Inherited predisposition to leukemia found in infants

Babies who develop leukemia during the first year of life appear to inherit an unfortunate combination of genetic variations that can make the infants highly susceptible to the disease, according to a new study at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the University of Minnesota.The research is available online in the journal Leukemia.Doctors have long puzzled over why it is that babies just a few months old sometimes develop cancer. As infants, they have not lived long enough to accumulate a critical number of cancer-causing mutations.

Preventing zoonotic feline tularemia by finding influential geospatial factors

Kansas State University epidemiologist is helping cats, pet owners and soldiers stay healthy by studying feline tularemia and the factors that influence its prevalence.Ram Raghavan, assistant professor of diagnostic medicine and pathobiology, and collaborative researchers have found that a certain combination of climate, physical environment and socio-ecologic conditions are behind tularemia infections among cats in the region. More than 50 percent of all tularemia cases in the U.S. occur in Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Arkansas, Raghavan said.

Childhood viewing of violent media linked to genes

The lifelong debate of nature versus nurture continues - this time in what your children watch. A recent paper published in the Journal of Communication found that a specific variation of the serotonin-transporter gene was linked to children who engaged in increased viewing of violent TV and playing of violent video games.Sanne Nikkelen, Helen Vossen, and Patti Valkenburg of the University of Amsterdam's School of Communication Research, in collaboration with researchers at the Erasmus University Medical Centre in Rotterdam, analyzed survey data of 1,612 parents of Dutch children ages 5-9.

Daily multivitamin use could reduce cataract risk for men

New research from Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, both in Boston, MA, has found that long-term daily use of multivitamin supplements could reduce the risk of cataract for men.

The study findings were recently published in the journal Opthalmology.

According to the research team, led by Dr. William Christen of Harvard Medical School, previous research has shown an association between the use of nutritional supplements and eye health.

But the researchers note that there is very limited information on the link between the long-term use of multivitamin supplements and the risk of eye diseases.

To investigate further, the research team analyzed 12,641 male doctors from the US who were aged 50 years or older.

All men were part of the Physicians' Health Study II (PHS II) and were assessed from 1997 to 2011.

Half of the men were randomly assigned to receive a common daily multivitamin, alongside vitamin C, vitamin E and beta carotene supplements, while the other half of the participants took a placebo. Vitamins were given to participants at doses in line with US dietary allowance recommendations.

The researchers followed the men for an average of 11.2 years to determine how many in each group developed new cases of cataract or age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

Cataracts are cloudy areas in the lens of the eye that can cause blurred vision, while AMD is defined as the deterioration of the macula - the part of the eye responsible for sharpness of vision.

Reduced cataract risk 'could have large public health impact'

Results of the study revealed that in the placebo group, there were 945 new cases of cataract reported. However, the multivitamin group reported 872 new cases of cataract, showing a 9% risk reduction for the condition.

'Largest ever' trial of adult stem cells in heart attack patients begins

The largest ever trial of adult stem cell therapy in heart attack patients has begun at The London Chest Hospital in the UK.

Heart disease is the world's leading cause of death. Globally, more than 17 million people died from heart disease last year. In the US, over 1 million people suffer a heart attack each year, and about half of them die.

Heart attacks are usually caused by a clot in the coronary artery, which stops the supply of blood and oxygen to the heart. If the blockage is not treated within a few hours, then it causes the heart muscle to die.

The stem cell trial - titled "The effect of intracoronary reinfusion of bone marrow-derived mononuclear cells (BM-MNC) on allcause mortality in acute myocardial infarction," or "BAMI" for short - has been made possible due to a €5.9 million ($8.1 million) award from the European Commission.

The full study involves 19 partners across France, Germany, Italy, Finland, Denmark, Spain, Belgium, Poland, the Czech Republic and the UK.

Using bone marrow stem cells to prolong life

A total of 3,000 patients will be involved in the trial to test whether life can be prolonged by administering stem cells from the patient's own bone marrow. The stem cells are injected into the patient's heart within 5 days of suffering a heart attack.

Crowd-sourced study: 'kids with involved parents become slimmer adults'

One of the first studies to use crowd-sourced information to uncover potential predictors of obesity has suggested that children whose parents are very involved in their young lives are more likely to be slim in adulthood. Results of the study, conducted by researchers at Cornell University in New York, are published in the journal PLOS ONE.

The researchers say they used crowdsourcing in order to determine whether the method could produce well-documented predictors in obesity research and whether new avenues for research could be discovered.

Accordingly, the team recruited 532 adult study participants from relevant areas of reddit.com, a website where users generate content, and asked them: "Which childhood experiences and behaviors might predict slimness or obesity in adulthood?"

The participants suggested what they believed to be the best predictor for adult weight and submitted this predictor in the form of a question. In total, 56 unique questions were submitted. Some of these were:

• When you were a child, did someone consistently pack a lunch for you to take to school?


• When you were a child, were your parents obese?


• When you were a child, how much sleep did you get on an average school weekday?


• When you were a child, were you bullied?

In addition to supplying weight, height and age, the participants answered questions from others about their own childhood behaviors.

Crowdsourcing 'provides new avenues of study'

The researchers note that data from 2010 showed the rate of obesity in the US to be 16.9% among children and adolescents, and 35.7% among adults.

Low pre-pregnancy levels of specific protein linked to higher risk of diabetes during pregnancy

Women with low levels of an important protein known to bind to sex hormones prior to pregnancy were five times more likely to develop gestational diabetes than women with higher levels of the protein, according to a Kaiser Permanente study published in the journal Diabetes Care."This study is among the first to find that low circulating levels of sex hormone binding globulin, measured years before pregnancy, are associated with increased risk of gestational diabetes," said Monique M.