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Scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara have reported a discovery at the cellular level that suggests possibilities for drug therapy for kidney disease.
Over 600,000 people in the U.S. are affected by the inherited kidney disease known as ADPKD, short for autosomal-dominant polycystic kidney disease. In the U.S. this is more than the number of individuals affected by cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy, hemophilia, Down's syndrome, and sickle cell anemia combined. The disease is characterized by the proliferation of cysts that eventually debilitate the kidney, causing kidney failure in half of all patients by the time they reach age 50.
In experiments with transgenic mice, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine researchers discovered the remaining steps in the complicated process of how the largest class of jumping genes replicates and inserts themselves within the human genome. Haig H. Kazazian, Jr. MD, Chair of the Department of Genetics, and colleagues at Penn published their findings in the February issue of Genome Research. This knowledge may shed light on the origins of "junk" DNA, parts of the genome for which no function has yet been discovered.
The next generation of artificial bone may rely on a few secrets from the sea. Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy?s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have harnessed the way seawater freezes to develop a porous, scaffolding-like material that is four times stronger than material currently used in synthetic bone.
Although still in the investigational stages, variations of this substance could also be used in a myriad of applications in which strength and lightness are imperative, such as dental implants, airplane manufacturing and computer hardware.
Cancer and open-heart surgery patients, disaster victims, organ or bone marrow transplant recipients, and others who require life-saving blood platelet transfusions will benefit from equipment invented by a researcher at the University of British Columbia?s Centre for Blood Research (CBR). The device has the potential to minimize the loss of donated platelets and effectively increase platelet supply by up to 20 per cent, in Canada alone.
The instrument, called a Dynamic Light Scattering Platelet Monitor (DLS-PM), is the first to measure the quality of blood platelets -- a key blood component that is transfused specifically to improve clotting and stop bleeding.
A protein associated with the growth of head and neck tumors may be a tumor suppressor that could prevent the spread of cancer when it is expressed above normal levels, according to a study published in the Feb. 1 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI).
The study, led by University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine professor of otolaryngology and pharmacology, Jennifer Grandis, M.D., is the first to show that the expression of a protein called STAT1 may play a vital role in preventing head and neck tumor growth. STAT1 belongs to a family of proteins called signal transducers and activators of transcription that have been linked to tumor progression in many cancers.
About half of patients with severe lupus that was refractory to standard treatment and who underwent autologous stem cell transplantation to improve their immune system have substantial improvement in disease activity after several years, according to preliminary research published in the February 1 issue of JAMA.
Many of us have experienced d?j? vu - the unsettling sensation of knowing that a situation could not have been experienced, combined with the feeling that it has. It is usually so fleeting that psychologists have until recently thought it impossible to study. But for some people, the feeling of having been there before is a persistent sensation, making every day a ?Groundhog Day?. Psychologists from Leeds? memory group are working with sufferers of chronic d?j? vu on the world?s first study of the condition.
Dr Chris Moulin first encountered chronic d?j? vu sufferers at a memory clinic. ?We had a peculiar referral from a man who said there was no point visiting the clinic because he?d already been there, although this would have been impossible.? The patient not only genuinely believed he had met Dr Moulin before, he gave specific details about the times and places of these ?remembered? meetings.
Scientists at the University of York have launched a new research project which aims to develop ways of making bones from blood.
Researchers from the University?s Department of Biology are heading the EC-backed project to create bone structures from cord blood stem cells for use in the repair of bone defects and fractures.
The three-year ?2.5 million research project involves scientists in the UK and across Europe, as well as academics from the University of York's Departments of Sociology and Philosophy, who will carry out sociological and ethical evaluations of the work. The project will seek to find a viable new medical use for the two million units of cord blood banked in Europe, and currently used for transfusions and treating leukaemia.
The ability to study undisturbed blood-forming stem cells in their natural environment will help researchers understand how they work.
Blood-forming stem cells are a bit like Greta Garbo, according to new research by scientists at Japan's University of Tsukuba and the University of Michigan Medical School. They want to be alone.
Until now, scientists didn't know exactly where to find these extremely rare, elusive adult stem cells ? the only cells capable of forming all the different types of blood and immune cells found in mammals. Previous research suggested, and most scientists believed, that hematopoietic stem cells were clustered together somewhere in bone marrow.
Scientists have discovered that a wide variety of different cancers actually share something in common ? a molecular ?signature? made up of tiny bits of genetic material called microRNA (miRNA) that target key cancer genes and promote malignant growth.
The study appears online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Scientists have only recently begun to understand how important microRNA may be in regulating gene expression. For years, these tiny bits of genetic material went unnoticed ? nestled within vast stretches of the genome that appeared to be non-functional. They may have been easy to overlook: miRNAs are usually only 22 or so nucleotides in length ? miniscule in size when compared to their cousins, messenger RNA, which can be several hundred to a thousand times that long.
Human adenoviruses may cause human obesity, but more research is needed before a screening test and vaccine become reality. Meanwhile, one researcher advises, 'Eat right, exercise, wash your hands'
There is a lot of good advice to help us avoid becoming obese, such as "Eat less," and "Exercise." But here's a new and surprising piece of advice based on a promising area of obesity research: "Wash your hands."
