Contrary to previous findings, new research finds no link between chronic fatigue syndrome and the viruses XMRV (xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus) and pMLV (polytropic murine leukemia virus). A study to be published on September 18 in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, reveals that research that reported patients with chronic fatigue syndrome carried these two viruses was wrong and that there is still no evidence for an infectious cause behind chronic fatigue syndrome.

"The bottom line is we found no evidence of infection with XMRV and pMLV. These results refute any correlation between these agents and disease," says Ian Lipkin of Columbia University, a co-author on the study.

Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), is a disabling condition in which sufferers experience persistent and unexplained fatigue as well as any of a host of associated problems, including muscle weakness, pain, impaired memory, and disordered sleep. Medical treatment for CFS/ME costs as much as $7 billion every year in the U.S. alone.

The possible causes of CFS/ME have been argued and researched for years with no success. Results from separate studies in 2009 and 2010 that reported finding retroviruses in the blood of patients with CFS/ME created a sensation among patients and the medical community and offered hope that a tractable cause for this disease had finally been found. Since then, other investigators have been unable to replicate the results of those studies, casting doubt on the idea that these viruses, XMRV and pMLV, could be behind CFS/ME.

Sandamalgama, Sri Lanka - In this tiny Sri Lankan village, rice farmer Wimal Rajaratna sits cross-legged on a wooden bed, peering out toward lush palm trees that surround his home. Listless and weak, the 46-year old father of two anxiously awaits word on whether his body can accept a kidney donation that offers his only chance of survival.

In Uddanam, India, a reed-thin farmer named Laxmi Narayna prepares for the grueling two-day journey he takes twice every week. For most of his 46 years, his job involved shimmying up palm trees to harvest coconuts at the top. He now spends most of his time negotiating the more than 100-mile bus trips he takes to receive the dialysis treatments that keep him alive.

Ten thousand miles away, in the Nicaraguan community of La Isla, Maudiel Martinez dreads returning to the rolling sugarcane fields where he spent most of his teenage years at work with a machete. Blood tests by the sugar company that employed him found that his kidneys were seriously damaged - and exertion beneath the tropical sun could tip the 20-year-old's health into a lethal spiral.

In three countries on opposite ends of the world, these men face the same deadly mystery: their kidneys are failing, and no one knows why.

A mysterious form of chronic kidney disease - CKD - is afflicting thousands of people in rural, agricultural communities in Sri Lanka, India and Central America. The struggle to identify its causes is baffling researchers across multiple continents and posing a lethal puzzle worthy of Sherlock Holmes.

The three epidemics have crucial threads in common. The victims are relatively young and mostly farm workers, and few suffer from diabetes and high blood pressure, the usual risk factors for renal disease. They experience a rare form of kidney damage, known as tubulo-interstitial disease, consistent with severe dehydration and toxic poisoning.

Egged on by massive food-industry marketing budgets, Americans eat a lot of sugary foods. We know the habit is quite probably wrecking our bodies, triggering high rates of overweight and diabetes. Is it also wrecking our brains?

That's the disturbing conclusion emerging in a body of research linking Alzheimer's disease to insulin resistance - which is in turn linked to excess sweetener consumption. A blockbuster story in the Sept. 3 issue of the UK magazine The New Scientist teases out the connections.

It's a wonder people spend billions of dollars on woefully ineffective and even harmful pharmaceuticals when our own spice racks contain so much natural healing power. And now, many recent studies back the millennia-old claims that spices have powerful healing properties.

Here are 5 organic spices possessing amazing healing properties to bolster your well-being and protect you from illness and disease.

Research published in the journal Pediatrics indicates that some dental composites -- long promoted as overall safer than mercury-based amalgams -- are having a significant negative impact on the psychosocial functioning of children. In fact, bisphenol-A based dental restorations were found to be worse than mercury-based amalgams when it came to learning impairment and behavioral issues. [i]

The study used data from The New England Children's Amalgam Trial, which, surprisingly, found that children randomized to amalgam restorations had better psychosocial outcomes than those assigned to bisphenol-A based epoxy resin composites (bisGMA) for tooth restorations. The new analysis aimed to "examine whether greater exposure to dental composites is associated with psychosocial problems in children."

