GOOD NEWS

Test-tube advantage

Children born as a result of assisted reproduction technologies are generally well adjusted, suggests a new survey. Researchers from the University of Cambridge found that egg donation was associated with greater parental psychological well-being compared with donor insemination, IVF and adoption ? and none of the children exhibited psychological problems. However, When the children were questioned regarding their social and emotional development, donor-insemination children,who had over-involved mothers, were more likely than egg-donation children to be bullied. In the medical journal Fertility and Sterility, the researchers theorise that “having a mother who is more likely to be over-involved might render children more vulnerable to negative reactions from their peers”.

Antibody vs tumour

Researchers from the University of Massachusetts Medical School have developed a monoclonal (cells derived from a single cell) antibody that kills lung cancer cells without destroying the normal cells. The Newswise reported that the cell was created in the laboratory of Kenneth L. Rock, UMMS professor and chair of pathology. The antibody binds to the surface of tumour cells and initiates apoptosis (an internal cellular mechanism that causes the cancer cells to self-destruct without affecting healthy tissue).

BAD NEWS

Unsafe driving

A new study has found that accident victims, who were not wearing seat belts, were three times more likely to die in the hospital’s emergency room than those using a belt, according to researchers at the Injury Research Center of the Medical College of Wisconsin. The report went on to say that unbelted crash occupants represented 68 per cent of the patients dying in the emergency ward, the Newswise reported.

Sleep breathing

Patients with severe sleep-disordered breathing are two to four times more likely to experience complex, abnormal heart rhythms while sleeping than individuals without the problem, according to researchers at Case Western Reserve University, Ohio. These findings appear in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. The study provides an explanation for the observed increase in sudden nocturnal deaths recently reported with sleep apnoea.