There is accumulating evidence that certain viruses may cause obesity, in essence making obesity contagious, according to Leah D. Whigham, the lead researcher in a new study, "Adipogenic potential of multiple human adenoviruses in vivo and in vitro in animals," in the January issue of the American Journal of Physiology-Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology published by the American Physiological Society.
Intracellular observation of RNA metabolism will help identify disease-associated RNAs.
For the first time, researchers can now peer inside intact cells to not only identify RNA-binding proteins, but also observe?in real-time?the intricate activities of these special molecules that make them key players in managing some of the cell's most basic functions. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine who developed the new technology see this advance as one of the next logical steps in genomics research. Senior author James Eberwine, PhD, Professor of Pharmacology at Penn, and colleagues published their research this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Nonsurgical cancer therapy that destroys tumors but leaves healthy surrounding tissue intact could be available at every hospital if research reported this week in the journal Nature eventually comes to fruition.
The Los Alamos National Laboratory Trident laser team, in collaboration with researchers from the University of Nevada, Reno and elsewhere, has succeeded in concentrating the intensity of a laser-driven carbon ion beam into a narrow range.
May provide new hope for cancer patients and others with compromised immune systems.
New study by Mount Sinai researchers may lead to improved stem cell therapies for patients with compromised immune systems due to intensive cancer therapy or autoimmune disease. The study is published in this week's issue of Cell.
A group, led by Paul Frenette, Associate Professor of Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, found that the sympathetic--or "fight or flight" branch--of the nervous system plays a critical role in coaxing bone marrow stem cells into the bloodstream. Bone marrow cells known as hematopoietic stem cells are the source for blood and immune cells.
Two studies in the Jan. 27, 2006 Cell have yielded evidence that could prove a boon for stem cell therapies aimed at patients with Parkinson's disease and those with compromised immune systems due to intensive cancer therapy or autoimmune disease, according to researchers. The basic findings in mice revealed critical factors that determine the fate of one type of nerve cell progenitor and that set bone marrow stem cells into action.
In experiments with mice, researchers have found that eliminating what appears to be a master genetic switch for the development of pain-sensing neurons knocks out the animals' response to "neuropathic pain." Such pain is abnormal pain that outlasts the injury and is associated with nerve and/or central nervous system changes. The animals rendered deficient in the gene, called Runx1, also showed lack of response to discomfort caused by heat and cold and inflammation. The researchers said that their findings, reported in the February 2, 2006, issue of Neuron, could have implications for the design of improved pain therapies.
New procedure may revolutionize traditional asthma care by lessening smooth muscle tissue in the airway.
Up until now, if you suffer from asthma, medication has been the only treatment available to you for relief. But now, clinical researchers at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP) hope to open up a new avenue to alleviate the debilitating symptoms of asthma - through an investigative bronchoscopic procedure where the smooth muscle of the airway, which causes the spasm, is reduced using thermal energy.
Research from UNSW provides the most convincing evidence to date that complex mental activity across people's lives significantly reduces the risk of dementia. The researchers found that such activity almost halves the incidence of dementia.
The paper, which has just been published in Psychological Medicine, is the first comprehensive review of the research in the field of 'brain reserve', which looks at the role of education, occupational complexity and mentally stimulating lifestyle pursuits in preventing cognitive decline. The paper integrates data from 29,000 individuals across 22 studies from around the world.
"Until now there have been mixed messages about the role of education, occupation, IQ and mentally stimulating leisure activities, in preventing cognitive decline. Now the results are much clearer," said the lead author, Dr Michael Valenzuela, from the School of Psychiatry at UNSW. "It is a case of 'use it or lose it'. If you increase your brain reserve over your lifetime, you seem to lessen the risk of Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases."
Like any other organism, an influenza virus's success in life is measured by its genetic track record, its ability to pass on genes from one generation to the next.
But while much is known about the genes and inner workings of flu viruses, how the microbe organizes its genetic contents to seed future generations of viruses has remained an enduring mystery of biology.
Now, with the help of a long-studied flu virus, an electron microscope and a novel idea of how the virus aligns segments of RNA as it prepares to make virions, the particles a virus creates and sends forth to infect cells, that puzzle has been resolved.
A research team led by Bharat Ramratnam, a Brown Medical School professor, has genetically modified bacteria found in yogurt so that the bugs produce a protein proven to block HIV infection in monkeys. The results offer hope for a microbicide that can prevent the spread of HIV, which now affects about 40 million people.
Researchers have come up with a novel delivery system for anti-AIDS drugs: milk-curdling bacteria used to make yogurt and cheese.
?We?ve found that you can engineer these bugs to secrete drugs ? in this case, a viricide that disables HIV,? said Bharat Ramratnam, assistant professor of medicine at Brown Medical School and attending physician at Rhode Island Hospital and The Miriam Hospital. ?The hope is to use the bacteria as the basis for a microbicide which can prevent sexual transmission of HIV.?
