Blood testing to determine a link between food and illness is increasingly common, but some tests are not considered diagnostic and can lead to confusion, according to a primer in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). Both traditional physicians and holistic medicine practitioners may offer blood testing to diagnose adverse reactions to food.

Greater lifetime exposure to the stress of traumatic events was linked to higher levels of inflammation in a study of almost 1,000 patients with cardiovascular disease led by researchers at the San Francisco VA Medical Center and the University of California, San Francisco.

Today’s tree pollen count in Chicago is 1600, which is 100 more than the 1500 limit, which indicates a dangerous air quality warning. Dr. Joseph Leija, who performs the official allergy count for the Midwest states: “After only seven days of allergy count recording, we are documenting the first air quality alert in the 2012 allergy reporting season.

Researchers from the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute and the University of Melbourne have identified a new way to accurately test for peanut allergy. It is hoped the test will be more cost effective and convenient than standard approaches and minimise over-diagnosis of peanut allergy in the community.

Schoolteachers who underwent a short but intensive program of meditation were less depressed, anxious or stressed – and more compassionate and aware of others’ feelings, according to a UCSF-led study that blended ancient meditation practices with the most current scientific methods for regulating emotions.

Your mother had a doctor’s appointment for a memory test. The results are conclusive: she presents with the first signs of Alzheimer type dementia.

Repeated stress triggers the production and accumulation of insoluble tau protein aggregates inside the brain cells of mice, say researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine in a new study published in the Online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Anxious people have a heightened sense of smell when it comes to sniffing out a threat, according to a new study by Elizabeth Krusemark and Wen Li from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the US. Their work is published online in Springer’s journal Chemosensory Perception. The study is part of a special issue of this journal on neuroimaging the chemical senses.

Poverty is bad for your health. Poor people are much more likely to have heart disease, stroke, and cancer than wealthy people, and have a lower life expectancy, too. Children who grow up poor are more likely to have health problems as adults. But despite these depressing statistics, many children who grow up poor have good health.

A study published by University of Kentucky researchers shows that survivors of multiple cancers report unhealthier behaviors post-diagnosis than control counterparts. Published in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine, the study recorded answers regarding health status and health behaviors from 404,525 adults using the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey.

Anxiety, depression, stress and social support can predict early alcohol and illicit drug use in youth, according to a study from Carolyn McCarty, PhD, of Seattle Children’s Research Institute, and researchers from the University of Washington and Seattle University.

A team of researchers led by Michael H. Antoni, director of the Center for Psycho-Oncology Research at the University of Miami (UM) has shown that a stress management program tailored to women with breast cancer can alter tumor-promoting processes at the molecular level.

Researchers have taken a critical step in understanding how allergic reactions occur after identifying a genetic signature for regulation of a key immune hormone, interleukin (IL-13). Scientists from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center say the finding opens the potential for new molecular targets to treat allergic disease.

A new study of mice supports the idea that exposure to germs in childhood helps develop the immune system and thereby prevent allergies and other immune-related diseases such as asthma and colitis later on in life. Researchers at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, US, led the study, a report of which is in the 22 March online issue of Science.

Autism Speaks, the world’s leading autism science and advocacy organization, has announced preliminary results of new research that estimates autism costs society a staggering $126 billion per year (U.S.) – a number that has more than tripled since 2006, and annually in the U.K. has reached more than $34 billion (equivalent to $54 billion U.S.).

Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are developmental disabilities that include difficulties in social interaction and communication as well as restricted, repetitive, and stereotyped behavior patterns. The CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) has released information this week, estimating that as many as 1 in 88 children, or more than 1%, may have some kind of ASD.