Insects transmit diseases when, probing for blood vessels, they inject saliva together with viral, bacterial, or parasitic pathogens into the skin of mammalian hosts. A study in mice published on June 16, 2016 in PLOS Pathogens suggests a critical role of mosquito saliva in the outcome of dengue virus infection.

In tropical regions, Aedes mosquitoes transmit dengue virus (DENV) as well as other closely related viruses such as Zika. DENV infects almost 400 million humans every year. There are four types of DENV. They are referred to as serotypes 1-4 because, following infection, individuals have distinct antibody profiles in their blood serum, resulting from specific immune responses to each of the four virus types.

According a new study, fetal exposure to commonly used SRI drugs may affect brain activity in newborns. The researchers suggest that the effects of drugs on fetal brain function should be assessed more carefully, Indications for preventive medication should be critically evaluated, and non-pharmacological interventions should be the first-line treatment for depression and anxiety during pregnancy.

"We found many changes in the brain activity of SRI-exposed newborns," says Professor Sampsa Vanhatalo, head of the BABA center at the Helsinki University Children's Hospital. "Since the changes did not correlate with the mother's psychiatric symptoms, we have assumed that they resulted as a side effect of maternal drug treatment."

As young people reach adulthood, their preferences for sweet foods typically decline. But for people with obesity, new research suggests that the drop-off may not be as steep and that the brain's reward system operates differently in obese people than in thinner people, which may play a role in this phenomenon.

The new findings are published online June 15 in the journal Diabetes.

SALT LAKE CITY, June 15, 2016 - It's easy to understand why natural selection favors people who help close kin at their own expense: It can increase the odds the family's genes are passed to future generations. But why assist distant relatives? Mathematical simulations by a University of Utah anthropologist suggest "socially enforced nepotism" encourages helping far-flung kin.

The classic theory of kin selection holds that "you shouldn't be terribly nice to distant kin because there isn't much genetic payoff," says Doug Jones, an associate professor of anthropology and author of the new study. "Yet what anthropologists have observed over and over is that a lot of people are pretty altruistic toward distant kin."

Scientists can interfere with sperm production in the parasitic blood fluke Schistosoma mansoni by blocking expression of the Nuclear Factor Y-B gene (NF-YB). The new study by Harini Iyer and Phillip A. Newmark of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and University of Illinois and James Collins (now at UT Southwestern) appears on June 15 in PLOS Genetics.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Women live longer than men.

This simple statement holds a tantalizing riddle that Steven Austad, Ph.D., and Kathleen Fischer, Ph.D., of the University of Alabama at Birmingham explore in a perspective piece published in Cell Metabolism on June 14.

"Humans are the only species in which one sex is known to have a ubiquitous survival advantage," the UAB researchers write in their research review covering a multitude of species. "Indeed, the sex difference in longevity may be one of the most robust features of human biology."

Steven Austad is pictured. Credit: UAB