The results of the study, which looked at a group of 534 children, 6 to 10 years old, were as follows:

Genetically engineered wheat contains an enzyme suppressor that, when consumed by humans, could cause permanent liver failure (and death). That's the warning issued today by molecular biologist Jack Heinemann of the University of Canterbury in Australia.

Heinemann has published an eye-opening report that details this warning and calls for rigorous scientific testing on animals before this crop is ever consumed by humans. The enzyme suppressor in the wheat, he says, might also attack a human enzyme that produces glycogen. Consumers who eat genetically modified wheat would end up contaminating their bodies with this enzyme-destroying wheat, causing their own livers to be unable to produce glycogen, a hormone molecule that helps the body regulate blood sugar metabolism. This, in turn, would lead to liver failure.

"What we found is that the molecules created in this wheat, intended to silence wheat genes, can match human genes, and through ingestion, these molecules can enter human beings and potentially silence our genes," said Heinemann in a press conference on the threat of GM wheat.

A woman who tried to help her friend save a cat that was choking on a mouse contracted Bubonic plague from the diseased feline, Portland health officials announced on Friday, September 14.

"Black Plague," or Bubonic plague, is a bacterial illness spread through the bite of infected fleas or through direct contact with an infected animal or person. Although the disease is now rare, Bubonic Plague killed an estimated 25 million Europeans in the Middle Ages and was once called the "Black Death." There have been about seven cases a year in the U.S., according to public health statistics.

A Chinese research team, led by Anhui Medical University and BGI, has found strong genetic evidence of a link between mutations of the mevalonate kinase gene (MVK) and disseminated superficial actinic porokeratosis (DSAP). It is a major step toward discovering the genetic pathogenesis of DSAP, and sheds light on its further molecular diagnosis and treatment.

The latest study was published online in Nature Genetics.

DSAP is a rare, non-cancerous, non-contagious skin disorder that causes dry, itchy lesions on the arms and legs. It usually begins to develop in adolescents and reach near-complete penetrance by the third or fourth decade of life. The accumulated sun exposure is a risk factor for DSAP. DSAP is a chronic disorder; it can be treated, but it cannot be cured.

In this study, Chinese researchers performed exome sequencing in two affected and one unaffected individuals who belong to a DSAP family. Through variants analysis and data filtering, they supposed that MVK gene emerged as the only candidate gene located in previously defined linkage region linked to DSAP. Then they confirmed the co-segregation between the identified novel deleterious mutation and DSAP phenotype within the family.

Kids who get migraine headaches are much more likely than other children to also have behavioral difficulties, including social and attention issues, and anxiety and depression. The more frequent the headaches, the greater the effect, according to research out now in the journal Cephalagia, published by SAGE.

Marco Arruda, director of the Glia Institute in São Paulo, Brazil, together with Marcelo Bigal of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York studied 1,856 Brazilian children aged 5 to 11. The authors say that this is the first large, community based study of its kind to look at how children's behavioural and emotional symptoms correlate with migraine and tension-type headaches (TTH), and to incorporate data on headache frequency.

Children with or suffering from migraine had a much greater overall likelihood of abnormal behavioral scores than controls, especially in somatic, anxiety-depressive, social, attention, and internalizing domains. Children with TTH were affected in the same domains as migraine sufferers, but to a lesser degree.

The study used internationally validated headache questionnaires as well as the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) to assess emotional symptoms. The researchers trained school teachers in how to walk parents through questionnaires step by step.

Research carried out at the University of South Carolina has identified novel mechanisms through which dioxin, a well-known environmental contaminant, can alter physiological functions, according to a study published online in the journal PLOS ONE.

The research team, which included Narendra Singh, Mitzi Nagarkatti and Prakash Nagarkatti of the USC School of Medicine, demonstrated that exposure to dioxin (TCDD) during pregnancy in an experimental mouse model can cause significant toxicity to the fetus, and specifically to the organs that produce the immune cells that fight infections. They found that dioxin alters small molecules called microRNAs, which can affect the expression of a large number of genes.

The study examined over 608 microRNAs, and 78 of these were significantly altered following exposure to dioxin. On the basis of the pattern of changes in these molecules, the team was also able to predict that dioxin can alter several genes that regulate cancer. Many other physiological systems were also affected, including those involved in reproductive, gastrointestinal, hematological, inflammation, renal and urological diseases as well as genetic, endocrine and developmental disorders.