In the continuing battle against antibiotic resistance, two new studies shed light on the complex defense mechanisms pathogenic bacteria use to evade antibiotic attack, an understanding of which could lead to new, more effective antibiotics to help save lives and combat the growing problem of antibiotic resistance. The studies, both of which target chemical components in the protective membrane surrounding bacterial cells, will appear in the February 17 inaugural print issue of ACS Chemical Biology, a new monthly publication of the American Chemical Society, the world?s largest scientific society.
The Alzheimer's drugs Aricept, Razadyne and Exelon can lead to small improvements in mental functioning and the ability to carry out everyday activities in people with mild to moderate forms of the disease, according to a new review of recent studies.
Although the three drugs work in slightly different ways, the few head-to-head studies of the drugs -- all funded by pharmaceutical companies -- found them equally effective, according to review author Jacqueline Birks of the University of Oxford.
New research shows that it is undamaged nerve fibres that cause ongoing spontaneous pain, not those that are injured.
These unexpected findings, by Dr Laiche Djouhri, Professor Sally Lawson and colleagues from the University of Bristol, UK, are reported in the Journal of Neuroscience today [25 January, 2006].
Previous research into ongoing chronic pain has tended to focus on the damaged nerve fibres after injury or disease and overlooked the intact fibres. This new understanding may help pharmaceutical companies formulate novel pain killers.
Traditional herbal medicines may improve symptoms of abdominal pain, disturbed bowel movements, and/or bloating and distension caused by Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). This was the conclusion of a systematic review of clinical studies that is published in the latest update of The Cochrane Library.
Authors searched for studies that evaluated the effectiveness of traditional herbs including Chinese, Tibetan and Indian herbal medicines and found 75 different randomised trials. The trials varied in quality, and investigated a wide range of different preparations. Most of the trials had been conducted in China and published in Chinese.
Topical quinolone antibiotics can clear aural discharge better than systemic antibiotics. This was the finding of a systematic review of literature published in the latest update of The Cochrane Library.
Chronically discharging ears associated with underlying persistent eardrum perforations (chronic suppurative otits media (CSOM)) are a common cause of preventable hearing impairment, particularly in low and middle income countries.
The narcotic painkiller fentanyl relieves breakthrough pain quickly and more effectively than other narcotics and traditional drug therapy in patients with cancer, according to a systematic review of current evidence.
"When compared to placebo and morphine, participants gave lower pain intensity scores and higher pain relief scores for (the fentanyl lozenge) at all time points," concluded the review led by Giovambattista Zeppetella, M.D., of the St. Clare Hospice in England.
Breakthrough pain is moderate to severe sudden pain that interrupts otherwise controlled, persistent pain in people already taking pain medicine. The fentanyl lozenge, known as oral transmucosal fentanyl citrate, or OTFC, is also known by the brand name Actiq.
Low-tech, at-home preparation in the last month before childbirth could help pregnant mothers avoid one of the more common surgeries performed on women in the United States, a new review suggests.
The review looked at studies in which women used a massage technique in the last four or five weeks of pregnancy to train the lower genital tract for childbirth. During perineal massage a women kneads the tissue below the vagina to prepare the tissue to expand more easily during birth.
A review of numerous studies finds no strong evidence indicating a significantly reduced risk of cancer associated with the consumption of omega-3 fatty acids, according to an article in the January 25 issue of JAMA.
Epidemiological studies have suggested that groups of people who consume diets high in omega-3 fatty acids, found in certain fish and vegetables, may experience a lower prevalence of some types of cancer, according to background information in the article. Many small trials have attempted to assess the effects of omega-3 fatty acids on cancer treatment by adding omega-3 fatty acid to the diet either as omega-3 fatty acid?rich foods or as dietary supplements. Because of the results of some studies, a number of omega-3 fatty acid?containing dietary supplements have appeared on the market claiming to protect against the development of a variety of conditions including cancer, even though studies have reported mixed results.
Of patients who were hospitalized and treated for moderate to severe carbon monoxide poisoning, those who sustained heart muscle injury due to their exposure had an increased risk of death during a mid-point follow-up period of 7.6 years compared to those without injury to the heart, according to an article in the January 25 issue of JAMA.
Despite a decline in the annual death rate from carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning, CO remains the most common type of accidental poisoning in the United Sates, contributing to 40,000 emergency department visits each year, according to background information. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that from 1968 through 1998 CO poisoning contributed to an average of 1,091 unintentional deaths and 2,385 suicidal deaths in the U.S. annually. Symptoms of CO poisoning include weakness, nausea, dizziness, lethargy, confusion and headache. In addition to neurological effects, heart damage has also often been reported in CO poisoning cases.
Women with stage I endometrial cancer (with grade 1 and grades 3 and 4 disease) who receive radiation therapy in addition to other treatment have improved survival rates, according to a study in the January 25 issue of JAMA.
Endometrial cancer remains the most common gynecological malignancy in the United States, according to background information in the article. However, the optimal supplemental treatment for stage I endometrial cancer remains uncertain.
Most alcoholics in North America are chronic smokers. While much is known about the adverse effects of chronic smoking on cardiac, pulmonary and vascular function as well as the risk for various cancers, little is known about its effects on brain neurobiology and function. Symposium participants at the June 2005 annual meeting of the Research Society on Alcoholism in Santa Barbara, California addressed the brain injuries that chronic smoking and drinking can cause separately as well as interactively. Proceedings are published in the February issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.
