Nutrition News

An overgrowth of bacteria in the gut has been definitively linked to Irritable Bowel Syndrome in the results of a new Cedars-Sinai study which used cultures from the small intestine. This is the first study to use this "gold standard" method of connecting bacteria to the cause of the disease that affects an estimated 30 million people in the United States.

For 5,000 years, the Chinese have used a system of medicine based on the flow and balance of positive and negative energies in the body. In this system, the appearance of the tongue is one of the measures used to classify the overall physical status of the body, or zheng. Now, University of Missouri researchers have developed computer software that combines the ancient practices and modern medicine by providing an automated system for analyzing images of the tongue.

E Pluribus Unum, the de facto motto of the United States, could just as well apply to biofilm-forming bacteria. Bacterial biofilms are far more resistant than individual bacteria to the armories of antibiotics we have devised to combat them. Now Tim Holm Jakobsen and Michael Givskov of the University of Copenhagen, and their many collaborators have pinpointed a constituent of garlic that attacks a key step in the development of biofilms, in an effort they hope may offer help in particular for patients with cystic fibrosis.

Azithromycin (marketed as Zithromax) is most often prescribed to treat bronchitis, sinusitis, pneumonia, middle ear infections, and even certain sexually transmitted diseases. It can produce skin rashes, itching, swelling, difficulty breathing or swallowing, and rapid, pounding, or irregular heartbeats.

The United States Preventive Services Task Force issued their final recommendation on the PSA prostate cancer-screening test Monday, recommending against routine PSA exams for men of any age. The task force says the PSA exam and additional treatments that may follow, like radiation and surgery, result in far more harm than benefit.

Following a period for public comment, the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) released its final recommendation for prostate cancer screening. The Task Force now recommends against PSA-based screening for all men, regardless of age. The final recommendations are being published early online in the May 22 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine, the flagship journal of the American College of Physicians (ACP).

Calcium supplements might increase the risk of having a heart attack, and should be "taken with caution," concludes research published in the online issue of the journal Heart. Furthermore, boosting overall calcium intake from dietary sources confers no significant advantage in terms of staving off heart disease and stroke, the findings indicate.

Brains that maintain healthy nerve connections as we age help keep us sharp in later life, new research funded by the charity Age UK has found. Older people with robust brain 'wiring' -- that is, the nerve fibers that connect different, distant brain areas -- can process information quickly and that this makes them generally smarter, the study suggests.

A University of Michigan Health System study provides new clues about the health-damaging molecular changes set in motion by eating high-fat foods. A better understanding of the body's response to indulgent eating could lead to new approaches for treating diabetes and metabolic syndrome. High-fat foods can contribute to obesity, which increases the risk for developing type 2 diabetes.

There are pollens -- and there are pollens, as scientists from across Europe discovered while investigating the allergic potential of pollens from the three main triggers of hay fever in Europe: birch, grass and olive. Different people can have very different allergic reactions to a particular type of pollen, however, and as the Hialine study researchers have now found, the allergenicity of the pollens also varies. Depending on the time of year and region, the pollens produce different quantities of protein compounds. These are ultimately responsible for the allergic immune reaction.

Blood tests convey vital medical information, but the sight of a needle often causes anxiety and results take time. A new device developed by a team of researchers in Israel, however, can reveal much the same information as traditional blood test in real-time, simply by shining a light through the skin. This optical instrument, no bigger than a breadbox, is able to provide high-resolution images of blood coursing through our veins without the need for harsh and short-lived fluorescent dyes.

Traditional "hunter-gatherer" and "horticulturalist" populations have significantly lower age-related increases in blood pressure and less risks of atherosclerosis than "modernized" populations. Lifestyle factors of these traditional populations -- high physical activity and high fruit and vegetable diets -- may protect against normal aging phenomena, high blood pressure and hardening of the arteries.