Health & Wellness
Salmonella is serving up a surprise not only for tomato lovers around the country but also for scientists who study the rod-shaped bacterium that causes misery for millions of people.
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| ©Janice Carr
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| This scanning electron micrograph (SEM) depicts four highly magnified rod-shaped, motile, Gram-negative Salmonella infantis bacteria, which are attached.
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In research published June 4 in the online journal
PloS One, researchers say they've identified a molecular trick that may explain part of the bacteria's fierceness. A team from the University of Rochester Medical Center has identified a protein that allows the bacteria to maintain a low profile in the body, giving the bacteria crucial time to quietly gain a foothold in an organism before the immune system is roused to fight the invader.
KNDOSat, 14 Jun 2008 17:08 UTC
Washington - A study finds woman veterans aren't getting equal medical care at many Department of Veteran Affairs facilities.
A review of care mandated by congress found that at about one third of its VA facilities, the quality of outpatient care given to women wasn't as good as what was offered to men.
For many residents of Lower Manhattan, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, had lasting psychological consequences. New findings, released today by the Health Department's World Trade Center Health Registry, show that one in eight Lower Manhattan residents likely had posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) two to three years after the attacks. The findings show that Lower Manhattan residents developed PTSD at three times the usual rate in the years following 9/11. The rate among residents (12.6%) matched the rate previously reported among rescue and recovery workers (12.4%). Residents who were injured during the attacks were the most likely to develop PTSD. The new study, published online this week in the
Journal of Traumatic Stress, is available online
here.
While the act of selecting an everyday writing utensil seems to be a simple enough task, scientists have found that it actually could shed light on complex cultural differences.
Psychologists Toshio Yamagishi, Hirofumi Hashimoto and Joanna Schug from Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan used the seemingly simple task of pen choice to determine if Japanese and American cultural differences are a function of social constraints. According to the scientists, previous psychological research on the topic has been flawed since it tends to attribute an individual's culture-specific behavior to their inherent preferences.
"In this perspective, preferences are the dominant determinants of behavior only in a social vacuum where individuals do not need to consider the reactions of others," wrote the authors in the June 2008 issue of Psychological Science, a publication of the Association for Psychological Science. "And we believe cultural psychologists would agree that culture-specific behavior does not occur in a social vacuum."
For the first time, UCLA researchers have discovered that people with sleep apnea show tissue loss in brain regions that help store memory. Reported in the June 27 edition of the journal
Neuroscience Letters, the findings emphasize the importance of early detection of the disorder, which afflicts an estimated 20 million Americans.
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| ©UCLA/Harper lab
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| Brain scans reveal that the mammillary bodies (in box) of a sleep apnea patient (right) are smaller than those of a control subject (left).
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Childhood vaccinations have become a very controversial topic over the past decade. In 1983, 10 vaccines were recommended for a child from birth to age six by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Today, the CDC recommends up to 36 vaccinations in the first six years of life. More families are stepping up and shunning inoculations. They are opting out for religious, medical or philosophical reasons. Every state has exemption vaccinations laws. Some states allow only medical and religious exemption, while others allow philosophical exemption. Less than one percent of school-age children in each state have exemption from vaccines, but the numbers are going up. The rates of opt out requests have nearly doubled in many school districts across the country. This means more and more kids are in school and are not vaccinated. This has the medical community concerned for general public health.
WASHINGTON - The toll from salmonella-tainted tomatoes jumped to 228 illnesses Thursday as the government learned of five dozen previously unknown cases and said it is possible the food poisoning contributed to a cancer patient's death.
Six more states - Florida, Georgia, Missouri, New York, Tennessee and Vermont - reported illnesses related to the outbreak, bringing the number of affected states to 23.
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| ©AP Photo/Toby Talbot
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| Tomatoes with vines still attached are on sale at the Hunger Mountain Cooperative in Montpelier, Vt., Tuesday, June 10, 2008. U.S. officials hunted for the source of a salmonella outbreak in 17 states linked to three types of raw tomatoes, while the list of supermarkets and restaurants yanking those varieties from shelves and dishes grew. Cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes, tomatoes sold with the vine still attached and homegrown tomatoes are likely not the source of the outbreak, federal officials said.
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The Food and Drug Administration has not pinpointed the source of the outbreak. With the latest known illness striking on June 1, officials also are not sure if all the tainted tomatoes are off the market.
Short sleep time is associated with overweight in children and adolescents, a core aspect of which may be attributed to reduced REM sleep, according to a research abstract that will be presented on Thursday at SLEEP 2008, the 22nd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS).
The study, authored by Xianchen Liu, MD, PhD, of the University of Pittsburgh, focused on 335 participants between seven and 17 years of age, who underwent three consecutive nights of standard polysomnography, or an overnight sleep test, and weight and height assessment as part of study on the development of childhood internalizing disorders (depression and anxiety).
A history of chronic insomnia in parents is not only associated with elevated risk for insomnia but also with elevated risks for use of hypnotics, psychopathology and suicidal behavior in adolescent offspring, according to a research abstract that will be presented on Thursday at SLEEP 2008, the 22nd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS).
The study, authored by Xianchen Liu, MD, PhD, of the University of Pittsburgh, focused on 798 teenagers (450 boys and 348 girls), with an average age of 14.4 years, who completed a sleep and health questionnaire.
According to the results, compared with adolescents of parents without insomnia, participants of insomnia parents were more than twice more likely to report insomnia, daytime fatigue, and use of hypnotics. Adolescents of insomnia parents were also more likely to have depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation and suicide attempts during the past year.
Teens who repeatedly cut themselves are more likely to engage in risky sexual behavior, increasing their chances of possibly contracting HIV, according to a study in the June issue of the Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics.
Researchers from the Bradley Hasbro Children's Research Center in Providence, R.I. report that frequent self-cutters - teens who have cut themselves more than three times - used condoms less consistently, were more likely to share cutting instruments, and had less self-restraint. The study is the first to examine whether these teens engage in the same level of risk behaviors as those who've only experimented with cutting once or twice.
"This study sheds some much-needed light on the relationship between frequency of self-cutting and sexual risk, which could prove critical, given the rising rates of self-injury among adolescents," says lead author Larry K. Brown, M.D., of the Bradley Hasbro Children's Research Center (BHCRC). "Basically, we found that greater frequency seems to imply greater HIV risk, as these teens were more likely to share cutting instruments and participate in other risky activities that can expose them to HIV and other diseases."