Growth factors are a large and diverse group of polypeptides critical for the development of the central nervous system. A symposium at the June 2005 annual meeting of the Research Society on Alcoholism in Santa Barbara, California focused on three growth factors ? insulin, brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), and glial cell-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) ? that may also play an important role in the regulation of the behavioral effects of alcohol. Symposium proceedings are published in the February issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.
People who meditate grow bigger brains than those who don't. Researchers at Harvard, Yale, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found the first evidence that meditation can alter the physical structure of our brains. Brain scans they conducted reveal that experienced meditators boasted increased thickness in parts of the brain that deal with attention and processing sensory input.
In one area of gray matter, the thickening turns out to be more pronounced in older than in younger people. That's intriguing because those sections of the human cortex, or thinking cap, normally get thinner as we age.
Compounds isolated from licorice root may help prevent cavities, according to researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles. In test tube studies, the scientists showed that an extract from a plant root that is used to make licorice candy and other products contains at least two compounds that appear to be potent inhibitors of Streptococcus mutans, a major cause of dental caries. Their study is scheduled to appear in the Feb. 24 print version of the Journal of Natural Products, a monthly peer-reviewed joint publication of the American Chemical Society and the American Society of Pharmacognosy.
Study finds no increased risk for second hemorrhage, careful patient selection advised.
A study from the Stroke Service at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) has found that some patients who have survived an intracerebral hemorrhage ? a stroke caused by bleeding in the brain ? may be safely treated with aspirin to prevent future heart attacks or strokes caused by blood clots. The study, appearing in the January 24 issue of the journal Neurology, addresses a fairly common clinical dilemma.
Sexual condition also associated with other chronic diseases and their risk factors.
Erectile dysfunction (ED) affects approximately one in five American men, appears to be associated with cardiovascular and other chronic diseases and may predict severity and a poor prognosis among those with heart disease, according to three studies in the Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
New medications for ED, introduced in 1998, prompted a 50 percent increase in physician visits related to the condition from 1996 to 2000, according to background information in one of the articles. Most previous estimates of the impact of ED have either excluded some men based on age, ethnicity or profession or were compiled before these medications became available. This led the National Institutes of Health Consensus Development Panel on Impotence to call for national epidemiological data to provide information about prevalence and risk factors for ED, the authors write.
Researchers at Melbourne's Howard Florey Institute have discovered how the brain prioritises pain and thirst in order to survive - a mechanism that helps elite athletes to 'push through the pain barrier'. The Florey's Dr Michael Farrell and colleagues discovered that pain sensitivity is enhanced when people are thirsty.
The scientists also found that a part of the brain is uniquely activated when pain and thirst are experienced together, suggesting these regions may act as an integrative centre that has a special role in modifying pain senses.
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"An apple a day" now has new meaning for those who want to maintain mental dexterity as they age. New research from the University of Massachusetts Lowell suggests that consuming apple juice may protect against cell damage that contributes to age-related memory loss, even in test animals that were not prone to developing Alzheimer's disease and other dementias.
Elderly patients taking the commonly prescribed blood thinner warfarin experience an increased risk for osteoporosis-linked bone fractures, according to a study at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The results suggest physicians should carefully monitor the bone health of patients placed on the medication and that their patients should take steps to decrease the risk of osteoporosis.
Therapeutic doses of Viagra? have been shown to influence the rate at which visual signals are integrated by the brain, affecting the way quick, repeated events, such as flickering light, are perceived. The work sheds light on the function of a specific photoreceptor enzyme and paves the way for future research utilizing Viagra as a safe tool for studying human vision.
Erectile dysfunction may provide a warning sign of significant coronary heart disease researchers from the University of Chicago report in the January 23 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine. Although recent studies suggest an association between erectile dysfunction and atherosclerotic vascular disease, this is the first study to link ED with abnormal results on cardiac stress testing, including evidence for severe coronary artery blockages and markers of a poor cardiovascular prognosis.
The human body has a unique immune system response to foreign DNA, suggesting that DNA viruses and RNA viruses are detected by different mechanisms, Yale School of Medicine researchers report this week in Immunity.
The researchers also found that DNA recognition might be used to detect invasive bacteria in addition to viruses, according to Daniel Stetson, a post doctoral fellow in the Section of Immunobiology and lead author of the study.
Although there are countless types of viruses, they can all be placed in two categories based on the type of nucleic acids that comprise their genome: viruses made of RNA and viruses made of DNA. Infected cells sense the presence of foreign nucleic acids as viruses replicate inside them and distill the problem of recognizing a dizzying array of viruses into a relatively simple mechanism for turning on the immune response.
"It is well established that such a pathway exists for detection of viral RNA inside infected cells," Stetson said. "In contrast, very little is known about whether cells can detect foreign intracellular DNA or how this system might function."
Stetson and Ruslan Medshitov, professor of immunobiology, a Howard Hughes Institute investigator, and senior author of the study, compared the innate immune response to intracellular DNA with other virus recognition pathways.
"We found that this novel pathway seems to function differently from all other known nucleic acid sensors," Stetson said. "The unique immune response activated by foreign DNA suggests that DNA viruses and RNA viruses are detected by different mechanisms."
