Complications of chronic kidney disease occur earlier in children

In what may lead to a shift in treatment, the largest prospective study of children with chronic kidney disease (CKD) has confirmed some experts’ suspicions that complications occur early. The findings suggest the need for earlier, more aggressive management of blood pressure, anemia and other problems associated with kidney disease, according to Dr. Marva Moxey-Mims, … Read more

Priming with DNA vaccine makes avian flu vaccine work better

The immune response to an H5N1 avian influenza vaccine was greatly enhanced in healthy adults if they were first primed with a DNA vaccine expressing a gene for a key H5N1 protein, researchers say. Their report describes results from two clinical studies conducted by researchers from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), … Read more

2011 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine

The 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to National Institutes of Health grantees Bruce A. Beutler, M.D., of The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, Calif.; and Jules A. Hoffmann, Ph.D., for their discoveries concerning the activation of innate immunity and the late Ralph M. Steinman, M.D., of Rockefeller University, New York … Read more

Social media may help identify college drinking problems

College students who post references to getting drunk, blacking out, or other aspects of dangerous drinking on social networking sites are more likely to have clinically significant alcohol problems than students who do not post such references, according to a study supported by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), part of the … Read more

Women exposed to DES in the womb face increased cancer risk

A large study of the daughters of women who had been given DES, the first synthetic form of estrogen, during pregnancy has found that exposure to the drug while in the womb (in utero) is associated with many reproductive problems and an increased risk of certain cancers and pre-cancerous conditions. The results of this analysis, … Read more

Research program to explore health effects from climate change

A new research program funded by the National Institutes of Health will explore the role that a changing climate has on human health. Led by NIH’s National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), the program will research the risk factors that make people more vulnerable to heat exposure; changing weather patterns; changes in environmental exposures, … Read more