Pregnant women carrying boys have a 10% higher energy intake than those carrying girls, finds a study in this week’s BMJ.

Researchers analysed the dietary intake of 244 pregnant women attending a large hospital in Boston, United States.

They found that women who were carrying a male embryo had an 8% higher intake of protein, a 9% higher intake of carbohydrates, an 11% higher intake of animal fats, and a 15% higher intake of vegetable fats than women who were carrying a female embryo

A review article in this week’s BMJ dispels some of the myths about treating head lice, using the most up-to-date medical research. For example, it shows that:

Head lice are harmless
Head lice on clothing or furniture cannot infect a person
Cutting hair, or tying it back, is not helpful
Banning children with nits from school is ineffective

Head lice are parasites that usually infest the scalps of school age children. Lice attach their eggs to hair shafts near the scalp

Research from Sri Lanka in this week’s issue of THE LANCET highlights how repeated doses of charcoal could reduce deaths from oleander-seed poisoning by up to 70%. The authors of the study suggest that charcoal could also be effective in treating poisoning from drugs used in Western populations with similar effects to oleander-seed poisoning, such as digoxin and digitoxin, or with drugs that are eliminated from the body in a similar fashion.

Deliberate self-poisoning with yellow oleander see

Neurons transmit chemical signals in a fleeting “kiss-and-run” process, which in large part determines how quickly neurons can fire, according to new studies by Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers.

The transfer of information between nerve cells occurs when chemicals called neurotransmitters are released into the synapse, the junction between neurons. Electrical impulses in the neuron cause tiny vesicles loaded with neurotransmitters to move to the tip of the nerve terminal where th

A study of about 50,000 pregnant women has shown that the integrated test for Down’s syndrome offers a “significantly higher” level of safety than the screening available to most women in the UK. The study, which will be reported in the June Journal of Medical Screening, was carried out by Professor Nicholas Wald and colleagues at the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine and University College Hospital. Their report also shows that the integrated test is best in terms of efficacy and cost.

Warnings about methylmercury contaminated fish are not just for young children and expectant mothers, according to new research published today in Environmental Health: A Global Access Science Source. Adults who regularly eat contaminated fish could find that their concentration, dexterity and verbal memory are impaired.

The major source of methylmercury is diet, particularly large fish like shark and swordfish. The authors of this new research concluded: “methylmercury exposure at levels of

In a clinical trial conducted at the University of Illinois at Chicago, researchers have demonstrated the first promising drug treatment for a common and life-threatening sleep disorder called sleep apnea.

The drug, an antidepressant called mirtazapine, significantly reduced the symptoms of sleep apnea. It cut in half the number of times breathing stopped or slowed during sleep and reduced the number of times sleep was disrupted by 28 percent. All 12 patients who participated in the study s

A diabetes epidemic that appears to have claimed the life of composer Johann Sebastian Bach may explain baffling disparities in the disease’s rates among 21st-century ethnic groups, a UCLA geographer and evolutionary biologist says in the current issue of Nature.

Aside from speculating that many people may carry genes that predispose them to diabetes, researchers have been at loss to explain why, for instance, only 2 percent of Europeans contract the disease as opposed to 13 percent of

Many types of cancer–like those of the breast and prostate–would not be nearly as deadly if it weren’t for their ability to spread to vital organs. Still, scientists don’t yet fully understand the way in which cancer spreads, or metastasizes, or how to prevent the process.

Now, researchers at the San Francisco VA Medical Center (SFVAMC) have used a modified version of a naturally occurring human protein to decrease the spread of human breast cancer implanted in mice.

“We

Oxford scientists have discovered a particularly macabre method one parasite (Strepsiptera) has for disguising itself in its insect host: it wraps itself in a piece of the host’s own body tissue. In this way the strepsipteran masquerades as ‘self’, and is protected from the insect’s immune system.

The mechanism whereby Strepsiptera flourish without interference from the host has so far been a mystery. Scientists have been intrigued by the exceptional diversity of host insects exploited by th

A new study links a protein discovered a few years ago at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with formation of scar tissue that occurs after injury to nerve cells in the brain or spinal cord.

Such scarring apparently blocks neurons of the central nervous system from recovering after traumatic injury – inhibiting their axon filaments from regenerating and ferrying nerve impulses elsewhere, to other neurons and tissue, including muscle. Loss of nerve cell function and paralysis ca

St. Jude researchers say reprogrammed nucleus model could offer valuable clues to how certain influencing factors combine with DNA mutations to cause tumors

Nuclei removed from mouse brain tumor cells and transplanted into mouse eggs whose own nuclei have been removed, give rise to cloned embryos with normal tissues, even though the mutations causing the cancer are still present. This research, from scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, appears in the June 1 issue

A completely new way of killing the malaria parasite has been found by researchers at St George’s Hospital Medical School in London. Professor Sanjeev Krishna’s research group is world-renowned in the battle against infectious diseases and has now discovered how to stop the malaria parasite’s sugar transport protein from working. This prevents the parasite growing and multiplying in the red blood cells where it lives. The research is published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of S

Two studies by researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center have identified treatments that appear helpful in preserving ovarian function in pre-menopausal women with cancer.

The unrelated analyses, to be presented at different times during the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, are the first to focus on the desire of many younger patients with breast as well as other cancers to maintain fertility, as well as to protect their bones, hearts, a

A research study at The University of Nottingham looking at how growth can contribute to spontaneous childhood cancer regression could lead to more effective ways of treating tumours.

The one-year project, led by Christopher Jones in the School of Nursing in collaboration with Dr Michael Symonds in the Division of Child Health and Dr David Walker at the University’s Children’s Brain Tumour Research Centre, will look at whether growth hormone plays a part in tumours spontaneously ge

Academics at The University of Nottingham are developing new nanotechnology that could be used to treat brain tumours more effectively by reducing the serious side-effects associated with anti-cancer drugs.

A team led by Dr Martin Garnett in the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences has been awarded a £206,000 grant from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council to continue investigations on the preparation of nanoparticles for delivering drugs to brain tumours.

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