A study in mice suggests a connection between sunlight, estrogen and aggression in male mammals. During short winter days, estrogen prompts male Oldfield mice to be more aggressive, but the hormone decreases aggression during long summer days, says a team from Ohio State University. Oldfield mice are commonly found in the southeastern United States.
Grape seed extract significantly inhibited the growth of colorectal tumors in both laboratory cell cultures and in mice, U.S. researchers report. A team from the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver says mice given the extract displayed a 44 percent reduction in the size of advanced colorectal tumors.
A new U.S. study finds that marijuana may help slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers from Ohio State University in Columbus found that marijuana may contain compounds that can slow memory loss associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
A Canadian population-based cohort study has revealed that medical induction of labour increases the risk of amniotic-fluid embolism. The study was led by Dr. Michael Kramer, Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Senior Investigator from McGill University, and will be published in the October 21st issue of The Lancet.
A loving, supportive family can be enough to override a genetic vulnerability to depression, new research suggests. Studies have found that people who carry a “short” version of the serotonin transporter gene — known as 5-HTTLPR — tend to be more susceptible to depression than people without this gene variant. But the new findings, published in the journal Biological Psychiatry, show that to be true only of gene carriers who grew up in a stressful home environment. In contrast, the investigators found that young adult gene carriers whose families were warm and supportive had a reduced risk of depression.
Having a positive outlook makes life more enjoyable, and it may also lower blood pressure in older adults. Among more than 2,500 people aged 65 or older, the higher a person scored on a questionnaire measuring positive emotions, the lower was his or her blood pressure. “Our thoughts and emotions do affect our physical processes,” Dr. Glenn V. Ostir of the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, the study’s lead author, told. “The nice thing is that we have some control over that.”
Taking supplements of the hormone dehydroepiandrosterone, better known as DHEA, does not improve body composition, physical performance, insulin sensitivity, or quality of life in elderly adults, according to a report in The New England Journal of Medicine. The new findings strongly contradict advertisements promoting these supplements as anti-aging compounds, lead author Dr. K. Sreekumaran Nair, from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and colleagues conclude.
According to a review of clinical trials, benefits of pioglitazone for type 2 diabetes is unclear. Marketed by Takeda Pharmaceuticals and Eli Lilly & Co. as Actos, pioglitazone belongs to a class of drugs called thiazolidinediones that work by increasing the body’s sensitivity to insulin, to better control patients’ blood sugar. It is used alone or in combination with other drugs if diabetes can’t be controlled by diet and exercise.
Impaired thinking may follow the onset or worsening of celiac disease, a common digestive disorder triggered by eating wheat products and other foods containing the protein gluten, as reported in the Archives of Neurology by Dr. Keith A. Josephs and colleagues from the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, who studied 13 patients who experienced cognitive decline within 2 years of the onset or worsening of celiac disease.
In the future doctors may be able to detect the spread of cancer by simply listen for it, researchers reported on Tuesday. Researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia said they used a technique called photoacoustic detection to pick up the characteristic vibrations of melanoma cells in the blood.