Elderly people who eat fish or seafood at least once a week are at lower risk of developing dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease, finds a study in this week’s BMJ.

Using data from a large ageing study, a team of French researchers set out to test whether there was a relation between consumption of fish (rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids) or meat (rich in saturated fatty acids) and risk of dementia.

The study involved 1,674 people aged 68 and over without dementia and liv

Raul Hernandez was no stranger to sports activity, and was active in Little League by the time he was 10 years old. But one day while running a short race at school, Raul experienced an intense burning sensation in his feet that turned his world upside down. From that day forward, he would experience severe pain in his feet any time he engaged in physical activity or, strangely, when the weather was hot or it rained. The situation worsened when the pain spread to his hands. His doctors, however, were

High blood pressure treatment with a calcium channel antagonist slowed progression of atherosclerosis, the disease process responsible for heart attacks and strokes, better than a beta blocker, according to a rapid track report posted online this week in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

Rapid track articles are released online early because Circulation editors believe the work has major clinical impact or represents important basic science discoveries.

The development of drugs to combat some of the world’s most serious parasitic diseases is a step nearer with the discovery of a widely-shared gene that helps parasites to invade host cells.

The new understanding of the gene’s role in the single-celled parasite Toxoplasma gondii gives scientists a target to block that could stop the parasite literally in its tracks.

In experiments reported today in the journal Science, researchers at Imperial College London and the Univer

A project which aims to make laboratory-grown leukaemia cells change form and then be used to prime a patient’s own immune system to kill off malignant cells has begun in Edinburgh. If successful, the study could give clinicians a way of destroying residual leukaemic cells which are undetectable by microscope. The findings could be helpful in the treatment of acute myeloblastic leukaemia (AML), one of the most common forms of leukaemia in adults.

Although about 70% of patients with AML achie

In experiments with butterflies, evolutionary biologists from Leiden University have demonstrated that natural selection is not always the only factor which determines the appearance of an organism. Constraints also appear to play a role at times in determining the progress and outcome of the evolutionary process.

This research from Leiden provides evidence for the hypothesis of Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin. In 1979, these two scientists stated that Darwin`s theory of natural selec

Microbiologists from the University of Nijmegen have discovered that a methane-forming archaeabacterium sometimes deliberately allows hydrogen ions to leak out of its cell. At high hydrogen concentrations in particular, the cell membrane works as a sort of pressure valve. The waste of energy seems to be of vital importance for the microorganism.

The researchers examined how a bacterium adapts to changing circumstances. The study focussed on the behaviour of the relatively simple methane prod

Communication within the immune system

A familial form of severe combined immune deficiency (SCID) is caused by anomalies of an enzyme called ZAP-70. If ZAP-70 is lacking or does not work, the T-cells, which play a key role in the mechanisms of immune defense, are no longer functional. Affected children therefore catch infections as soon as they are exposed to pathogenic microorganisms. The only treatment at present is bone marrow transplantation.

INSERM research scientists

Caterpillar study shows order in the complexity of tropical biodiversity

One of the world’s largest and highest-quality set of observations on live tropical insects and their host plants has led researchers to reinterpret the structure of tropical insect communities. The team of scientists who collaborated on this analysis includes Scott Miller of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, Yves Basset of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Vojtech Novotny

Drugs to protect the brains of Alzeimer’s patients could result from new finding.

Duke University Medical Center researchers have discovered that a seemingly mild “insult” to the brain could sensitize neurons to attack by immune system proteins that are otherwise protective.

The finding could explain why sufferers of Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases significantly worsen following such insults. According to the scientists, such minimal “excitotoxic insult

Biomedical scientist Shuming Nie is testing the use of nanoparticles called quantum dots to dramatically improve clinical diagnostic tests for the early detection of cancer. The tiny particles glow and act as markers on cells and genes, giving scientists the ability to rapidly analyze biopsy tissue from cancer patients so that doctors can provide the most effective therapy available.

Nie, a chemist by training, is an associate professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Eng

Women with a combined HIV/malaria infection more frequently experience complications during pregnancy than healthy women. This is revealed in research from Kenya. However, to their surprise the researchers established that HIV-infected mothers with a mild malaria infection less frequently transmit the HIV infection to their children than HIV-infected mothers without malaria.

In Kenya, the epidemiologists Annemieke van Eijk and John Ayisi investigated the interaction between HIV and malaria a

A headache is often regarded as an excuse for not having sexual intercourse, but neurologists in Germany have been conducting a trial to investigate the true nature of this condition. They found that men in their early 20s are more likely to get a sexual headache, delegates at the European Federation of Neurological Societies congress were told today (28 October).

Sexual headache occurs in up to one percent of the population who suffer from it at least once in their life. It is not caused b

A team of experts has refuted previous findings published last summer stating that Pfiesteria is not toxic to fish or humans. When they cultured the same strain of P. shumwayae studied by the dissenting scientists, it produced a toxin that killed fish within minutes.

Dr. JoAnn Burkholder, director of North Carolina State University’s Center for Applied Aquatic Ecology, presented the results of the new study Tuesday at the 10th International Conference on Harmful Algae in S

A high-throughput assay developed by University of Illinois at Chicago chemists has led to discovery of a small organic compound that shows the unusual ability to inhibit cell migration. The new compound, identified as UIC-1005, may play a role in developing new kinds of cancer drugs.

The findings are published in the November issue of the journal ChemBioChem.

“We’ve been looking for chemical compounds that slow the process of cell migration,” said Gabriel Fenteany, assistant

UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute researchers have localized a region on chromosome 16 that is likely to contain a risk gene for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, the most prevalent childhood-onset psychiatric disorder.

Their research, published in the October edition of the American Journal of Human Genetics, suggests that the suspected risk gene may contribute as much as 30 percent of the underlying genetic cause of ADHD and may also be involved in a separate childhood onset disorder