Many patients who experience a traumatic injury to the brain experience major depression or other psychiatric illnesses within a year after their head injuries, according to two articles in the January issue of The Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Mood and anxiety disorders are common complications among patients who have experienced traumatic brain injury (TBI), according to the article. Studies suggest that depression is also a common psychiatric complica

An influenza virus vaccine delivered as a nasal spray, appears to be effective in protecting healthy children against certain strains of influenza, according to an article in the January issue of The Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Each winter, influenza causes significant illness in all age groups, according to the article. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently approved an influenza virus vaccine (cold-adapted trivalent influenza vi

Path to recovery at the brain level appears different from drug therapy

An imaging study by neuroscientists in Canada has found that patients who recover from depression with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) show a pattern of brain changes that is distinct from patients who recover with drug therapy.

It’s an important finding because it shows — for the first time with definitive imaging evidence — that the depressed brain responds ’differently’ to different

Scientists at the University of Sussex are pioneering a non-invasive way to identify cancers. The team has vastly improved a system for detecting cancer in the early stages, without putting patients through painful exploratory procedures.

The detection works by beaming ultra violet light at a patient and analysing the information reflected. This information, known as luminescence, reveals a spectrum of colours that separates healthy and cancerous tissue. The results show whether the light h

Researchers at Northeastern University today announced that they have demonstrated that, contrary to previous research, swinging the limbs during the act of running requires a significant fraction of energy. In contrast to the established hypothesis, which asserted that force produced when the foot is on the ground (stance-phase) is the only determinant of the energy cost of running, Northeastern researchers observed that a significant fraction energy was used to fuel muscles that move the limb while

Corn mutant reveals gene coordinating major steps in meiosis

Berkeley – For all its importance in sexual reproduction, the process of creating eggs and sperm, called meiosis, is still poorly understood.

How the chromosomes in germ cells pair off, trade a few genes and split to give each gamete half a normal complement of genes is so complicated that researchers have had a hard time making sense of the mechanisms involved.

A team of biologists at the University of C

A bacterium that can be dangerous to premature babies and young infants could be more widespread in the environment than previously thought, suggest authors of a research letter in this week’s issue of THE LANCET.

Enterobacter sakazakii occasionally causes illness among premature babies and infants. In some previously described outbreaks, infant formula-contaminated during factory production or bottle preparation-was recognised as a source for bacterial colonisation; however the degree of wi

Two articles and a Commentary in this week’s issue highlight how combination therapy offers the best hope for tackling drug resistance for the millions of people worldwide affected by malaria.

Drug resistance is the main barrier to effective malaria treatment. Artemisinin (extract of sweet wormwood , commonly used in Chinese herbal medicine) and its derivatives, artemether and artesunate, are of potential importance as other malarial drugs have been associated with microbial resistance.

Higher cutoffs led to more accurate identification of high-functioning

Diagnosticians would do well to raise the bar when testing high-functioning people for pre-clinical signs of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a new study. Higher test cutoffs, rather than the standard group average, more accurately predicted how many highly intelligent people would deteriorate over time. This finding is reported in the January issue of Neuropsychology, which is published by the American Psych

Patients with persistently abnormal liver function tests but no serologic evidence of liver disease may nevertheless have hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, according to a study published in the January 1 issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases, available online now.

Such occult (meaning hidden or concealed) infection is not supposed to occur–the conventional wisdom is that the virus leaves markers in serum or plasma, including specific antibodies and viral RNA, which have been the ser

Viruses can both cause and prevent autoimmune disease. In order to understand this dualism, Matthias von Herrath and colleagues from the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology in California exposed prediabetic mice to viral infections. In the January 2 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation the authors report that infection with lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV) during the prediabetic period completely abolished the diabetic process in two distinct mouse models.

This

Research performed by scientists at the School of Biomedical and Molecular Sciences, University of Surrey and the Health Protection Agency (Porton Down, Salisbury) provides hope for developing a new meningitis vaccine that will protect children against all groups of meningococcus.

Published in the journal, Infection and Immunity, the research found that meningococcus is responsible for epidemics of meningitis worldwide that kills thousands of children each year. Vaccines are available for th

Approximately one to three percent of children are affected by obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). This condition can cause growth problems and delay development. Symptoms include snoring, difficulty breathing when asleep, and sleep disturbance. Sometimes parents notice the child becomes completely obstructed despite struggling to breathe. Once diagnosed, OSA in children can usually be treated by removing the tonsils and adenoids. The diagnosis of this condition usually requires a detailed evaluation and

In research published today scientists at the John Innes Centre (JIC), Norwich(1), report on what plants do during the hours of darkness. During daylight hours plants use the energy from sunlight to power the production of food (sugar) from carbon dioxide and water. This process (photosynthesis) is well understood, but what happens when the sun goes down? The JIC researchers have found a previously unknown sugar transport system within plants and this has, for the first time, shed light on what plan

Find opens debate about whether man’s earliest ancestors came from Asia and were diurnal or nocturnal

A skull and jawbones recently found in China is the oldest well-preserved primate fossil ever discovered – as well as the best evidence of the presence of early primates in Asia. But the fossil raises the tantalizing possibility that remote human ancestors may have originated in Asia and stirs up debate about the nature of early primates.

In the words of Robert D. Martin

An international team of researchers finds that taking a single daily dose of an approved antiviral drug known as valacyclovir can reduce the transmission of genital herpes to uninfected partners by 50 percent. The results are published in the Jan. 1 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

The team of researchers led by Dr. Larry Corey, a member of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research, conducted a study of nearly 1,500 heterosexual monogamous couples in which one partner had genital herpes