Stetson said one important question raised by these findings is how this newly described system avoids responding to genomic DNA that is contained within all cells.
"If this 'tolerance' to self DNA were to break down, cells might mount an antiviral response against their own DNA," he said. "Further characterization of this pathway will shed light on the mechanisms of antiviral responses and how cells discern viral and self-DNA."
For the first time, scientists have identified a significant increase in the incidence rate of melanoma--an invasive form of an already deadly skin cancer--among California Hispanics. A new study published in the March 1, 2006 issue of CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, finds in contrast to non-Hispanic Caucasians, increases in melanoma in Hispanics have been confined to thicker lesions, which have a poorer prognosis.
Working half a world away from each other, two teams of medical scientists have identified what they believe is a simple, effective and inexpensive treatment to reduce lung problems associated with cystic fibrosis, the leading fatal genetic illness among whites. The new therapy, identified through studies supported chiefly by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, also appears to be safe and easy to take.
Aspirin is typically prescribed for people at risk of having an ischemic stroke to prevent blood clots. Because aspirin may cause bleeding, it is typically avoided in people who have had a hemorrhagic stroke, also called intracerebral hemorrhage. A new study, however, finds that aspirin may not increase the risk of recurrent intracerebral hemorrhage. The study is published in the January 24, 2006 issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology (AAN).
Researchers followed 207 survivors of intracerebral hemorrhage at regular intervals to check whether they took an antiplatelet drug such as aspirin and if it increased their risk of another hemorrhage. In an intracerebral hemorrhage, a blood vessel bursts within the brain resulting in a pressure buildup that can lead to unconsciousness or death.
Drug discovery researchers at Northwestern University have developed a novel orally administered compound specifically targeted to suppress brain cell inflammation and neuron loss associated with Alzheimer's disease.
The compound is also rapidly absorbed by the brain and is non-toxic ? important considerations for a central nervous system drug that might need to be taken for extended periods.
Nonsurgical cancer therapy that destroys tumors but leaves healthy surrounding tissue intact could be available at every hospital if research reported this week in the journal Nature eventually comes to fruition.
The Los Alamos National Laboratory Trident laser team, in collaboration with researchers from the University of Nevada, Reno and elsewhere, has succeeded in concentrating the intensity of a laser-driven carbon ion beam into a narrow range.
This work builds upon past research led by the University of Nevada that discovered much higher quality laser proton beams from laser acceleration as opposed to conventional particle acceleration.
Producing carbon ion beams and limiting their spread removes the major impediment to improving such applications as tumor irradiation therapy.
Many technological challenges still have to be met to develop a compact particle generator that could be used in a hospital setting. No clinical trials are imminent.
This research also opens up opportunities for advances in nuclear fusion applications.
Using an ultrafast, nanoscale semiconductor laser, investigators at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, have discovered a way of rapidly distinguishing between malignant and normal cells. Moreover, this new technique has the potential of detecting cancer at a very early stage, a development that could change profoundly the way cancer is diagnosed and treated.
Reporting its work in the journal Biomedical Microdevices, a team of researchers led by Paul Gourley, Ph.D., described the methods it used to construct a device that can flow cells one at a time past an ultrafast laser, and how this device revealed that malignant cells have a characteristic optical response that differs from that of a normal cell. This response, the researchers found, arises from the fact that mitochondria, the internal organelles that produce a cell?s energy, are scattered in a chaotic, unorganized manner in malignant cells, while they form organized networks in healthy cells. This difference produces a marked change in the way that malignant cells scatter laser light.
University of Pittsburgh researcher Alexander Star and colleagues at a California-based company, Nanomix, Inc., have developed devices made of carbon nanotubes that can find mutations in genes causing hereditary diseases, they report in the Jan. 16 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. This method is less expensive and takes less time than conventional techniques.
Carbon nanotubes are rolled-up sheets of graphite only a few nanometers wide-about the width of a molecule of DNA. The researchers used these nanotubes' electrical properties to find a particular mutation in the gene that causes hereditary hemochromatosis, a disease in which too much iron accumulates in body tissues.
Single-walled carbon nanotubes wrapped with DNA can be placed inside living cells and detect trace amounts of harmful contaminants using near infrared light, report researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Their discovery opens the door to new types of optical sensors and biomarkers that exploit the unique properties of nanoparticles in living systems.
"This is the first nanotube-based sensor that can detect analytes at the subcellular level," said Michael Strano, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Illinois and corresponding author of a paper to appear in the Jan. 27 issue of the journal Science. "We also show for the first time that a subtle rearrangement of an adsorbed biomolecule can be directly detected by a carbon nanotube."
Looking at 10 easily obtained risk factors, including age, blood pressure and medical history, could help physicians identify patients with pulmonary embolism who are at low risk of death in the short term and therefore are candidates for outpatient treatment, according to a new study.
Pulmonary embolism (PE) generally occurs when a blood clot that develops in the veins of the leg or pelvis becomes dislodged and results in sudden blockage of an artery in the lung. It is a major health problem in the United States, causing more than 100,000 hospitalizations in 2002, according to background information in the article. The condition can be fatal, but evidence suggests that nonmassive PE, which is not accompanied by respiratory failure or other serious complications, could effectively and safely be treated on an outpatient basis, the authors write.
