If you're at high risk of skin cancer, check your skin regularly. Roman Königshofer/Flickr, CC BY-ND

By H. Peter Soyer, The University of Queensland and Anna Finnane, The University of Queensland

We don't actually know whether probiotics have a measurable impact on digestive health - and if it is positive. brownpau/Flickr, CC BY-SA

By Paul Bertrand, RMIT University; Andrew Ball, RMIT University, and Kate Polglaze, RMIT University

 Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is one of a group of preventable, lifelong conditions (the Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders) that may result from high alcohol use in pregnancy. It can cause low IQ, delays in development and problems with learning, academic achievement, behavior, motor function, speech and language and memory.

It is also characterized by abnormal facial features and poor growth, before or after birth. 

One in eight children born in 2002 or 2003 and living in remote Fitzroy Valley communities in Western Australia have Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, finds the The Lililwan study published today in the Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health.

In a radio interview , Prime Minister Tony Abbott raised what he described as the “potential health impacts” of wind farms.

Preventing inflammation in obese fat tissue may hold the key to preventing or even reversing type 2 diabetes, new research has found.

Researchers from Melbourne's Walter and Eliza Hall Institute and the RIKEN Institute, Japan found they could 'reverse' type 2 diabetes in laboratory models by dampening the inflammatory response in fat tissue.

Dr Ajith Vasanthakumar, Dr Axel Kallies and colleagues from the institute discovered that specialised immune cells, called regulatory T cells (Tregs), played a key role in controlling inflammation in fat tissue and maintaining insulin sensitivity.

Imagine being able to tone down appetite and promote weight loss, while improving the body’s ability to handle blood sugar levels.

That’s just what Tony Means, PhD, and his team at the Duke University Medical Center were able to do when they blocked a brain enzyme, CaMKK2, in mice.

“We believe we have identified an important drug development target that could potentially turn into a metabolic triple play: appetite control, weight loss and blood sugar management,“ said Means, who is the Nanaline H. Duke Professor and Chairman of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology.

What causes us to lose muscle strength as we age and how exercise can prevent it from happening has never been thoroughly understood, but McMaster University researchers have discovered a key protein required to maintain muscle mass and muscle strength during aging.

This important finding means new and existing drugs targeting the protein may potentially be used to preserve muscle function during aging.

"We found that the body's fuel gauge, AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK), is vital to slow muscle wasting with aging," said Gregory Steinberg, the study's senior author and professor of medicine at the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine. He is also co-director of MAC-Obesity, the Metabolism and Childhood Obesity Research Program at McMaster.

A large international analysis of 174,000 patients has shown conclusively that statin treatment reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease in women.

Caloric restriction in mice has been touted for accomplishing everything from increasing longevity to lowering cholesterol, but those animals are weaned on that from birth, and humans will go to jail trying it with their children.

It may be unnecessary - and the diet advice we have gotten for the last 30 years may be also. A new study found that a diet of high carbohydrates and low protein - the opposite of what has been recommended - improves insulin sensitivity and can provide benefits similar to those obtained with calorie restriction.

Should doctors recommend homeopathy? Sometimes placebos work, that is why placebo has an Effect named after it and, because they are inert, they can't do any harm. But when patients or taxpayers are coughing up money for it, the issue is more murky.

Peter Fisher, Director of Research at the Royal London Hospital for Integrated Medicine, says that of all the major forms of complementary medicine, homeopathy is the most misunderstood. He says how regular medicine reviews homeopathy is. For example, in a recent report by the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council which stated that "there are no health conditions for which there is reliable evidence that homeopathy is effective."