The vast majority of adults have had a sore back at some point in their lives. If they're lucky, the pain subsides after a few days or weeks. But for some, whose initial injuries appear no different than the fortunate ones, back pain lasts for years. Now, researchers have discovered a difference in brain scans between the two groups of patients that appears early in the course of the pain. The finding could lead to not only ways of identifying patients who are the most at risk for long-term pain but to new treatments or preventions for chronic pain.

"This is the very first time we can say that if we have two subjects who have the same type of injury for the same amount of time, we can predict who will become a chronic pain patient versus who will not," says neuroscientist Vania Apkarian of Northwestern University, Chicago, who led the new work.

Over the past 2 decades, Apkarian's lab has run many studies comparing the brains of patients with chronic back pain with those of healthy people, finding differences in brain anatomy or the function of certain regions. But the study designs made it hard to sort out which brain changes were consequences of the chronic pain - or the patients' painkillers or altered lifestyles - versus those that drove the pain's chronic nature.

Apkarian and colleagues have now tracked the brains of back pain patients over time rather than comparing single neural snapshots. His team began with 39 people who had experienced moderate back pain - a five or six on a self-described scale of 10 - for 1 to 4 months. Over the next year, the team scanned the patients' brains four times and followed their pain. By year's end, 20 of the patients had recovered, while 19 continued to hurt, meeting the criteria for chronic pain.

To clean up its drugs that are contaminated with genotoxic ingredients (which are also carcinogenic), Big Pharma may deploy lab-created, nanosized, polymer-based scavengers.

But is the cure any safer?

New research explains that:

A variety of chemical compounds, intermediates, and reagents are used during the process of synthesizing active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). Some of these chemicals, intermediates, and reagents, as well as byproducts of synthetic processes, can have toxic properties and be present as impurities at low levels in the API or final drug formulation....

The kinetics of acrolein scavenging in the presence of the API iodixanol and the scavenging capacity of resins were demonstrated in this paper.

They found a nanopolymer so efficient it cleans up 97.8% of acrolein without eating the active pharmaceutical components.

Yum ... drugs with nanobots.

Patients unable to breathe because of acute lung failure or an obstructed airway need another way to get oxygen to their blood -- and fast -- to avoid cardiac arrest and brain injury. A team led by researchers at Boston Children's Hospital has designed tiny, gas-filled microparticles that can be injected directly into the bloodstream to quickly oxygenate the blood.

The microparticles consist of a single layer of lipids (fatty molecules) that surround a tiny pocket of oxygen gas, and are delivered in a liquid solution. In a cover article in the June 27 issue of Science Translational Medicine, John Kheir, MD, of the Department of Cardiology at Boston Children's Hospital, and colleagues report that an infusion of these microparticles into animals with low blood oxygen levels restored blood oxygen saturation to near-normal levels, within seconds.

When the trachea was completely blocked -- a more dangerous "real world" scenario -- the infusion kept the animals alive for 15 minutes without a single breath, and reduced the incidence of cardiac arrest and organ injury.

Genetically engineered ingredients show up in most of the processed foods in your shopping cart. Yet their long-term health effects remain unknown. The debate: Should those ingredients be labeled?

You don't have to look hard to find genetically modified food on supermarket shelves: More than 85 percent of the corn and soy grown in the United States comes from seeds whose DNA has been rejiggered (to increase yields), and those two crops play starring roles in countless processed foods, from soda to salad dressing to bread. Advocates say genetically modified (GM) foods allow farmers to produce more with fewer chemicals - which means a cleaner environment and cheaper groceries for us all. But the question remains: What impact do GM foods have on our health?

The answer is, no one really knows. GM foods have been on the market only since 1994, and research on their long-term effects on humans is scarce. To date most of the studies have been done on animals; worryingly, though, some of those studies link GM foods to altered metabolism, inflammation, kidney and liver malfunction, and reduced fertility. In one experiment, multiple generations of hamsters were fed a diet of GM soy; by the third generation, they were losing the ability to produce offspring, producing about half as many pups as the non-GM soy group.

