Kidney stones, crystals that develop in the kidneys or the tubes that carry urine from the kidney to the bladder, affect 10 percent of the U.S. population, and men run a four times greater risk than women of developing them. The chance of forming kidney stones rises steeply after the age of 40. Oxalate, a key chemical in the formation of kidney stones, comes in high concentrations in iced tea.

“For many people, iced tea is potentially one of the worst things they can drink,” John Milner, an instructor in the department of urology at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, said in a news release. “For people who have a tendency to form kidney stones, it’s definitely one of the worst things you can drink.”
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In the journal Cell, researchers report that when a worm gene called elt-3 becomes less active, lots of other genes do the same, and worms age. So what, you ask? The scientists want to find out if a similar process happens in other animals, including humans. If so, keeping key genes active may keep aging at bay.

Stanford University’s Yelena Budovskaya and colleagues basically showed that aging is written into worms’ genetic script — at least, in a lab where worms lived out their days without becoming some other animal’s supper. The elt-3 gene was one of the worms’ important aging genes. When the elt-3 slowed down, aging picked up its pace. …read more

Long-time mobile phone users who talk more than an hour a day on the devices may be may be more likely to have high-frequency hearing loss, researchers say. “Our intention is not to scare the public,” says Naresh K. Panda, MS, DNB, chairman of the department of ear, nose, and throat at the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research in Chandigarh, India, and researcher for the study. The study, he tells WebMD, is preliminary and small. “We need to study a larger number of patients.”

His team found that people who had talked on cell phones for more than four years and those who talked more than an hour daily were more likely to have these high-frequency losses. These losses can make it difficult to hear consonants such as s, f, t and z, making it hard to understand words. But another hearing expert familiar with the study says there is as yet no cause for alarm.
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The condition, called varicocele, is a network of tangled blood vessels in the scrotum which prevents the normal circulation of blood through the veins in the testicles. A minimally invasive radiological procedure called embolization can, in most cases, correct the problem. “Using the embolization of varicoceles, we were able to improve factors related to infertility, especially sperm count and sperm motility,” said lead researcher Dr. Sebastian Flacke, an associate professor of radiology at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston.

In embolization, a small catheter is inserted into the groin and, using X-ray guidance, is placed in the varicocele. Once the catheter is placed, a tiny platinum coil and a few milliliters of an agent to ensure the closure of the gonadic vein are also inserted. The minimally invasive procedure has a short recovery time; most patients go home the next day.
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