Normal weight adults, including those who had lost a lot of weight and kept it off, ate more often than overweight people in a new study looking at factors that may help in preventing weight gain. Researchers following about 250 people for a year found that overweight individuals ate fewer snacks in addition to meals than people in the normal body weight range, but the overweight still took in more calories and they were less active over the course … full story

More than one in five people with heart disease aren't getting life-saving statin drugs despite guidelines saying they should, a new study shows. Researchers looked at nearly 39,000 people who had experienced a heart attack or undergone heart surgery, and found about 8,600 people weren't prescribed the cholesterol-lowering medications. Although there is still controversy over whether people should take statins to prevent heart attacks, research … full story

Being part of a stressful job can increase a person’s risk of developing asthma by 40 percent, reveals a new study. The research led by Heidelberg University in Germany tracked 5,000 men and women aged between 40 and 65 over eight years. They found that among those free of asthma at the start of the project, there was up to a 40 percent higher incidence of asthma eight years later if they suffered stress at work. The signs were long working hours, … full story

Scientists have found a new way to deliver Alzheimer’s drugs directly to the brain, potentially opening the way to a more effective treatment for sufferers. Efforts to treat the disease have been hamstrung over 50 years by the difficulty of administering drugs to the brain to slow or halt its progression. But University of Oxford researchers switched off a gene linked to Alzheimer’s in mice brains by relying on tiny particles naturally released … full story

Proline, a simple amino acid that recurs at the centre of proteins found in tooth enamel, makes teeth stronger and more resilient, according to a new research. University of Illinois-Chicago (UI-C) researchers compared proline repeats in amphibian and animal models and discovered that when the repeats are short, such as in frogs, teeth will not have the enamel prisms that are responsible for the strength of human enamel. Conversely, when the proline … full story

More than one in 10 parents use an "alternative" vaccination schedule for their young children, including refusing vaccines altogether, according to a US survey. Based on the findings, researchers worry that more parents may be refusing vaccines in the future, raising the risk that diseases like measles and whooping cough will spread in schools and communities. "The vaccines that we recommend have been so effective in largely eliminating the vaccine-preventable … full story

Australian scientists claim to have discovered a gene responsible for baldness in women which may lead to an effective treatment for hair loss. Researchers at the University of Melbourne and St Vincent’s Hospital studied the DNA of almost 500 women who had lost at least 50 percent of hair on their scalp. Aged between 18 and 65, all the women who participated in the study, suffered severe hair loss, a condition that will affect up to 55 percent … full story

Babies whose mothers have the flu jab during pregnancy are less likely to catch the virus themselves, finds a recent study. A flu jab protects youngsters in the first six months of life and makes them 40 percent less likely to need hospital treatment for respiratory illnesses, according to a US research. Research shows pregnant women are at higher risk of serious complications from swine flu compared with the general public, and have a higher rate … full story

Seniors who take aspirin daily are twice as likely to have late stage macular degeneration, an age-related loss of vision, than people who never take the pain reliever, a new European study reports. The data do not show that aspirin causes vision loss. But the findings are of concern if aspirin somehow exacerbates the eye disorder, researchers say, given how many seniors take it daily for heart disease. (Reuters) full story

People recently diagnosed with lung cancer are at higher risk of having a stroke than those without lung tumors, suggests a large new study from Taiwan. Researchers looking at data covering more than 150,000 adults found that among those with lung cancer, 26 in every 1000 experienced a stroke each year, compared with 17 in 1000 who did not have cancer. "This is one more telling sign of the long term risk of smoking," said Dr. Andrew Russman, a … full story