HIV treatment can be delivered even in settings of armed conflict, and humanitarian health agencies should not wait until a conflict is over before launching HIV care programs, say a team from Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in this week’s PLoS Medicine.

Heather Culbert and colleagues report their results of three years’ experience of providing HIV care, including antiretroviral therapy (ART), to a conflict-affected population in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The reported treatment outcomes were similar to those in HIV projects in non-conflict settings.

An international team of scientists, including researchers from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, report using antibodies derived from immune cells from recent human survivors of H5N1 avian influenza to successfully treat H5N1-infected mice as well as protect them from an otherwise lethal dose of the virus.

Women who consume higher amounts of calcium and vitamin D may have a lower risk of developing premenopausal breast cancer.

Data from animal studies have linked calcium and vitamin D to breast cancer prevention, according to background information in the article. However, epidemiologic studies on humans have been less conclusive.

Researchers at Ohio University have found that after primates evolved the ability to see red, they began to develop red and orange skin and hair.

Humans, apes and Old World monkeys, such as macaques and leaf monkeys, all have trichromatic vision, which allow them to distinguish between blue, green and red colors. Primatologists have disagreed about whether this type of color vision initially evolved to help early primates forage for ripe fruit and young, red leaves among green foliage or evolved to help them select mates. 

It may seem strange that science is out there doing studies on topics that not only seem unnecessary but are downright redundant, yet it happens all of the time. Here are this week's examples of science studies to reaffirm things your mother would tell you are pretty obvious:

Binge drinking among college students impairs decision-making ability - yes, it took a scientific study to tell you alcohol encourages you to do things you otherwise might reconsider. I have a friend who once set his hair on fire doing bar tricks involving flame and booze.

Some months ago, I wrote about Juan Magdaraog who is blogging about his struggle with Pompe disease, a rare, but important genetic condition. He let me know about an essential problem: the diagnostic delay.

The diagnosis often poses a dilemma due to the rarity of the disease, the variable rates of progression and the unspecific phenotypic features… Just take a look at the diagnostic delay diagram, there are from 2 to 4 years between the first symptoms and the diagnosis!

Mice genetically engineered to lack a single enzyme in their brains are more adept at learning than their normal cousins, and are quicker to figure out that their environment has changed, a team led by researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center has found.

A CME (Coronal Mass Ejection) is a solar body slam to our high-tech civilization. CMEs begin when the sun launches a billion tons of electrically conducting gas (plasma) into space at millions of miles per hour. A CME cloud is laced with magnetic fields, and CMEs directed our way smash into Earth's magnetic field. If the CME magnetic fields have the correct orientation, they dump energy into Earth's magnetic field, causing magnetic storms. These storms can cause widespread blackouts by overloading power line equipment with extra electric current. But wait; there's more.

Substituting soy nuts for other protein sources in a healthy diet appears to lower blood pressure in postmenopausal women, and also may reduce cholesterol levels in women with high blood pressure.

The American Heart Association estimates that high blood pressure (hypertension) affects approximately 50 million Americans and 1 billion individuals worldwide. The most common-and deadly-result is coronary heart disease, according to background information in the article. Women with high blood pressure have four times the risk of heart disease as women with normal blood pressure.

People whose blood shows signs of inflammation are more likely to later develop Alzheimer's disease than people with no signs of inflammation, according to a new study.

The study, which is part of the larger Framingham Heart Study, involved 691 healthy people with an average age of 79. Blood tests determined whether the participants had signs of inflammation. Then the participants were followed for an average of seven years. During that time, 44 of the participants developed Alzheimer's disease.