News Articles

Boston, MA-- Among military veterans identifying as transgender, 90 percent have at least one mental health diagnosis, such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or depression, and nearly 50 percent had a hospitalization after a suicide attempt or suicidal thoughts. These study findings, from a single veterans' hospital, will be presented Friday at The Endocrine Society's 98th annual meeting in Boston.
"As more of our active military returns from deployment and transitions to veteran status, the health care system will be faced with treating more transgender veterans who have mental health issues," said principal investigator Marissa Grotzke, MD, an endocrinologist at Salt Lake City Veterans Affairs Medical Center (VAMC), Salt Lake City.

Despite the hype, there’s still no bee-pocalypse. Two weeks ago, the U.S.
Department Agriculture released its latest count of
commercial honeybee hives, and although the figure dipped 2.9 percent from the 20-year
record-high set in 2014, the overall count of 2.7 million hives in 2015 remains
strong. You wouldn’t know it from the news coverage.

When athletes gets their bell rung on the field or court, there's often tension between their desire to keep playing and a trainer's responsibility to prevent them from further harming themselves. The problem with standard on-field concussion protocols--including the one most recently used by the National Football League--is that several of their components are subjective and prone to human error.

New findings from large-scale studies of more than 3.6 million people who underwent screening for cardiovascular disease reveals that a person's age and gender affects the prevalence of certain types of peripheral vascular diseases (PVD), and that diabetes is a major risk factor for developing these diseases, even in patients without heart disease.
As the U.S. population ages, more people are developing PVD, a common condition that affects the blood vessels. Up until now, there has been a lack of research to identify exactly which populations are at greatest risk for PVD, which can lead to heart attack, stroke and even amputation of the limbs.

BUFFALO, N.Y. - Women with a preference for more intelligent partners are less likely to show interest in male-dominated fields such as math and science, according to a newly published study from the University at Buffalo.
The research, published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology, builds upon previous findings that found that thinking about romantic goals affected women's attitudes toward careers in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).
In particular, previous research suggested an incompatibility between romantic goal pursuits and intelligence goal pursuits for women, but not men. The current paper suggests that the incompatibility may be most pronounced for women who prefer partners of greater intelligence.

The genomes of two distinct strains of the virus that causes the common lip cold sore, herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1), have been identified within an individual person -- an achievement that could be useful to forensic scientists for tracing a person's history. The research also opens the door to understanding how a patient's viruses influence the course of disease. The research by an international team led by Moriah L. Szpara, assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Penn State University, will be published in the May 2016 issue of the journal Virology.

Medical experts in Newcastle, UK, say that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are still being diagnosed later than they should be, meaning they are not getting access to specialist services early enough.
Their comments come as they publish a study which found that the age of diagnosis has not decreased in a decade - still averaging 4-and-a-half years (55 months).
In the biggest study undertaken in the UK of children with autism, the team analysed data between 2004 and 2014. Over this period, they found that even those classed as being diagnosed early - under the age of three - were identified at age 30 months, the same as a decade before.
The results are published today in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.

Researchers believe that the obesity wave, combined with an ageing population, will lead to a significant increase in heart failure in the future. A review of all available research in this area shows a clear correlation between higher BMI, waist circumference and the risk of heart failure.
A BMI over 30 is considered obese, and the connection between obesity and the risk of heart failure has been established in several studies. Now, researchers from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Imperial College London and the Oslo University Hospital have conducted a new meta-analysis that shows that a BMI between 25 and 30 kg /m2, which is considered overweight, is also associated with increased risk.

Climate is not constant on Earth. Consider ice ages coming and going as an example. Parallel to ice age cycles, atmospheric carbon dioxide reduces during glacial periods and increases during warmer times, although modern fossil fuel-related carbon dioxide emission broke this natural cyclicity. With the proper proxy measurements, scientists can look into these past cycles to determine how exactly climate systems were naturally governed.
Syracuse University Earth sciences Assistant Professor Zunli Lu says, "A million dollar question in understanding climate system is: Where and how was CO2 sequestered from the atmosphere during ice ages?"

Boston, MA-- Many ultraviolet (UV)-filtering chemicals commonly used in sunscreens interfere with the function of human sperm cells, and some mimic the effect of the female hormone progesterone, a new study finds. Results of the Danish study will be presented Friday at the Endocrine Society's 98th annual meeting in Boston.
"These results are of concern and might explain in part why unexplained infertility is so prevalent," said the study's senior investigator, Niels Skakkebaek, MD, DMSc, a professor at the University of Copenhagen and a researcher at the Copenhagen University Hospital, Rigshospitalet.

LOS ANGELES -- Whether you like your coffee black, decaf, half-caff or even instant, feel free to drink up. Researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center of Keck Medicine of USC have found that coffee consumption decreases the risk of colorectal cancer.

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- At a time when the nation is facing projected physician shortages, a Mayo Clinic study shows an association between burnout and declining professional satisfaction with physicians reducing the number of hours they devote to clinical practice. The findings appear in Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
"A dramatic increase in burnout has occurred among U.S. physicians over the last several years," says Tait Shanafelt, M.D., Mayo Clinic physician and lead author of the study. "Using independent payroll records, this study objectively found that the measured level of burnout today predicts whether physicians will cut their work hours over the next 12-24 months."