Sure, you're more likely to give things a favorable evaluation when you're happy, and a negative evaluation when you're sad.

24 Jan 2008

Cranberries might help prevent urinary infections in women

Evidence supports drinking cranberry juice a familiar home remedy to treat urinary tract infection (UTI), according to a new review from Scotland.

24 Jan 2008

Computer-based tool aids research, helps thwart questionable publication practices

A new computer-based text-searching tool developed by UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers automatically and quickly compares multiple documents in a database for similarities, providing a more efficient method to carry out literature searches, as well as offering scientific journal editors a new tool to thwart questionable publication practices.

24 Jan 2008

Cigarettes leave deadly path by purging protective genes

A University of Rochester scientist discovered that the toxins in cigarette smoke wipe out a gene that plays a vital role in protecting the body from the effects of premature aging.

24 Jan 2008

Antioxidants such as vitamins C and E don't prevent pre-eclampsia

Taking vitamins C or E during pregnancy will not reduce a woman's risk of experiencing pre-eclampsia, a Cochrane Systematic Review has concluded.

24 Jan 2008

Adaptive functional evolution of leptin in cold-adaptive pika family

Researchers at the Northwest Institute of Plateau Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences have put forward the viewpoint for the first time that adaptive functional evolution may occur in the leptin protein of the pika (Ochotona) family, a typical cold-adaptive mammal.

24 Jan 2008