Interrupted HIV treatment beneficial

Stopping anti-retroviral therapy in HIV-infected patients from time to time could reduce the side effects and costs of the treatment, according to an article in The Lancet journal. Though extremely effective at preventing AIDS, lifelong treatment with Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy (HAART) is expensive and can lead to serious side effects, such as liver damage, and decreasing the time that patients receive HAART could solve these problems. At the same time, however, interrupting therapy may increase the risk of the disease progressing. The virus may also become resistant to HAART if treatment stops as low concentrations of the drug remain in the body, says a team of Swiss researchers after studying 430 patients with chronic HIV.

Escalators, carts harm kids

Shopping carts, escalators and lawn mowers injure 35,000 American children every year and should be redesigned, researchers report in the latest issue of the journal Pediatrics. Three-quarters of the injuries were to the head or neck. Some children were injured when they or fell off while riding in carts or trapped in the gaps between moving stairs. The researchers say that changes in cart designs and avoiding taking strollers on an escalator will reduce such injuries. They also suggest that escalator designers must reduce the gap between the steps and side wall or provide shields against access to the gap to decrease entrapment risk.

Mushroom boosts cancer fight

A mushroom used for centuries in Eastern Asian medicine might be able to improve the effects of a particular anti-cancer drug, according to research published in the British Journal of Cancer. Researchers at the Boston University tested the effects of extracts of Phellinus linteus on prostate cancer cells and found that when it was combined with doxorubicin, a well-known cancer chemotherapy drug, it increased the number of cancer cells killed by the drug. The findings raise the possibility that one day lower doses of chemotherapy would be needed to achieve the same effectiveness in treating certain cancer patients.

Like parents, like daughters

Very attractive people are 36 per cent more likely to have daughters than sons and this is why the world’s females are becoming better-looking than men, says a study in the Journal of Theoretical Biology. The study postulates that differing “evolutionary strategies” lead parents to produce the sex that would most benefit from their own characteristics.