Small head circumference at birth, followed by a sudden and excessive increase in head circumference during the first year of life, has been linked to development of autism by researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine and Children’s Hospital and Health Center, San Diego. Autism spectrum disorder occurs in one out of every 160 children and is among the more common and serious of neurological disorders of early childhood.

Published in the July

Human papillomavirus 16 (HPV16), the virus responsible for approximately half of all cervical cancers, appears to be better at dodging the immune system than other HPV types, according to a large study of HIV-positive women in the July 16 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The findings may help explain why HPV16 plays such a major role in causing cervical cancer in the general population.

Whereas other HPV types have a lower prevalence and incidence among women wi

Genetics causes some men to test higher on the blood test for prostate cancer – even when they don’t have the disease – report researchers from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center and colleagues in the July 16 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

The discovery could lead to more accurate testing and fewer unnecessary biopsies, said Scott D. Cramer, Ph.D., lead researcher, from Wake Forest.

“Up to 20 percent of men may have genetic variants that ca

In the July 15 issue of The Journal of Clinical Investigation, Ambrose Cheung and colleagues at Dartmouth School of Medicine in New Hampshire, USA, report that salicylic acid (SAL), the major metabolite of aspirin, downregulates two Staphylococcus aureus genes key to this organism’s pathogenesis.

Over 100 years have passed since S. aureus was first described as the organism responsible for causing sepsis and abscesses. Today it remains a leading cause of serious infections such a

Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic inflammatory disease characterized by joint destruction. It has been suggested that the extracellular matrix protein osteopontin (OPN), which is expressed by a number of different mediators of the immune response, may facilitate this destruction.

In the July 15 issue of The Journal of Clinical Investigation, Nobuchika Yamamoto and colleagues from the Fujisawa Pharmaceutical Company in Japan, provide important new evidence indicating a role for OPN in

Routine blood tests given to people suspected of having a heart attack can also reliably measure the risk of heart disease in people on dialysis awaiting a kidney transplant, even though they have no symptoms of heart disease. That’s according to a team of researchers led by a University of Maryland cardiologist. Their study is published in the July 16, 2003 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The tests, which measure troponin T and C-reactive protein, appea