The family stories are remarkably, painfully, similar.

They begin begin with toddlers developing well, and happily. Then they are taken to the doctor's office for routine vaccines which, in the early 1990s, often were bundled together.

A week after the shots, the devastation begins: loss of speech and eye contact, high fever, constant pain, screaming, bowel problems, no sleep. The children no longer respond to their names; later, they are diagnosed with autism or related disorders.

The relative amount of protein, carbohydrate, and fat that people choose to eat may be influenced by genetics, according to new research. Jose Ordovas, PhD, director of the Nutrition and Genomics Laboratory at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University (USDA HNRCA), and colleagues found that the apolipoprotein A-II gene (APOA2) is associated with proportions of fat, carbohydrate, and protein in the diet, along with total calories and, therefore, with body-mass-index (BMI). These results, published in Clinical Chemistry, are the first to show that the APOA2 gene is linked to food preferences that shape dietary patterns, particularly preferences for dietary fat.

Ordovas, corresponding author, and colleagues analyzed genetic alleles, or variants, in the APOA2 promoter, a region that controls expression, or behavior, of the APOA2 gene. The alleles of the APOA2 promoter, T and C, form combinations; TT, TC, and CC, which indicate genotype. Of more than 1,000 study participants, approximately 85 percent had the common TT and TC genotypes, whereas 15 percent of participants had the CC genotype. "Both men and women with the CC genotype had a statistically significant higher intake of fat than people with the TT and TC genotypes," says Ordovas. "People with the CC genotype also consumed an average of 200 more calories per day and were nearly two times more likely to be obese, as compared to those with the two more common alleles."

In addition to preference for dietary fat, the researchers found evidence that the APOA2 gene influences preferences for protein and carbohydrate. People with the CC genotype consumed higher absolute amounts of protein and lower absolute amounts of carbohydrate than those with the TT and TC genotypes. "People with the CC genotype also exhibited dietary patterns with a lower amount of carbohydrate relative to fat and protein than people with the TT and TC genotypes," says Ordovas, "despite their caloric intake or BMI."

Study participants, who were part of the Genetics of Lipid Lowering Drugs and Diet Network (GOLDN) Study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, were asked to fill out dietary and lifestyle questionnaires. Researchers measured participants' weight, height, and waist and hip circumference, along with blood lipid levels both before and after a high-fat meal.

The rise of sleeplessness in increasingly sophisticated economies such as Britain could lead to the creation of a "zombie nation".

Scientists fear that this lack of sleep could sap the ability of Western society to develop the next generation of technology.

Because of the rise of cheap labour in countries such as China, there has been an increasing emphasis in the West on the ability to innovate.

The Chancellor, Gordon Brown, said he wanted Britain to lead the world in science.

But yesterday an eminent chronobiologist told the Cheltenham Science Festival, sponsored by The Daily Telegraph, that a "zombie nation" could sleep walk to economic disaster.

Two prominent prostate cancer experts have been threatened for opposing approval of a controversial new drug and are being protected by bodyguards as they attend the nation's largest cancer conference here.

A man has sued the maker of the health drink Boost Plus, claiming the vitamin-enriched beverage gave him an erection that would not subside and caused him to be hospitalized.

The lawsuit filed by Christopher Woods of New York said he bought the nutrition beverage made by the pharmaceutical company Novartis AG at a drugstore on June 5, 2004, and drank it.

Woods' court papers say he woke up the next morning "with an erection that would not subside" and sought treatment that day for the condition, called severe priapism.

They say Woods, 29, underwent surgery for implantation of a Winter shunt, which moves blood from one area to another.

But TB specialists said yesterday that the real importance of the case is that it is a warning: People everywhere should brace themselves for many more cases of the drug-resistant airborne germ in the months and years ahead.

"This is the tiniest tip of the iceberg," said Dr. Paul Farmer , a Harvard professor who has treated drug-resistant TB in Haiti, Peru, and Siberia. "We need to take excellent care of our own but also acknowledge that we're lucky as a nation: We have little TB, drug resistant or otherwise. We need to think about this much more globally."

A Canadian researcher on Monday called for an investigation into why children from broken marriages are twice as likely to be prescribed attention-deficit drugs as children whose parents remain together.

University pf Alberta professor Lisa Strohschein reported in the Canadian Medical Association Journal more than 6 percent of 633 children from divorced families were prescribed Ritalin, compared with 3.3 percent of children whose parents stayed together.

If ever a man's been 10,000 miles in the mouth of graveyard, Dr. Doug Rokke has, for when you really look into Depleted Uranium, as he has, time and space open wide to reveal tombstones of future generations.

To hear Rokke (Rocky) tell it, he's lost friends, colleagues and portions of his own corpus to Depleted Uranium (DU to those in the field). He's been shot at, run off the road, and had his good name smeared in the press.

As an Army expert on DU deployment during and following the first Gulf War, he stopped cooperating with Army DU policy when he realized not all its victims were designated enemies, and that his own government was in denial about this reality. Rokke says most American casualties in the First Gulf War were the result of friendly fire involving DU weapons.

Researchers have announced the first drug to make major inroads against liver cancer, one of the more voracious forms of the disease.

Nexavar, made by Bayer, gave patients with advanced liver cancer 44 percent more time to live, compared to patients who did not receive the drug, according to results presented Monday at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, in Chicago.

A revolutionary technique being developed by British scientists could cure blindness in millions of people around the world.

The first 45-minute operations could take place within five years and could be as commonplace as cataract surgery in a decade.

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