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Malaria mosquitoes prefer to feed — and feed more — on blood from people infected with malaria. Researchers from Stockholm University, the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and KTH Royal Institute of Technology have discovered why. The findings can lead to new ways to fight malaria without using poisonous chemicals. The results will be published in the next issue of the journal Science.

Pounding headache, dry mouth, queasy stomach: You feel like you’re dying. But if you had a few too many drinks last night, you probably just have a hangover.

Beyond the fatigue and massive headache, physical symptoms of a hangover include increased sensitivity to light and sound, muscle aches, eye redness, and thirst, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. You may also find yourself feeling sweaty, dizzy, and extra- irritable.

Such side effects usually set in several hours after you’ve stopped drinking, as your blood alcohol level (BAC) falls, and they peak when your BAC reaches zero. Some researchers explain the correlation as a “kind of mini withdrawal,” Robert Swift, PhD, professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University and director of research at the Providence Veterans Administration Medical Center, told Newsweek. Hangover symptoms, which can last the entire following day, are similar to those that alcoholics experience when they stop drinking.

Blame Your Hangover On the Congeners

Congeners are chemical byproducts of the alcohol fermentation process, found more prominently in darker liquor such as red wine, bourbon, brandy, whiskey, and dark-colored beers. Think of them as your worst hangover

For all of its health benefits (it has plenty of fiber and protein, and it acts as a diuretic to help beat bloating),asparagus can have one major downfall: It can make your pee smell funky.

So what’s to blame for the cooked-cabbage aroma? “Your body breaks down asparagus during digestion into sulfur-containing chemicals that give your urine a distinctive odor,” explains Roshini Raj, MD, assistant professor of medicine at New York University Langone Medical Center and author of What the Yuck?!.

Not everyone is affected, though: Dr. Raj says that only about half of people complain about, er, report the funny smell.

Scientists have developed two theories to explain why asparagus-tainted urine only affects some people. One posits that only some people metabolize asparagus’ sulfuric compounds in a way that produces the aroma. The other holds that while everyone makes the smell, only some people can actually detect the odor.

In a study published in the journal Chemical Sense, researchers from the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia sought to determine which explanation was the more likely. They collected urine samples from 38 participants before and after they ate asparagus, then asked whether

A study led by UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers has uncovered key molecular pathways behind the disruption of the gut’s delicate balance of bacteria during episodes of inflammatory disease.

According to a new study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, sitting for long periods increases your risk of all-cause early death. (Now would definitely be the time to stand up.)

In the study, researchers followed 222,497 Australian adults for several years. Over the course of the study, participants who sat for more than 11 hours a day had the highest risk for all-cause mortality, followed by those who sat between 8 and 11 hours daily. Those who sat for less than four hours a day had the lowest risk of all-cause mortality.

The revelation that sitting can kill isn’t necessarily new. In the past several years, study after study has confirmed that living a sedentary life — going from your bed to your desk to the couch and back to bed every day — can damage our health in a variety of ways. In fact, it has been shown to increase risk for heart disease, obesity, diabetes, dementia, and some cancers.

Another recent study actually found that sitting is so detrimental, its effects are almost impossible to exercise away. The study followed 27 Finnish men and women over two days. On the

Medical and public health groups are banding together to explain how global warming has taken a toll on human health and will continue to cause food-borne illnesses, respiratory problems, and deaths unless policy changes are enacted.

In a conference call with reporters, the heads of the American Medical Association (AMA) and the American Public Health Association (APHA) joined with a pediatrician and a scientist to lay out what they say is a major public health issue: climate change caused by global warming.

The “evidence has only grown stronger” that climate change is responsible for an increasing number of health ills, including asthma, diarrheal disease, and even deaths from extreme weather such as heat waves, said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the APHA.

For one, rising temperatures can mean more smog, which makes children with asthma sicker, explained pediatrician Dr. Perry Sheffield, assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics and the Department of Preventive Medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, in New York.

There is also evidence that pollen season is also getting longer, she said, which could lead to an increase in the number of people with asthma.

Climate

The risk of death after head injury remained significantly increased for as long as 13 years, irrespective of the severity of the injury, results of a case-control study showed.

Overall, patients with a history of head injury had more than a twofold greater risk of death than did two control groups of individuals without head injury.

Among young adults, the risk disparity ballooned to more than a fivefold difference, Scottish investigators reported online in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry.

“More than 40% of young people and adults admitted to hospital in Glasgow after a head injury were dead 13 years later,” Dr. Thomas M. McMillan, of the University of Glasgow, and coauthors wrote in the discussion of their findings. “This stark finding is not explained by age, gender, or deprivation characteristics.”

“As might be expected following an injury, the highest rate of death occurred in the first year after head injury,” they continued. “However, risk of death remained high for at least a further 12 years when, for example, death was 2.8 times more likely after head injury than for community controls.”

Previous studies of mortality after head injury have

The timing of an operation doesn’t affect a patient’s subsequent risk of complications or death, a new study finds.

For example, there’s no difference in death rates between elective surgery performed in the afternoon versus the morning or on Monday instead of Friday, the researchers said. Their findings should help to ease concerns that fatigue may lead to a higher rate of safety problems when operations are performed later in the day or week, they said.

The study included an analysis of the outcomes of more than 32,000 elective surgeries performed between 2005 and 2010. The overall complication rate before discharge was 13 percent, and the overall risk of death within 30 days of surgery was 0.43 percent.

After the researchers adjusted for other factors, the risk of complications or death was not significantly different for patients who had surgery at different times of the day — between 6 a.m. and 7 p.m. — or week.

The time of year also had no impact on the risk of complications or death. This included July and August, when most new residents start working in teaching hospitals.

The study appears in the December issue

To be sure, Americans remain sharply divided over the legislation, with slightly more than one-third (36 percent) of adults saying they want the law repealed and 21 percent saying they want it to remain as is. Another 25 percent would like to see only certain elements of the law modified, the poll found.

“The public is still divided, mainly on partisan lines, as to whether to implement or repeal all, parts, or none of the health care reform bill,” said Harris Poll Chairman Humphrey Taylor.

The poll, conducted earlier this month, found that support for the legislation clearly breaks down along party lines. Almost two-thirds of Republicans (63 percent) said they wanted the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act repealed, compared to 9 percent of Democrats.

But while poll respondents were split about the law as a whole, many strongly supported key elements of the bill, “with the notable exception of the individual mandate [the requirement that all adults purchase health insurance] which remains deeply unpopular,” Taylor said.

That support for certain components of the law seems to be increasing slowly with time. For instance, 71 percent of those polled now back the

In cases where drug resistance can lead to treatment failure, new research shows that therapies tailored to contain an infection or a tumor at tolerable levels can, in some cases, extend the effective life of the treatment and improve patient outcomes. In other cases, aggressive treatments aimed at eliminating as much of the infection or tumor as possible — the traditional approach — might be best. But how can we know which stands the better chance of working?