WASHINGTON: Stuttering, a speech problem that stigmatizes millions worldwide and has stumped scientists for centuries, could be caused by defects in three genes, a landmark study showed this week. “People have speculated about the cause of stuttering for thousands of years and finally, we know at least some of the cause,” Dennis Drayna, a geneticist [...]
WASHINGTON: Being obese as a child increases the risk of dying before you reach 55, says a study published Wednesday, a day after US First Lady Michelle Obama launched a program to fight childhood obesity amid warnings it is shortening lives. Out of 4,857 non-diabetic Native American children aged five to 20 who took part [...]
Electronic cigarettes should be evaluated, regulated, labeled and packaged in a manner consistent with cartridge content and product effect even if that effect is a total failure to deliver nicotine as demonstrated in a study supported by the National Cancer Institute and led by a Virginia Commonwealth University researcher. The research was published in the [...]
MELBOURNE: Australian researchers Wednesday said a new study supported the use of lap-band surgery for severely overweight teenagers after it found the procedure helped them lose 80 percent of their excess fat. The study, conducted at Monash University and the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, showed dramatically better results among adolescents who had the surgery, [...]
Researchers who studied records of all births occurring in California in the 1990s found that the risk of having a child with autism was significantly higher when the mother was older, regardless of the father’s age, except when the mother was younger, the risk was also higher if the father were older. The study was [...]
