http://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on Health and Medicine. Earth Day may be more than a month away, but another, more personal, ecosystem has been shown to also be worth protecting—within our bodies are communities of microbes that affect the behavior of human cells hosting them. These communities, called the "microbiome," is so crucial to our health that some consider it to be a complex "second genome." Understanding the interaction of these microbes among one another and their human hosts has the potential to yield insights into numerous diseases and complex human disorders from obesity to susceptibility to infection. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-human-genome-microbiome.html Medical research Thu, 28 Feb 2013 11:10:18 EST news281272193 A new study finds that nearly half of older teenagers and young adults break up and get back together with previous dating partners and over half of this group have sex as part of the reconciliation process. This study was recently published in the Journal of Adolescent Research. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-onoff-relationships-sex-teenagers-young.html Psychology & Psychiatry Tue, 22 Jan 2013 13:19:51 EST news278083178 (Medical Xpress)—A desire for expensive, high-status goods is related to feelings of social status - which helps explain why minorities are attracted to bling, a new study suggests. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-12-bling-social-status.html Psychology & Psychiatry Mon, 17 Dec 2012 13:10:46 EST news274972230 The odds of individuals with open-angle glaucoma undergoing visual field testing decreased for all racial/ethnic groups from 2001 through 2009, but the odds decreased the most for Hispanic men and women in a study of enrollees in a large U.S. managed care network, according to a report published in the December issue of Archives of Ophthalmology. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-12-odds-visual-field-glaucoma-decreased.html Ophthalmology Mon, 10 Dec 2012 16:00:12 EST news274369693 Peanut allergies are rising among American children and one reason might be due to economic status. According to a new study presented at the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI) Annual Scientific Meeting, greater rates of peanut allergy are found in families with higher economic status. This supports the "hygiene hypothesis" of many allergists. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-11-socioeconomic-status-linked-childhood-peanut.html Immunology Fri, 09 Nov 2012 04:10:02 EST news271654267 Racial minorities have reduced access to high-quality joint replacement care, according to Dr. Xueya Cai and colleagues from the University of Iowa in the US. Their work, published online in Springer's journal Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research, shows that African American patients are more likely than Caucasians to receive total knee arthroplasty (or replacement surgery) in low-quality hospitals. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-09-dictate-quality.html Other Tue, 13 Sep 2011 09:29:29 EST news235124953 Among low-income patients who are black or whose primary language is not English, patient navigators may help improve colorectal cancer (CRC) screening rates, according to a report in the May 23 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. The article is part of the journal's Health Care Reform series. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-05-patient-colorectal-cancer-screening-ethnically.html Cancer Mon, 23 May 2011 17:30:10 EST news225390594