News by Subject Medicine & Health

The kidneys often become bulky and dysfunctional in diabetes, and now scientists have found that one path to this damage dramatically reduces the kidney's ability to clean up after itself.

More than 18 percent of US adults do not know whether they will have enough to eat from day to day, and the numbers are worse for Hispanics, Blacks, people with obesity, and women, a new report shows.

Throughout her 38-year nursing career, Laurel Despins has progressed from a bedside nurse to a clinical nurse specialist and has worked in medical, surgical and cardiac intensive care units. She noticed diabetes is rarely referred to as a primary cause of death in itself, yet the disease is a leading contributor to deaths involving heart disease, stroke and cancer.

Nearly a decade ago, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) developed a new index to assess protein quality in foods. The goal, writ large, was to address food security for the world's most vulnerable populations, creating more accurate tools for food assistance programs seeking to provide balanced nutrition. Hans H. Stein at the University of Illinois knew he could help.

Glucocorticoids are associated with an increased risk for infection, even at doses as low as 5 mg or less per day. These findings are significant, as low-dose glucocorticoids are generally considered safe and are widely prescribed. Physicians should consider this information when weighing the benefits and risks of glucocorticoid treatment for patients with RA. An observational cohort study is published in Annals of Internal Medicine.

Early to bed, early to rise...while the old saying promises health, wealth and wisdom, new research confirms part of the adage holds true, as a world first study shows that people who go to bed early are more likely to be in better health and more physically active compared to night owls.

Using data from humans and other mammals, a team of scientists including researchers from the Santa Fe Institute has developed one of the first quantitative models that explains why sleep times across species and during development decrease as brains get bigger. Crucially, the model identifies a sharp transition at around 2.4 years of age, where sleep patterns change in humans as the primary purpose of sleep shifts from reorganization, which is essentially learning, to repair.

Consuming high fructose corn syrup appears to be as bad for your health as consuming sugar in the form of fructose alone, according to a new study from researchers at the University of California, Davis. The study reports health risks related to the type of sugar consumed, but also reveals novel risks when sugars are combined, which has important implications for dietary guidelines.