Waist-to-hip ratio, not body mass index (BMI), is the best obesity measure for assessing a person’s risk of heart attack, concludes a global study published in this week’s issue of The Lancet.

If obesity is redefined using waist-to-hip ratio instead of BMI the proportion of people at risk of heart attack increases by threefold, calculate the authors.

Previous research has shown that obesity increases the risk of heart disease. However, these studies have mai

Using a humanized mouse model that mimics the effects of human rheuma-toid arthritis (RA), researchers have discovered that protein growth factors called cytokines in the immune system have both pro- and anti-inflammatory responses to RA that help explain why some patients respond to current therapy and others don’t. By pinpointing the unique immune mecha-nisms involved in different forms of RA, the scientists hope to guide physicians toward more pre-cise individualized diagnosis of RA patien

May help researchers develop cancer therapies that target one enzyme, while leaving the other alone

Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center researchers have found that two enzymes that catalyze the same reaction and produce the same product have opposite effects on cell growth and death. These findings may help researchers develop cancer therapies that target one enzyme, while leaving the other alone.

In the November issue of the Journal of Biological Chemist

UCSF surgeons are using a novel technique to remove tumors from the cervical region of the spine that were previously thought “inoperable.”

Called a lateral paramedian transpedicular approach, the technique uses advances in spinal instrumentation and reconstructive strategies to provide a direct approach to the removal of cervical spinal tumors with minimal, or no, neural manipulation.

The procedure is reported in the November issue of Operative Neurosurgery. UCSF

Vagus Nerve Stimulation (VNS) Therapy Is the Only Implantable Device Specifically Indicated for Long-term Treatment of TRD

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center is the first in the greater New York City-area to offer Vagus Nerve Stimulation (VNS) Therapy as a long-term treatment specifically approved by the FDA for treatment-resistant depression (TRD).

VNS Therapy is approved as a long-term adjunctive (add-on) treatment for patients 18 years of a

Workers who take probiotics daily are less likely to be off work with common illnesses, such as colds and gastroenteritis, than workers who don’t. An exploratory study published today in the open access journal Environmental Health shows that workers who took a daily dose of the probiotic bacteria Lactobacillus reuteri were 2.5 times less likely to take sick leave than workers who took a placebo.

Py Tubelius, from Tetra Pak Occupational Health and Safety AB, and colleagues

The Cretaceous that lasted approximately from 135 through 65 million years ago was the period of drastic changes in biosphere. It was at that time that mass extinction of dinosaurs and other reptiles took place; birds and mammals came to take their place. In the early Cretaceous, the first flowering plants appeared, they quickly occupied the dominant position overland and settled in diverse ecotopes. These large-scale processes, thanks to which the Earth gradually acquired the contemporary appeara

Our view of wild birds is mostly positive. They are a lovely sight as they soar through the air or drift lazily on updrafts. But there is a downside to this beauty. Birds are reservoirs for all manner of infectious disease and we can do little about it, according to an article in the November 2005 issue of Microbiology Today, the quarterly magazine of the Society for General Microbiology.

“Wild birds carry several important human and animal diseases,” explains Dr Keith Jones of Lancaster

In examinations of children with serious reading and writing difficulties German and Swedish researchers have now succeeded in demonstrating for the first time the contribution of a specific gene.

About five million Germans have serious learning difficulties when it comes to reading and writing. It is frequently the case that several members of the same family are affected. So hereditary disposition seems to play an important role in the occurrence of dyslexia. Scientists at th

EuroStemCell researchers at Stockholm’s Karolinska Institute have made an important new discovery about the role of oxygen in development. Their research, published this week in Developmental Cell, may shed light on the processes at work in tumour development and has implications for successfully growing stem cells in the laboratory.

Scientists have observed that stem cells grow more easily as undifferentiated cells when oxygen levels are reduced. But until this week, they didn’t kno

University of Navarra researcher, Xabier Sevillano, recently defended his PhD thesis on a novel procedure for the elimination of organic waste from water. The chemist’s work involved studying how one of the most noxious substances, phenol, could be eliminated. National and European legislations limit the dumping of this product. Nevertheless, many companies generate this toxic product in such a way that contamination of water by phenol is frequent.

To fight this contamination, Xabier

A study led by a scientific team at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) provides another important step in our understanding of the critical role that the brain’s molecular pathways play in the development of obesity and related disorders.

The findings, reported in the November 4, 2005 issue of the journal Cell, demonstrate for the first time that the neuronal pathways that help to keep body weight stable diverge at the melanocortin-4 receptor (MC4R) to regulate ei

Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) researchers have deciphered a key part of the regulatory code that governs how motor neurons in the spinal cord connect to specific target muscles in the limbs.

The researchers said that understanding this code may help guide progress in restoring motor neuron function in people whose spinal cords have been damaged by trauma or disease. The studies suggest that the code — which involves members of the family of transcription factors encoded

Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have discovered that a protein associated with causing neurodegenerative conditions may, when appearing in normal amounts, actually protect against neurodegeneration.

The findings, appearing in today’s issue of the journal Cell, have surprised the researchers, because an excess of the same specific protein – alpha-synuclein – causes Parkinson’s disease.

“It’s the first time that anyone has shown that synuclein has

A new, sharper picture of the nano-machine that translates our genetic program into proteins promises to help researchers explain how some types of antibiotics work and could lead to the design of better ones.

The high-resolution snapshots of the bacterial ribosome were captured by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) with the lab’s Advanced Light Source, which generates intense beams of X-rays that can reve

New insights into vital genome regulation strategy provided

One of the body’s primary strategies for regulating its genome is a kind of targeted gene silencing orchestrated by small molecules called microRNAs, or miRNAs. First observed only a few years ago, these molecules appear to inactivate messenger RNA, itself responsible for translating genes into proteins. Scientists have been eager to know more about miRNAs, clearly important players on the genetic field despite h