A lack of oxygen in waters around the world could be doing more than just suffocating fish: It may be acting as an endocrine disruptor and impeding their ability to reproduce, posing a serious threat to the survival of many populations.

A new study of carp suggests that hypoxia, or oxygen deficiency, is an endocrine disruptor. The findings add a surprising member to the growing list of potential hormone-disturbing agents — a list that includes pesticides such as atrazine and DDT, various typ

Mayo Clinic has found that for patients with eye shingles, oral antiviral drugs are critical to prevent long-term consequences in the eye. Untreated, 10 percent of eye shingles patients experience a serious long-term outcome, such as severe visual loss, eyelid scarring or chronic in-turning of the eyelashes; if treated, two percent of patients experience these effects. The Mayo Clinic study refutes the findings of a previous British study of oral antivirals in patients with eye shingles.

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A long-term study of patients in Rochester, Minn., with the eating disorder anorexia nervosa found that their survival rates did not differ from the expected survival rates of others of the same age and sex.

The results, published in the March issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings, add to the knowledge of anorexia nervosa and point to other areas that need greater study from researchers.

“Although our data suggest that overall mortality is not increased among community patients

UK astronomers Elizabeth Stanway, Andrew Bunker and Richard McMahon at the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, England, have used three of the most powerful telescopes in existence to identify some of the farthest galaxies yet seen. But at the same time, they have encountered a cosmic conundrum: it looks as if there were fewer galaxies forming stars at this early stage in the history of the Universe than in the more recent past. Their results, which will be published in the Monthly Notic

Genetically altered bacterial viruses appear to be more effective than naked DNA in eliciting an immune response and could be a new strategy for a next generation of vaccines that are easy to produce and store, say researchers from Moredun Research Institute in the United Kingdom.

“In theory, millions of doses can be grown within a matter of days using simple equipment, media and procedures,” says John March, one of lead researchers presenting findings at the American Society for Microbiol

Fndings in mice hold implications for human disorders

New research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill offers an important contribution to a new wave of thinking in genetics: the idea that not all human disease states are due to alterations in DNA sequence.

A growing body of research on these “epigenetic” changes are leading geneticists to rethink the conventional view that all human disease is fundamentally tied to DNA sequence variation (changes in the actua