UC Davis research is shining new light on a neglected issue: marital violence in Asian Americans.In a new analysis, the researchers found that, as expected, violence is more common among Asian-American couples who report marital distress. But UC Davis psychology professor Nolan Zane and graduate student Manveen Dhindsa found that three other factors also stood out as significant risks for marital violence. [click link for full article]

A protein that dwindles in response to obesity and a sedentary lifestyle may one day help doctors predict which people are at increased risk for pancreatic cancer, new research by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and collaborating scientists indicates.In a report in Cancer Research, the investigators found that, in a large study group, people with the lowest blood levels of a protein called IGFBP-1 were twice as likely to develop pancreatic cancer as those with higher levels. [click link for full article]

Research underway at Rutgers University-Camden seeks to examine links between children’s mental health problems and alcohol, nicotine, and illegal drug use over time. [click link for full article]

A nursing mother who takes codeine could be placing her infant at raised risk of morphine overdose if she is an ultra-rapid metabolizer of codeine, warns the US Food and Drugs Administration (FDA). The FDA says it has examined all available data since The Lancet reported that a 13-day old breastfed baby died from morphine overdose. Levels of morphine in the breast milk had been abnormally high after the mother took small doses of codeine. [click link for full article]

The largest problem for controlling high blood pressure (hypertension) is compliance with treatment, according to an Editorial in this week’s issue of The Lancet, Cardiology Special Edition .The editorial states “Despite very effective and cost-effective treatments, target blood pressure levels are very rarely reached, even in countries where cost of medication is not an issue. [click link for full article]

Preschoolers are more introspective than we give them credit for, according to new research by Simona Ghetti, assistant professor of psychology at UC Davis.Ghetti and her co-investigator, Kristen Lyons, a graduate student in psychology at UC Davis, presented their findings during the “Young Researchers in Developmental Psychology” symposium at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association in San Francisco. [click link for full article]

Football, one of the most popular sports in the United States, is also the leading cause of sports-related injuries. During the 2005-06 season, high school football players sustained more than half a million injuries nationally. A study conducted by researchers in the Center for Injury Research and Policy (CIRP) at Columbus Children’s Hospital, is the first to compare injuries among high school and collegiate football players using a nationally representative sample. [click link for full article]

Scientists at Cure Lab, Inc., a biotechnology company based in Canton, Massachusetts, in collaboration with researchers at Boston University and Harvard Medical School have discovered a potential new target for the development of anti-influenza (flu) drugs, including those that may be effective against potentially pandemic influenza strains like H5N1.Their findings have been published in the journal Cell Cycle. [click link for full article]

A new Joslin Diabetes Center-led study has identified a protein found in fat cells that may play a major role in how fat is produced and stored, offering a new target for treatments to prevent obesity and reduce the risk for type 2 diabetes. This latest research appears in the August 2007 issue of Cell Metabolism.The study examined the role of a protein called Sirt2, a member of the sirtuin family of seven cellular proteins. [click link for full article]

Pregnancies in Jerusalem in the 1960s and 1970s may hold vital clues about how pancreatic cancer and diabetes are linked. According to research published in the online open access journal BMC Medicine, women with a history of gestational diabetes had a higher risk of developing pancreatic cancer later in life.The research team drawn from the US and Israel and led by M. C. [click link for full article]