Humans
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Health & Medicine
Darn that diet, anyway
Seemingly healthful foods—such as broiled chicken and baked fish—can contain high concentrations of compounds that may damage the cardiovascular system, and eating these foods can raise the concentration of these so-called advanced glycation end products in a person's blood.
- Health & Medicine
Singing the blues
After finding that people with diabetes are slightly more likely to have had an episode of depression in the past 11 years than similar people who have not developed diabetes, some researchers have made the controversial suggestion that depression may cause diabetes.
- Health & Medicine
Lifestyle can prevent diabetes…maybe
Losing weight and exercising more can help ward off diabetes—but other research suggests that it's hard to get people to make such lifestyle changes.
- Health & Medicine
Silencing a gene slows breast-tumor fighter
The protein encoded by the HOXA5 gene plays a key role in fighting breast cancer, helping to switch on cancer-suppressing genes.
- Health & Medicine
Common antibiotic may cure river blindness
Tests in cows suggest that tetracycline might kill the tiny worm that spreads river blindness, a disease that infects about 18 million people.
- Health & Medicine
Did colonization spread ulcers?
A comparison of strains of Helicobacter pylori, the bacterium that causes ulcers, suggests that colonists brought it to the New World.
- Health & Medicine
New tests may catch bicyclers on dope
Two new tests, on blood and urine, detect the presence of synthetic erythropoietin, a drug that boosts red blood cell counts and enhances stamina.
- Archaeology
Neandertals’ diet put meat in their bones
Chemical analyses of Neandertals' bones portray these ancient Europeans as skillful hunters and avid meat eaters, countering a theory that they mainly scavenged scraps of meat from abandoned carcasses.
- Health & Medicine
Enzyme Shortage May Lead to Lupus
Without the enzyme DNase I, mice are vulnerable to symptoms of lupus, a debilitating autoimmune disease.
- Health & Medicine
Bypass surgery in elderly works fine
Coronary bypass surgery works as well in people over age 75 as it does in people 15 years younger.
- Health & Medicine
An alternate approach to Parkinson’s
While levodopa is the treatment of choice for Parkinson's disease, drugs called dopamine agonists, which mimic the neurotransmitter dopamine, may work as well early in the disease, cause fewer side effects, and preserve levodopa's effectiveness.
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