Infections could play a key role in triggering certain types of adult brain cancer, according to results from a new statistical analysis of the disease.
The international study, led by Dr Richard McNally at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, was funded by Cancer Research UK, the Dutch Cancer Society, and the Christie Hospital Research Endowment Fund.
The British and Dutch team analysed a database of adult brain tumours diagnosed in patients from the North Brabant province of the Netherlands between 1983 and 2001. They found clusters of cases of glioma tumours, which make up about half of all brain tumours, at different time intervals in different geographical locations.
Researchers report dramatic benefits from a single amino acid substitution in troponin I cardiac muscle protein.
It's just one little amino acid, but it makes all the difference in protecting the heart from the harmful effects of heart attack and cardiac failure. Researchers from the University of Michigan Medical School suggest this amino acid, called histidine, could be the key to a new therapy for cardiovascular disease.
In a study to be published Jan. 22 in Nature Medicine as an advance online publication, U-M scientists describe how they created a modified form of a heart muscle protein called troponin I and how it improved cardiac function in mice and in damaged human heart cells. The secret was using genetic engineering technology to replace one amino acid called alanine, found in the adult form of troponin I, with a histidine from the fetal form of the same protein.
In a study of more than 3,000 older Australians, those with a higher white blood cell count, a sign of inflammation, were more likely to die of cancer, according to an article in Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
White blood cell (WBC) count, or the measure of white blood cells in the blood, is a reliable and widely used marker that reflects inflammation throughout the body, according to background information in the article. People who smoke or have acute or chronic infections generally have a higher WBC count. Previous studies have linked WBC count to other chronic conditions, including cardiovascular disease, hypertension and diabetes. Some evidence also suggests that inflammation is related to the development and progression of cancer, but few researchers have examined whether WBC count and other markers of inflammation can predict cancer, the authors write.
In an Australian-first, a UNSW researcher based at the Diabetes Transplant Unit at the Prince of Wales Hospital has produced a human embryonic stem cell (hESC) line without the use of any animal products. The breakthrough eliminates the risk of animal-to-human contamination in potential stem cell therapy treatments.
In another first, the Prince of Wales Hospital is the first public institution in the country to extract stem cells from human embryos produced using IVF in infertile couples.
The impacts of parental alcoholism in children are well known, particularly the alcohol consumption habits of children of alcoholics (COA's). However, until now, little research has been conducted on the correlation between parental alcoholism and illicit drug use in emerging adults. A new study by David Flora, PhD of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (now at York University), and Laurie Chassin, PhD of Arizona State University, shows that parental alcoholism represents a risk factor for maladaptive behaviors in adulthood that extend beyond alcoholism and into illicit drug use. The study appears in the current issue of Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, published by the American Psychological Association (APA).
Last year there were about 350-500 million infections and approximately 1.3 million deaths due to malaria, mainly in the tropics. Malaria is spread by female mosquitoes, which carry protozoan parasites called Plasmodium.
Currently drug discovery seeks compounds that can inhibit or kill invading parasites and infections, but there are potentially millions of candidate compounds. It can take 10 years to discover a drug and another 10 to get it approved.
Grid technology, where the resources of many computers in a network are applied to a single problem at the same time can reduce candidate compounds from millions to thousands or even hundreds, isolating the most promising candidates and speeding up the discovery process.
In a discovery that could greatly accelerate the search for genetic causes of heart disease, a multi-disciplinary Duke University research team has found that the common fruit fly can serve as a powerful new model for testing human genes implicated in heart disease.
The finding is important, the Duke team said, because the entire genome of the fruit fly is well understood and catalogued, enabling researchers to systemically screen genes to identify potential gene mutations or variants implicated in human heart disease. The achievement also raises the possible of rapid screening in fruit flies of drugs to treat heart disease, said the researchers.
Researchers urge doctors to perform sleep studies on children before, during treatment.
Growth hormone helps hundreds of children with a rare disorder that causes them to gorge on food, but for some, starting treatment can worsen a dangerous nighttime breathing problem, University of Florida researchers have found.
Sleep apnea disrupts breathing during sleep and is common among morbidly obese children, including those with Prader-Willi syndrome, a disease that compels them to eat nonstop. Researchers say that uncovering how to treat obesity and related problems in children genetically wired to be overweight could help them better battle childhood obesity in general.
When activated, a specific protein in the brain enhances long-term storage of fearful memories and strengthens previously established fearful memories, Yale School of Medicine researchers report this week in Nature Neuroscience.
"This report is the first to demonstrate evidence of enhancements in memory reconsolidation in the brain," said the senior author, Jane Taylor, associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry. "Understanding these molecular mechanisms may provide critical insights into psychiatric disorders."
Long-term goal to create 'stem cell banks' for emergency treatment.
University of Rochester Medical Center researchers today announced the launch of a study that will examine whether transplanted stem cells can be safely used to treat damaged heart muscle in patients just after their first heart attack. As part of the fast emerging science of regenerative medicine, labs worldwide are attempting to replace damaged tissue with new cells, much in the same way as salamanders re-grow limbs.
