Washington, Feb 24 : Statins, commonly used to lower cholesterol levels, have been found to adversely affect patients' brain functions, claim researchers.

Lead researcher Yeon-Kyun Shin, a biophysics professor at Iowa State University has shown that drugs that inhibit the liver from making cholesterol may also keep the brain from making cholesterol, which is vital to efficient brain function.

"If you deprive cholesterol from the brain, then you directly affect the machinery that triggers the release of neurotransmitters," said Shin.

"Neurotransmitters affect the data-processing and memory functions. In other words -- how smart you are and how well you remember things," he added.

Washington, Feb 24 : Men who are infertile are nearly three times more likely to develop testicular cancer than those who are fertile, says a new study.

According to the report in the February 23 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals, testicular germ cell cancer, the most common cancer among young men in industrialized countries, has become even more prevalent during the last 30 to 50 years.

London, Feb 24 : Patients with Alzheimer''s disease could improve memory by listening to their favourite songs, suggests a new study.

Listening to certain tunes from past evokes powerful and vivid memories that appear to be immune from the condition, the researchers have claimed.

According to Petr Janata and his team from the University of California, making a "soundtrack of someone''s life" before their mind is too damaged and playing it back to them could help form a resistance to the disease.

Washington, Feb 24 : Women are less likely than men to have a stroke after mini-stroke, according to a new study.

Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and Yale University said that their findings underscore the need to continue researching gender differences in disease prevention and follow-up care.

Transient ischemic attack (TIA) is called mini-stroke because it produces stroke-like symptoms but rarely causes lasting damage.

The researchers said that their study found that 30 days after a TIA, women are 30 percent less likely to have a stroke, 14 percent less likely to have heart-related problems and 26 percent less likely to die than men of the same age.

London, Feb 24: Naked mole rats live for nearly 30 years longer than any other rodent, and scientists reckon that these animals may hold the secret to longevity.

The oxidising compounds produced in the bodies gradually wear down DNA and proteins, hence causing ageing by destroying the cells.

But, surprisingly, naked mole rats have almost equivalent levels of oxidants to mice that live to be just three and a half years.

For the study, Rochelle Buffenstein of the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio and colleagues extracted liver tissue from both species, and treated it with chemicals that "unravel" proteins to reveal damage.

Washington, Feb 24: Babies born in the high mould season, which generally encompasses the fall and winter months, are at increased risk of developing early symptoms of asthma, suggests a new study.

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley found that newborns whose first few months of life coincide with high pollen and mould seasons have three times the odds of developing wheezing - often an early sign of asthma - by age 2 compared with those born at other times of the year.

The study results have been reported online in the journal Thorax.