Using Body Mass Index Skews Analyses on Obesity Rates

When researchers use percent of body fat data to assess obesity rather than body mass index (BMI), the huge gap in obesity rates between African-American //and white women, for example, is cut in half, and white men are found to have a much higher risk of obesity than African-American men. Wh...

NYU study finds new risk factor for melanoma in younger women

...n among women than men under the age of 40. Between 40 and 50 the incidence is about equal in both sexes, and over the age of 50, melanoma incidence skews markedly toward men. Polsky and his co-authors suspect the difference may be linked to the activity of estrogen, mediated in part by a genetic variant...

In Unfolding Budget Debate, Alliance to Spotlight Flawed MedPAC Policy Guidance, Failure to Evaluate Medicaid Margins in Recommending Medicare Funding Levels

...ughout to year to explain to policymakers on Capitol Hill and executive agencies why excluding Medicaid margins in formulating Medicare funding policy skews the perception of economic reality in a manner harmful to seniors and their growing complex care needs, as well as to the direct care workers who serv...

Skews in Biological News

Stress may make you itch

...ls in your skin, resulting in inflammatory skin disease. The related report by Joachim et al., "Stress-induced Neurogenic Inflammation in Murine Skin skews Dendritic Cells towards Maturation and Migration: Key role of ICAM-1/LFA-1 interactions," appears in the November issue of The American Journal of Pa...

Gene chips used to distinguish ventilator-associated pneumonia from underlying critical illness

...reathe face a high risk of pneumonia. The lung infection, however, is exceedingly difficult to diagnose because a patient's underlying condition often skews laboratory test results and masks pneumonia's symptoms a reality that can delay appropriate antibiotic treatment. Using gene chip technology, scie...