News by Subject Social & Behavior

A single allergic reaction during pregnancy prompts sexual-development changes in the brains of offspring that last a lifetime, new research suggests. Female rats born to mothers exposed to an allergen during pregnancy acted more characteristically 'male' -- mounting other female rodents, for instance -- and had brains and nervous systems that looked more like those seen in typical male animals.

Researchers from the George Washington University and the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology have developed a solution for multiparametric optical mapping of the heart's electrical activity. This technique is a useful tool for enhancing our understanding of the mechanisms behind cardiac arrhythmias. Arrhythmia causes your heart to beat too quickly, too slowly or erratically. Hijacking the heart's vital rhythm and pumping function can have serious consequences like a stroke or cardiac arrest.

A UCLA-led study confirms what women approaching menopause have long suspected: menopause does make fat go up. The study finds that women undergoing perimenopause lost lean body mass and more than doubled their fat mass. The research demonstrates that body mass index (BMI) is a very important clinical tool for predicting health events, such as getting diabetes or having cardiovascular disease -- but is a less useful gauge of cardio-metabolic risk in older women.

Seemingly harmless fluid-filled spaces around the cerebral small vessels, commonly seen on brain MRIs in older adults, are now thought to be associated with more compromised cognitive skills, according to a Vanderbilt University Medical Center study published in Neurology.

Researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai reveal that genomic data extracted from population biobanks across the globe contain much less ethnic diversity than desirable. Of the nearly 5 million samples of DNA contributed to biobanks worldwide, 68 percent come from individuals of European ancestry.

This study looked at the association of calcium intake (dietary and supplementation) with the risk and progression of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a leading cause of blindness. Previous research has had mixed results about the role of calcium in AMD progression. This study, a secondary analysis of 4,751 randomized clinical trial participants, found higher calcium intake was associated with lower risk of progression to late AMD but there was an inconsistent association between calcium intake and different stages of AMD.

According to a new study appearing in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, published by Elsevier, the rate of health insurance coverage and access to affordable acute and preventive care services improved for women after the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The greatest advances were seen in women in the lowest income groups.

From 1999 to 2017, 38,942 US children ages 5 to 18 years old were killed by firearms, averaging more than 2,000 deaths a year. In 2017 alone, 2,462 school-age children were killed by firearms compared to 144 police officers and 1,000 active military worldwide who died in the line of duty. The study finds significant increases that began with an epidemic in 2009, followed by another one in 2014. Each of these epidemics has continued through 2017.