Health & Medicine

  1. Health & Medicine

    Few Americans eat right

    The Institute of Medicine periodically issues recommendations on what people should eat to be healthy and maintain a reasonable weight. Americans have largely ignored this well-intentioned advice, a new study shows. It reports that “nearly the entire U.S. population consumes a diet that is not on par with recommendations.”

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  2. Life

    A thousand points of height

    A study finds heaps of genetic variants that influence a person’s stature, but even added together they don’t stack up to much.

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  3. Life

    A salty tail

    Just adding sodium can stimulate limb regrowth in tadpoles, a study finds, raising the possibility that human tissue might respond to relatively simple treatment.

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  4. Health & Medicine

    How the brain chooses sides

    A new study reveals where and how people decide which hand to use for a simple task.

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  5. Health & Medicine

    Disease donations

    Sometimes organ donors share more than a functioning body part. They can unwittingly bestow quickly lethal infections. That’s what happened, beginning last November, according to a new case report.

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  6. Health & Medicine

    Main malaria parasite came to humans from gorillas, not chimps

    Using DNA from fecal samples, researchers show that the infection was not passed to Homo sapiens by its closest primate relative.

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  7. Health & Medicine

    Vital flaw

    Liver cells that inherit the wrong number of chromosomes often do just fine, and may even have some advantages.

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  8. Health & Medicine

    Enzyme might underlie some stroke damage

    Inhibiting NOX4 in mice limits brain injury, tests show.

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  9. Health & Medicine

    Obesity in children linked to common cold virus

    Exposure to adenovirus-36 may partly explain why kids are getting heavier, a new study suggests.

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  10. Health & Medicine

    Scottish kids’ asthma declined after smoking ban

    Hospitals report a drop in asthma emergencies among children since a law prohibiting lighting up in public buildings went into effect in 2006.

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  11. Life

    Environmental DNA modifications tied to obesity

    Chemical changes that affect gene activity could underlie many common conditions, a new study suggests.

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  12. Health & Medicine

    DNA-damaging disinfection by-products found in pool water

    A study detects subtle changes in swimmers’ cells after 40 minutes of laps.

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