Health & Medicine

Health & Medicine

Breast implants may mask early cancer

Breast augmentation is the leading cosmetic surgery in North America, with roughly 400,000 procedures a year in the United States alone. A study now finds some evidence that breast implants may hinder early detection of breast malignancies. The good news: This didn’t affect survival.

Health & Medicine

Mapping the fruit fly brain

A new digital atlas could reveal how 100,000 neurons work together.

Health & Medicine

Gulf War Syndrome real, Institute of Medicine concludes

U.S. veterans who claim to suffer from Gulf War Syndrome just received powerful new ammunition against arguments that their symptoms are trivial, if not altogether fictional. On April 9, the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences issued a report that concludes military service in the Persian Gulf War has not only been a cause of post-traumatic stress disorder in some veterans but also is "associated with multisymptom illness” – as in Gulf War Syndrome.

Health & Medicine

Traffic’s soot elevates blood pressure

Legions of studies have shown that air pollution can harm the heart and blood vessels. Scientists now have linked airborne concentrations of tiny black-carbon particles — soot — with increasing blood pressure in older men. They also showed that the genes we inherit appear to play a big role in determining our vulnerability to soot’s pressurizing impacts.

Health & Medicine

Walnuts may slow prostate cancer

More news from the American Chemical Society meeting.

Health & Medicine

Vaccine works against type 1 diabetes in mouse experiments

Researchers uncover a self-regulating feature of the immune system.

Health & Medicine

Lung function still impaired by dust from World Trade Center

Firefighters and emergency medical teams continue to have breathing problems years after the 2001 terrorist attack.

Life

Eating seaweed may have conferred special digestive powers

Gut microbes in Japanese people may have borrowed genes for breaking down nori from marine bacteria.

Health & Medicine

U.S. health system not adequately prepared for the aging sick

Is the U.S. healthcare system prepared to deal with aging patients who have at least two chronic medical conditions — ones that will each require at least a year of ongoing treatment? “Current indications suggest that it is not,” two physicians at the Department of Health and Human Services conclude.

Life

Gene variants linked to Crohn disease have little effect, study finds

A genetic variant linked to Crohn disease does not raise the average person’s risk of developing the condition, a new study finds.

Chemistry

Study reports hints of phthalate threat to boys’ IQs

You may have a hard time spelling phthalates, but there’s no avoiding them. They’re in the air you breathe, water you drink and foods you eat. And this ubiquity may carry a price, particularly for young boys, emerging data suggest. Including a drop in their IQ.

Health & Medicine

Languages use different parts of brain

Different areas are active depending how the grammar of a sentence conveys meaning.