Health & Wellness
Scientists studying the genetic make-up of these bugs, which are resistant to almost all antibiotics, say they are nearly identical clones that have emerged from a single bacterial strain, which they have dubbed USA300.
"The USA300 group of strains appears to have extraordinary transmissibility and fitness," said Frank DeLeo, a researcher with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in Hamilton, Montana.
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Then consider the food some people love to hate, and hand over a gift bag of broccoli along with that heart-shaped box of chocolates. Researchers in Connecticut are reporting impressive new evidence that eating broccoli may protect against heart disease.
Researchers have known for years that broccoli is a rich source of antioxidants, vitamins, and fiber that may protect against cancer, Dipak K. Das and colleagues note. Other studies also suggest that broccoli may benefit the heart, although scientists do not know how it works.
The benefit for caffeine drinkers also seemed strongest for women who had never used oral contraceptives or postmenopausal hormones, the researchers wrote in the journal Cancer.
The ink isn't even dry on the massive Vioxx settlement and already Big Pharma's been accused of burying clinical data, spinning journal articles and selling drugs that cause the conditions they're supposed to fix. Sound familiar?
Increasingly, genes are being linked in the mainstream press, on the Web and also in prestigious medical journals not only to medical conditions but also to behavioral conditions such as narcissism, aggressiveness, and in some instances to voting behavior. Linking disease to specific genes is becoming progressively more common among the American public, too. The increasing perception is that an individual's genes are the main cause of disease.
At Children's Hospital in Oakland, Calif., a famed nutritionist is convinced that widespread deficiency of vitamin D in the U.S. population leads to poor immune system and brain functioning, among other conditions.
And scientists at University of California-Davis this month were awarded $600,000 by the federal government to study the link between vitamin D and major diseases of the day.
The Italian government has set up an emergency commission to try and stop the spread of the disease, which affects milk production.
Requested by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration from the National Research Council last year, the report was released Jan 16. The authors did not evaluate potential human health effects of radio frequency, or RF, exposure from wireless devices, but rather made recommendations on how to meet research needs regarding the technology, said Barnes, a distinguished professor in the electrical and computer engineering department.
"This is a very, very complex issue," said Barnes. "Obviously we are not seeing immediate short-term effects of such exposure, like people dropping dead on their cell phones. But in the long term -- 10, 20 and 30 years out -- we have a lot less information about potential effects from these types of wireless devices."