Health & Medicine

  1. Health & Medicine

    Distressing Gut Symptoms May Trace to Sweets

    U.S. diners are notorious for having a sweet tooth. It’s hard not to succumb to the pervasive siren calls of sugary confections. Television commercials bombard viewers with enticements for presweetened cereals, breakfast bars, sugar-laden soda pop, and fruit-flavored beverages–many containing, at best, only about 10 percent real juice. Grocery stores seduce consumers with aisle after […]

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  2. Health & Medicine

    Blood Booster: Growth signal shifts cord stem cells into high gear

    A protein called Delta-1 stimulates stem cells in umbilical cord blood to proliferate in a lab dish, attach well to bone marrow when implanted into mice, and even proceed to the animal's thymus to become T cells.

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  3. Health & Medicine

    A different GI link to colon cancers

    Diets rich in sweets and other quickly digested carbohydrates appear to increase an individual's risk of developing colon cancer.

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  4. Health & Medicine

    Berry promising anticancer prospects

    Cranberry products can retard the growth and spread of breast cancer in rodents.

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  5. Health & Medicine

    A Most Dreadful Pest

    Yellow fever was a deadly scourge that had a devastating effect on lives and economies throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. This engrossing Web exhibit features historical documents from the Walter Reed Yellow Fever Collection at the University of Virginia. It focuses on the work of the Reed Commission, which proved that the Aedes aegypti […]

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  6. Health & Medicine

    Drug Eases Bone Cancer Pain in Mice

    Pain caused by bone cancer in mice can be alleviated somewhat by osteoprotegerin, a drug being tested for osteoporosis, suggesting a possible new treatment for people with this cancer.

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  7. Health & Medicine

    Less Crying in the Kitchen: Tasty, tearfree onions on the horizon

    The discovery of a new enzyme responsible for creating the tear-inducing chemicals found in onions may herald the arrival of genetically modified tearfree onions.

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  8. Health & Medicine

    West Nile Worries Are No Reason to Give Up Breast-feeding

    West Nile virus infections are spreading like wildfire–and not just through bug bites. Although the vast majority of the nearly 2,800 U.S. cases reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) so far this year were picked up from mosquitoes, at least 3 people–and possibly 15–appear to have acquired the virus from infected […]

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  9. Health & Medicine

    Final Word? Breast surgeries yield same survival rate

    Women with breast cancer who undergo partial-breast removal are just as likely to survive for at least 20 years as are women who have their entire breast removed.

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  10. Health & Medicine

    Making Bone: Novel form of vitamin D builds up rat skeleton

    A newly synthesized form of Vitamin D induces bone-making cells to capture calcium and fortify bone mass in rats, suggesting it might work against osteoporosis in people.

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  11. Health & Medicine

    ‘Bubble’ babies thrive on gene therapy

    Gene therapy to repair mutations that thwart development of essential immune cells has helped three babies to overcome severe combined immunodeficiency, in which a child is born without a functional immune system.

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  12. Health & Medicine

    Calcium may become a dieter’s best friend

    Enriching the diet with calcium, especially from dairy products, can switch the body's fat cells from storing calories to burning them.

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