Ever since penicillin, a byproduct of a fungal mold, was discovered in 1929, scientists have scrutinized fungi for other breakthrough drugs. As reported Jan. 20 in the Journal of Chemistry and Biology, a team led by a University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher has developed a new method that may speed the ongoing quest for medically useful compounds in fungi.
By manipulating a single fungal protein, the team, led by professor of plant pathology and medical microbiology Nancy Keller, pinpointed the genes responsible for creating dozens of secondary metabolites, a class of compounds that make good drug candidates. Already, analysis of one subset of these genes has revealed that they encode proteins required to produce an anti-tumor agent.
A new technique based on the same technology used to detect chemical warfare agents and explosives is being employed by scientists at The University of Manchester to treat hospital patients with lung disease.
Dr Paul Thomas and a team of researchers are using a sensor, commonly used to detect explosives at airports, to develop a new way of diagnosing lung disease.
The microDMx" sensor, developed by Sionex Corporation, is being used to develop a new technique which is able to detect 'unhealthy' molecules present in the breath of a patient.
Researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center report that they have created a way for viral and gold particles to "directly assemble" and potentially seek out and treat disease where it resides in the body.
Their study, published in the online early edition of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) the week of Jan. 23 - 27, 2006, shows the use of biologically compatible materials to fabricate a "nanoshuttle" - thousands of times smaller than a human hair - which can be harnessed to viral particles to precisely home to disease wherever it hides.
Every year, more than 200, 000 Americans die from sepsis, a severe illness caused by bacterial infection of the bloodstream. A study by Vikas Sukhatme and colleagues (Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School) now reveals that a protein called angiopoietin-2 may play a pivotal role in acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), a condition that affects about 40% of patients with sepsis and worsens their prognosis.
In ARDS, small blood vessels in the lungs become leaky and release fluid. This impairs lung function, and patients experience trouble breathing and need to be put on respirators. If the condition lasts too long, the lung tissue gets damaged irreversibly. But what causes the leakage of fluid out of the blood vessels?
The function of tubular organs like the kidneys, lungs, and vessels of the vascular system is critically dependent on the length and diameter of the tubular branches of which they are composed. Several devastating pathological conditions like polycystic kidney disease and ischemias have been intimately linked to the aberrant sizes of tubular organs. Yet the underlying cellular and molecular mechanisms that control tube size are poorly understood, and, consequently, drugs that intervene in tubular organ disorders are lacking.
Carnegie Mellon University scientist Chien Ho and his colleagues have developed a promising tool that uses magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to track immune cells as they infiltrate a transplanted heart in the early stages of organ rejection. This pre-clinical advance, described in an upcoming issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), ultimately could provide a non-invasive way to detect transplant rejection in patients.
"We have reported for the first time the ability to monitor single immune cells in a live animal using MRI. This could revolutionize the management of transplant patients," said Ho, professor of biological sciences at the Mellon College of Science.
In an article appearing online today in the journal Nature Methods, researchers at the EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique F?d?rale de Lausanne) unveil a powerful new tool that will facilitate genetic research and open up new avenues for the clinical treatment of genetic disease.
The researchers have combined several gene manipulation techniques and incorporated them into a single lentiviral vector ? a gene delivery system partly derived from HIV. When injected into living cells ? either in vitro or in vivo ? the genetic material aboard the lentiviral vector joins the genetic material in the nucleus of the cell, causing the cell to express the protein encoded by the new gene. This versatile package can also carry bits of RNA that stop the cell from expressing one of its own genes, by way of RNA interference. But the cargo that makes this tool really novel and exciting is a fusion protein that acts as a kind of remote control. By administering an antibiotic, the genetic manipulation ? either the transgenic material introduced by the lentivirus, or the gene silencing via RNA interference--can be switched on or off at will.
Compounds in blackcurrants could prevent Alzheimer's disease and the characteristics of British berries suggest they do it best, writes Jennifer Rohn in Chemistry & Industry magazine.
New research led by Dilip Ghosh of the Horticulture and Food Research Institute in New Zealand, shows that compounds in blackcurrants have a potent protective effect in cultured neuronal cells against the types of stress caused by dopamine and amyloid-b, a peptide associated with Alzheimer's disease.
About one in a hundred patients with apparently incurable non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) survive five or more years after being given relatively small doses of radiation therapy (RT) meant to ease symptoms, according to a new study. Published in the March 1, 2006 issue of CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the study says a new subset of patients with NSCLC appears to have disease that is curable with minimal therapy, and may explain occasional cures attributed to unconventional therapies or faith healing.
Investigators at Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering, the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, and the biotechnology firm GlycoFi, Inc., report a breakthrough in using yeast to produce antibodies with human sugar structures.
Antibodies are proteins with sugars attached to them, and they are emerging as a major class of drugs in the treatment of cancer. In the global effort to increase the potency of antibodies, the interdisciplinary work by the Dartmouth/GlycoFi team, published in the February issue of Nature Biotechnology, represents a major advance. The work shows that antibodies with increased cancer-killing ability can be produced by controlling the sugar structures that are attached to them.
