In Philadelphia, a 45% increase in syphilis cases last year and steep cuts in state funding for HIV/AIDS are creating challenges for public health workers in the city, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. Since 2008, the most recent year for which data are available, Philadelphia's syphilis rates have increased across all groups, according to the Inquirer...

Pieces in the complex autism inheritance puzzle are emerging in the latest study from a research team including geneticists from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). The study identified 27 different genetic regions where rare copy number variations - missing or extra copies of DNA segments - were found in the genes of children with autism spectrum disorders, but not in the healthy controls. The findings are published June 26 in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics.