Health & Medicine
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Health & Medicine
Dieting woes tied to hunger hormone
A rise in the appetite-enhancing hormone ghrelin after weight loss may explain why dieters regain pounds.
By John Travis -
Health & Medicine
Arthritis drug fights Crohn’s disease
The inflammation-fighting drug infliximab can hold off the painful symptoms of Crohn's disease for as long as a year in many patients.
By Nathan Seppa -
Health & Medicine
Operation overload: Kids’ backpacks
Sixth-graders in Italy routinely carry school backpacks that equal, on average, 22 percent of their body weight, a finding researchers link to an earlier report that more than 60 percent of children in this age group had experienced low-back pain more than once.
By Nathan Seppa -
Health & Medicine
Hysterectomy often improves sex life
A study of more than 1,000 women who had hysterectomies finds that after the operation, women generally wanted and had sex more often, were more likely to reach orgasm, experienced less vaginal dryness, and were less likely to have pain during sex than was the case before surgery.
By Nathan Seppa -
Health & Medicine
Glutamate glut linked to multiple sclerosis
The chemical glutamate can overwhelm nervous-system cells called oligodendrocytes, adding to the nerve damage caused by wayward immune cells in multiple sclerosis.
By Nathan Seppa -
Health & Medicine
Learning from leprosy’s nerve damage
The bacterium that causes leprosy directly damages a protective sheathing around many nerve cells.
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Health & Medicine
What Activates AIDS?
New studies suggest that a natural process called immune activation—the signaling that alerts immune cells of foreign invaders—plays a key role in explaining why infection with the human immunodeficiency virus progresses to AIDS more quickly in some people than in others.
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Health & Medicine
Sickening Food
If food that was going to leave you with gut-wrenching cramps — or more — tasted sickening, few people would indulge. The problem, of course, is that sickening food can taste quite scrumptious. Foods that look, smell, and taste yummy can still harbor disease-causing pathogens. Mead et al./Emerging Infectious Diseases Indeed, when the hour of […]
By Janet Raloff -
Health & Medicine
The brew for a slimmer you
Green tea contains a compound that triggers the body to burn more fat.
By Janet Raloff -
Health & Medicine
Stem cells repair rat spinal cord damage
Using embryonic stem cells from mice, researchers restored some movement in paralyzed rats that had undergone a crippling spinal injury.
By Nathan Seppa -
Health & Medicine
Eat Broccoli, Beat Bacteria: Plant compound kills microbe behind ulcers and a cancer
A chemical abundant in broccoli and certain other vegetables kills ulcer-causing Helicobacter pylori bacteria in the laboratory and inhibits stomach cancer in mice.
By Ben Harder