Health & Medicine

  1. Health & Medicine

    Academic Impacts of Vegetarian Childhoods

    Teens are always looking for creative excuses for late homework, low test scores, and waning attention in class. Any who stumbled onto a copy of the September American Journal of Clinical Nutrition may have uncovered the basis for a particularly novel rationalization: “My parents made me a vegetarian.” Plants do not make vitamin B-12, also […]

    By Janet Raloff
  2. Health & Medicine

    Unexpected Sources of Peanut Allergy

    Attention new moms: Some lotions and creams for soothing scaly or irritated skin run the risk of triggering immune reactions in your infant that could lead to a serious food allergy months later. Or so conclude the authors of a new study in England. U.S. products explicitly marketed for use on a baby’s skin, such […]

    By Janet Raloff
  3. Health & Medicine

    Pressurized Pregnancies: Schizophrenia linked to fetal diuretic exposure

    A Danish study has found that pregnant women who take diuretic medication for high blood pressure during the third trimester substantially raise the chances that their unborn children will develop schizophrenia by age 35.

    By Bruce Bower
  4. Health & Medicine

    Tough Nut Is Cracked: Antibody treatment stifles peanut reactions

    Researchers have successfully demonstrated the first preventive drug treatment against peanut allergy.

    By Nathan Seppa
  5. Health & Medicine

    Abortion-cancer link is rejected

    A workshop report concludes that abortions do not increase a woman's chance of developing breast cancer.

    By John Travis
  6. Health & Medicine

    Protective virus ties up HIV docking sites

    A harmless virus that seems to keep HIV infections from progressing to AIDS appears to do so by occupying key molecular receptors on immune cells.

    By Nathan Seppa
  7. Health & Medicine

    Gene mutation for color blindness found

    Scientists have identified the gene that is mutated in people who have color blindness on the Pacific island of Pingelap, perhaps paving the way for genetic screening.

    By Nathan Seppa
  8. Health & Medicine

    Enzyme needed to degrade acetaldehyde

    A shortage of the enzyme ALDH-2, which is needed to break down alcohol in the body, causes a buildup of the cancer-linked chemical acetaldehyde, perhaps explaining why alcoholics lacking ALDH-2 have high rates of mouth and throat cancers.

    By Nathan Seppa
  9. Health & Medicine

    Scarce-Banana Scare—But don’t kiss that banana good-bye yet

    Headlines have been blaring that the banana will be extinct within 10 years but crop specialists say that’s not likely. The furor has called attention, however, to a problem of worldwide banana supply and to the possibility that we’ll be peeling things a little different in 2013. The fuss started with the Jan. 18 New […]

    By Susan Milius
  10. Health & Medicine

    Blood sugar processing tied to brain problems

    Elderly people with slightly elevated blood sugar are more likely to have short-term memory problems than those with normal blood sugar.

    By Nathan Seppa
  11. Health & Medicine

    Ulcer Clue? Molecule could be key to stomach ailment

    A protein called Ptprz binds with a bacterial toxin to produce ulcers in mice, possibly revealing a mechanism for the disorder.

    By Nathan Seppa
  12. Health & Medicine

    Light could be therapy against blindness

    Beaming red light at rats soon after they've drunk methanol partially protects their eyes against that chemical's blinding effects.

    By Ben Harder