News by Subject Medicine & Health

Changes in sea surface temperature affect the survival of albatross during their first year at sea, resulting in a reduced population growth rate when temperatures are warmer than the current average, a new study published in the Journal of Animal Ecology has revealed.

A study led by UNC's Sylvia Becker-Dreps, M.D., M.P.H., reviewed more than 675,000 pregnancies in the US to determine if the Tdap vaccine given to a mother will reduce the chances of her child developing pertussis during the first 18 months of life. The results show a decrease in overall cases of pertussis, and most notably, in pertussis hospitalization in infants whose mothers were immunized during pregnancy.

Neonatal intensive care units increasingly encourage meaningful touch and skin-to-skin care -- aka 'kangaroo care' -- between parents and premature babies to aid the babies' development. But a Michigan children's hospital practicing skin-to-skin care noticed an unwanted side effect in 2016 -- a spike in Staphylococcus aureus (SA) infections among newborns.

Having a prior cesarean section (C-section), smoking, illicit drug use, and obesity increase the likelihood of developing an infection during a C-section delivery, according to new research presented at the 45th Annual Conference of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC).

Researchers found that painted lady butterflies return from the Afrotropical region to recolonise the Mediterranean in early spring, travelling an annual distance of 12,000 km across the Sahara Desert.

Threatened by the mosquito-borne Zika virus in 2016, Florida residents felt more susceptible than others in the United States to getting the virus, were more knowledgeable about it, and were more likely to support taking community action against it. Floridians were nearly twice as likely as non-Floridians to say they took steps to protect themselves from Zika. Even so, fewer than half of Floridians said they actually did take preventive measures.

Heart defects are the most common type of birth defect, and can be caused by mutations in the gene CHD4. Researchers at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine have now revealed key molecular details of how CHD4 mutations lead to heart defects.

Complete brood failure in blue tits is almost always associated with the sudden and permanent disappearance of one of the parents. Peter Santema and Bart Kempenaers from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen show in their study that the remaining parent substantially increased its effort to raise at least some of the chicks, which turned out to be successful in two thirds of the nests.

Despite efforts to eradicate it, syphilis is on the rise. It is the second leading cause of stillbirth and miscarriage worldwide, and if left untreated it can cause strokes, dementia, and other neurological disease. Until now, most health agencies focused on treating infected people and their sex partners -- but new discoveries may make a vaccine possible, UConn Health researchers report in the June 12 issue of mBio.