Obese and lean individuals have different gut flora composition. The gut microbiota of mice and humans are similar, with Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes dominating. At this point it's not clear exactly which species are important in weight management. Some studies show reduced numbers of Bacteroidetes in obese subjects, while others point to lower levels of beneficial bacteria like Lactobacillus.

Even though diet will affect gut flora composition, most studies conclude that gut flora on it's own has an effect on weight. Alteration of the gut microbiota can be an important part of a weight loss program.

Several mechanisms have been proposed as to how gut flora regulates weight. Inflammation, energy from polysaccharides, insulin sensitivity and energy expenditure and storage are all affected by gut flora.

A few days ago, England's Euro 2012 football team lost a quarter-final match to Italy on penalties. This scenario has happened so regularly that one might call it the 'England finish'.

It has also happened so regularly that it hasn't been difficult to see a pattern emerging for some years: England just run out of energy; they aren't able to sustain 90 minutes of football.

The question is: Why? And the answer, which I have been convinced of for some years, was their rubbish carb-based diet. I am no lover of football, so have never watched a game, but commentaries on news bulletins spell out the form. To précis it, the England team always seem to start the game full of bounce, have most of the possession and often take the lead, then it all goes wrong. At half time they fill up on Jaffa cakes - and are so rubbish during the second half that they lose. But this, is exactly what I would expect.

Carbs not only result in reactive hypoglycaemia (you run out of blood glucose), they also raise serotonin, a hormone that makes you sleepy and slows you down. This is why people are advised to have a carb meal before going to bed. But both of these conditions are the last thing you should eat if you have to work - or play football.

Now a study just published in the Journal of the American Medical Association finds another good reason why the carbs, so favoured by the England team's nutritionists, are so devastating to their game: Carbs, it now appears, as well as everything else that is wrong with them, actively slow down the rate at which your body can use its energy.

Washington: In a new study, researchers have successfully reversed diabetes in mice using stem cells, thereby paving the way for a breakthrough treatment for a disease that affects millions worldwide.

The research by Timothy Kieffer, from University of British Columbia in collaboration with scientists from the New Jersey-based BetaLogics, is the first to show that human stem cell transplants can successfully restore insulin production and reverse diabetes in mice.

Crucially, they re-created the "feedback loop" that enables insulin levels to automatically rise or fall based on blood glucose levels.

After the stem cell transplant, the diabetic mice were weaned off insulin, a procedure designed to mimic human clinical conditions.

Three to four months later, the mice were able to maintain healthy blood sugar levels even when being fed large quantities of sugar.

Transplanted cells removed from the mice after several months had all the markings of normal insulin-producing pancreatic cells.

"We are very excited by these findings, but additional research is needed before this approach can be tested clinically in humans," Kieffer said.

"The studies were performed in diabetic mice that lacked a properly functioning immune system that would otherwise have rejected the cells. We now need to identify a suitable way of protecting the cells from immune attack so that the transplant can ultimately be performed in the absence of any immunosuppression," Kieffer added.

The study has been recently published online in Diabetes.

We've all heard that eating fish is good for our brains and memory. But what is it about DHA, an omega-3 fatty acid found in fish, that makes our memory sharper?

Researchers with the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry discovered a possible explanation and just published their findings in the peer-reviewed journal Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism.

Principal investigator Yves Sauve and his team discovered lab models fed a high-DHA diet had 30 per cent higher levels of DHA in the memory section of the brain, known as the hippocampus, when compared to animal models on a regular, healthy diet.

"We wanted to find out how fish intake improves memory," says Sauve, a medical researcher at the University of Alberta who works in the department of physiology, the department of ophthalmology and the Centre for Neuroscience.

Based on the premise that massage reduces anxiety, a collection of emerging research suggests that massage therapists are needed to work side-by-side with cardiologists, pulmonologists and gastroenterologists.

Anchored in strong beliefs about the significance of their work, most professional massage therapists are familiar with some of the emotional and physical benefits of bodywork. Massage's ability to foster relaxation and relieve anxiety seems obvious. However, the universally accepted consequences of intentional touch have been underestimated for far too long. Based on facts compiled by academics at Harvard University, an ability to reduce anxiety translates to a capacity for improving some of our culture's most widespread physiological ailments.