Junior doctors who work long hours are significantly more likely to suffer from needlestick injuries and other skin-puncturing accidents, says a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association (Sept 6) by researchers at Harvard Medical School. The study of 2,737 junior doctors says that doctors who work over their normal hours increase the risk of skin-puncturing injuries by 61 per cent.

Toddlers who are morbidly obese have lower IQ scores, developmental delays and brain lesions similar to those seen in Alzheimer’s disease, claim Florida University researchers in the Journal of Pediatrics (Sept). The scientists, who studied 60 children and adults, suspect that metabolic disturbances caused by obesity may also have an adverse effect on young brains.

Baby girls who possess a specific immune gene that too closely resembles their mothers’ immune gene are significantly more likely to develop schizophrenia later in life, say scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles. The gene, HLA-B, is linked to other prenatal complications such as pre-eclampsia and low birth weight, says a report in the American Journal of Human Genetics (Oct).

Every 20lb a man is overweight increases his chances of infertility by about 10 per cent, according to a study in Epidemiology (Sept) by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Data gleaned from questionnaires completed by 1,468 farmers and their wives as part of the 23-year-long Agricultural Health Study suggested that significantly obese men are nearly twice as likely to be infertile as normal for their age group.

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