Did you ever notice how some of us (e.g., me) seem to be mosquitoes' favored dishes on the human buffet, while others (e.g., my former boss), like bitter Brussels sprouts, may, occasionally, get one bite? Researchers with Rothamsted Research in the UK are working on finding the reasons why some of us get bitten half to death by flies and mosquitoes, while others walk away unscathed, and create repellents to make us all, well, repellent. Let's all wish them speedy discoveries, so soon we can all be as unappetizing as those lucky few!

Now for a more pleasant aspect of summer (or year-round, for some people): Barbecues! For some time, people have been warned about unhealthy grilling, but now scientists in Taiwan report in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry that marinating foods with marinades that include soy sauce or sugar can inhibit the formation of unhealthy cholesterol compounds during grilling.

Does living a healthy life do more than drugs for heart health? Yes! (And many would say "obviously.") A study published online on July 3 in Circulation tracked 42,847 men aged 40 to 75 who were participants in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, and found that the majority of coronary heart disease events may be preventable through adherence to healthy lifestyle practices, even among those taking medications for high blood pressure or high cholesterol.

And speaking of heart health and HBP, research published online on June 29 in the American Journal of Public Health warns that white-collar workers with high job demands and low social support from bosses and coworkers tended to have higher blood pressure than other workers. The effect occurred in men and women, but was stronger in men.

A review and meta-analysis published in the July 4 issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal confirms that exercise is an effective intervention to improve quality of life, cardiorespiratory fitness, physical functioning and fatigue in breast cancer patients and survivors.

Meanwhile, an article from the July 5 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute notes that women who have the cancer-causing gene SNP309, in combination with the p53 tumor suppressor protein, had reduced survival rates. Alone, SNP309 did not affect survival.

If new moms want another reason to breastfeed, here's one that's probably unexpected:According to a paper published in the July issue of Pediatrics, breastfeeding for longer than three months may protect against bedwetting during childhood! (Breast milk supplemented with formula did not make a difference in the rate of bedwetting.)

Also in the July issue of Pediatrics, researchers at McGill University in Montreal report that there is no link between the MMR vaccine and increasing rates of autism. The researchers, who looked at 27,749 children born from 1987 to 1998, found that not only were autism rates higher in kids who were vaccinated after one suspect, the preservative thimerosal, was removed from vaccines, but rates of autism also were higher after MMR vaccine coverage decreased. Now the trick is to find what is really the cause of increasing autism rates (For more on autism, see our earlier article, Learning to Smile .)

An article published in the July 6 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine reports that doctors often fail to diagnose the flu in young children. Of children with laboratory confirmed influenza, only 28% were correctly diagnosed by the treating physician in an inpatient setting and only 17% were correctly diagnosed in an outpatient setting.