The Scientist

NEW YORK, Aug 1 (Praxis Press) The way in which physicians recognize and manage obesity is unknown. To estimate national patterns of office-based, obesity-related practices and to determine the independent predictors of these practices, Stafford and colleagues performed serial cross-sectional surveys of 55,858 adult physician office visits. The researchers assessed reporting of obesity at office visits and physician counseling for weight loss, exercise, and diet among patients identified as obes

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If synergistic epistasis occurs, each mutation added to a genome has a greater deleterious effect than preceding mutations. Without this effect it is difficult to explain how small populations can survive in the face of genetic drift, or how larger populations can survive a high mutation rate. In the 27 July Nature Peck and Waxman use a mathematical model to deduce that competition in small groups does, indeed, lead to synergistic epistasis (Nature 2000, 406:399-404). This competition also produ

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An elaborate dirty tricks campaign orchestrated by the tobacco industry to sabotage WHO anti-tobacco efforts is revealed in a WHO report released today.

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NEW YORK, July 31 (Praxis Press) Blood screening, immunization, and infection control policies have made hospital outbreaks of hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection rare; in contrast, community outbreaks of HBV remain problematic. Using molecular epidemiology, Webster and colleagues traced the origin and spread of HBV infection acquired by a woman who attended a London clinic for autohemotherapy. Sixteen percent of the 352 clinic patients 4 staff members tested had serologic evidence of HBV infectio

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NEW YORK, July 31 (Praxis Press) Patients with psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis have increased concentrations of tumor necrosis factor in their skin lesions and joints. Mease and colleagues studied psoriasis disease activity in 30 patients randomized to receive etanercept, an inhibitor of tumor necrosis factor, and in 30 patients randomized to receive placebo. After 12 weeks of treatment, the median improvements in psoriasis area and severity index scores were 46.2% for etanercept-treated patie

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