Periodontal disease — a progressive, eventually painful and disruptive condition in which bacteria attack gums and the hidden roots of teeth — develops much earlier than dentists and other health professionals thought, a major new study concludes.

Clinicians found a significant proportion of young adult patients examined had well-established periodontal disease despite no signs or symptoms. Affected pregnant women faced more than twice the risk of preterm birth and other pregnancy

Yale researchers report the first evidence that phantom pain following spinal cord injury is the result of hypersensitive neurons in the thalamic region of the brain that can be suppressed with specially designed molecular agents.

“A majority of people with spinal cord injury and limb amputations experience phantom sensations of excruciating pain at or below the level of their paralysis or loss,” said Bryan Hains, associate research scientist and co-author of the study.

Study may help find ways to prevent recurrence

Using a recently developed mouse model of breast cancer, a team from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine has shown that Snail, a molecule normally important in embryonic development, can promote breast cancer recurrence. They also found that high Snail expression predicts more rapid tumor recurrence in women who have been treated for breast cancer. These observations suggest that Snail may represent a target for can

A large study funded by NIH’s National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) provides, for the first time, detailed information comparing the effectiveness and side effects of five medications – both new and older medications – that are currently used to treat people with schizophrenia. Overall, the medications were comparably effective but were associated with high rates of discontinuation due to intolerable side effects or failure to adequately control symptoms. One new medication, olanzapine,

Salicylate causes membranes to thin, soften, rupture more easily

It’s well known that high doses of aspirin can cause ulcers and temporary deafness, but the biochemical mechanism responsible for these phenomena has never been deciphered. New research from Rice University offers clues, showing for the first time how salicylate — an active metabolite of aspirin — weakens lipid membranes. Researchers believe these mechanical changes disrupt the lining of the stomach, which functi

Because clinical depression is so disabling and affects more than 16 percent of adults in the United States at some time in their lives, researchers have worked hard to develop more effective treatments. But how much better are the newer pharmaceuticals?

Many second-generation antidepressants, despite differences in drug classification and cost, offer patients essentially the same benefits with little variation in risks, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers have

Children may be born with some ability to perform basic arithmetic, Harvard research suggests

Psychologists at Harvard University have found that five-year-olds are able to grasp numeric abstractions and arithmetic concepts even without the formal education or language to express this knowledge in words. The discovery of these inborn skills among preschoolers could point the way to new teaching techniques, making arithmetic easier and more pleasant for elementary school children.

The popular media has portrayed men and women as psychologically different as two planets – Mars and Venus – but these differences are vastly overestimated and the two sexes are more similar in personality, communication, cognitive ability and leadership than realized, according to a review of 46 meta-analyses conducted over the last 20 years.

According to the meta-analysis of studies on gender differences reported on in the current issue of the American Psychologist, males and

The tobacco industry coordinated cross-industry campaigns to delay and weaken federal and international regulations on pesticide use, according to new findings by UCSF researchers.

The findings are reported in a study and commentary posted online at the pre-publication website of Environmental Health Perspectives, the journal of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. The information will be published in a future issue of the journal.

Based on an anal

Survivors of stem-cell transplantation for blood cancers can expect to be just about as healthy 10 years later as adults who have never had a transplant, according to a new study by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Research Cancer Center.

The findings, to be published in the Sept. 20 edition of the Journal of Clinical Oncology, is the first of its kind to follow a large group of patients from before their transplant through the 10-year post-transplant period.

“In many area

Coinciding with National Stroke Week in Australia (19 – 25 September 2005) is the release of results from two recent stroke studies from the George Institute for International Health that investigate both the causative factors as well as a little studied outcome of stroke, that of depression. The studies are part of a larger project to determine the impact of prevention strategies and improvements in stroke healthcare.

A study of trends in stroke incidence, led by The George Inst

Drug should be tested as front-line therapy, say researchers

The tyrosine kinase inhibitor erlotinib (Tarceva®) showed encouraging activity with relatively tolerable side effects in elderly, previously untreated patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), reports a team led by investigators from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

The uncontrolled, Phase II results are sufficiently promising to merit a Phase III trial comparing erlotinib with single-

Prison bullying is not a one-way process, according to new research funded by the ESRC. Among bullies, it found that 71 per cent were also victims, and of those who had themselves been intimidated, 57 per cent bullied others.

Professor John Archer and Dr Jane Ireland of the University of Central Lancashire found no evidence to back the theory that ‘bully-victims’ – those who are both bullies and on the receiving end – are a special type of person.

Their findings, based

Computers can predict the detailed structure of small proteins nearly as well as experimental methods, at least some of the time, according to new studies by Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers.

The findings, which were reported in the September 16, 2005, issue of the journal Science, provide a glimmer of hope that scientists eventually may be able to determine the structure of proteins from their genomic sequences, a problem that has seemed insurmountable.

An international team of 53 researchers has offered the most convincing evidence so far linking bipolar disorder, also known as manic depression, to two chromosomal regions in the human genome. The finding gives scientists refined targets for further gene studies.

“Even though bipolar disorder affects millions of people around the world-sometimes throughout their lifetimes-what we understand to be biologically relevant at the genetic level is not terribly characterized,” said Matth

A team of researchers led by the University of Toronto has charted how and where a painful event becomes permanently etched in the brain – a discovery that has implications for pain-related emotional disorders such as anxiety and post-traumatic stress.

U of T physiology professor Min Zhuo and his colleagues Professor Bong-Kiun Kaang of Seoul National University in South Korea, and Professor Bao-Ming Li of Fudan University in China have identified where emotional fear memory an