The first genome-wide screen for protein complexes is completed.
Today researchers in Germany announce they have finished the first complete analysis of the "molecular machines" in one of biology's most important model organisms: S. cerevisiae (baker's yeast). The study from the biotechnology company Cellzome, in collaboration with the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), appears in this week's online edition of Nature.
"To carry out their tasks, most proteins work in dynamic complexes that may contain dozens of molecules," says Giulio Superti-Furga, who launched the large-scale project at Cellzome four years ago. "If you think of the cell as a factory floor, up to now, we've known some of the components of a fraction of the machines. That has seriously limited what we know about how cells work. This study gives us a nearly complete parts list of all the machines, and it goes beyond that to tell us how they populate the cell and partition tasks among themselves."
Adult stem cells may be free of the ethical concerns that hamper embryonic stem cell research, but they still pose formidable scientific challenges. Chief among these is the doggedness with which adult stem cells differentiate into mature tissue the moment they're isolated from the body. This makes it nearly impossible for researchers to multiply them in the laboratory. And because adult stem cells are so rare, that makes it difficult to use them for treating disease.
Now, researchers in the lab of Whitehead Institute Member and MIT professor of biology Harvey Lodish have discovered a way to multiply an adult stem cell 30-fold, an expansion that offers tremendous promise for treatments such as bone marrow transplants and perhaps even gene therapy.
Discovery offers potential to determine if President Lincoln would have developed the disease.
Researchers at the University of Minnesota Medical School have discovered the gene responsible for a type of ataxia, an incurable degenerative brain disease affecting movement and coordination.
This is the first neurodegenerative disease shown to be caused by mutations in the protein ?-III spectrin which plays an important role in the maintaining the health of nerve cells. The scientific discovery has historical implications as well--the gene was identified in an 11-generation family descended from the grandparents of President Abraham Lincoln, with the President having a 25 percent risk of inheriting the mutation.
Minimizing trauma to the body's largest artery ? the aorta ? during heart bypass surgery can significantly reduce cognitive loss that often follows the operation, a team from Wake Forest University School of Medicine reported today (Jan. 21) in the Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery.
"A surgical strategy designed to minimize aortic manipulations can significantly reduce the incidence of cognitive deficits in coronary artery bypass graft patients compared with traditional techniques," said the team, headed by John W. Hammon Jr., M.D., professor of cardiothoracic surgery.
The use of continuous low-level heat wrap therapy (CLHT) significantly reduces acute low back pain and related disability and improves occupational performance of employees in physically demanding jobs suffering from acute low back pain, according to a Johns Hopkins study published in The Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
"With recent concerns around the safety of oral pain medications, both patients and physicians are considering alternative treatment options for acute low back pain," said Edward J. Bernacki, M.D., M.P.H., associate professor of medicine at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the study?s principal investigator. "The dramatic relief we see in workers using CLHT shows that this therapy has clear benefits for low back pain and that it plays an important role in pain management. Physicians and other health care providers in an occupational environment can tell patients that CLHT is a safe and effective alternative for treating acute low back plain."
Scientists at the University of York have played a crucial role in developing a way of using plants to clean up land contaminated by explosives.
The research, by a team led by Professor Neil Bruce in CNAP (Centre for Novel Agricultural Products) in the University's Department of Biology, uses micro-organisms found in soil to turn trees and plants into highly-effective pollution-busters. The research findings are published in Nature Biotechnology.
Decades of military activity have resulted in pollution of land and groundwater by explosives resistant to biological degradation. Large tracts of land used for military training, particularly in the USA, are contaminated by RDX, one of the most widely-used explosives, which is both highly toxic and carcinogenic.
A breakthrough in computational medicine is helping one University of Houston professor pave the way to uncover a ticking "time-bomb" in the heart.
Ioannis A. Kakadiaris, an associate professor of computer science at UH and director of the Computational Biomedicine Laboratory (CBL), and doctoral student Sean O'Malley are collaborating with Dr. Morteza Naghavi and other leading cardiologists from the Association for Eradication of Heart Attack (AEHA) in this research effort. With cardiovascular disease accounting for twice as many deaths as all cancers in the United States, this group has developed computer technology to alert physicians to heart attack risk.
When a human looks at a number, letter or other shape, neurons in various areas of the brain's visual center respond to different components of that shape, almost instantaneously fitting them together like a puzzle to create an image that the individual then "sees" and understands, researchers at The Johns Hopkins University report.
A team from the university's Zanvyl Krieger Mind/Brain Institute describes the complex but speedy process in detail in a recent issue of the journal Neuron.
The question of how the brain sees, recognizes and understands objects is one of the most intriguing in neuroscience, associate professor and paper co-author Charles E. Connor said.
The MRI and CT scan may one day have a robotic cousin capable of following and peering into patients as they move around.
A University of Florida engineer has designed a robot to shadow and shoot X-ray video of sufferers of orthopedic injuries as they walk, climb stairs, stand up from a seated position or pursue other normal activities ? and maybe even athletic ones like swinging a bat.
UF mechanical and aerospace engineer Scott Banks? goal is to augment static images of patients? bones, muscles and joints with an interior view of these and other parts in action during normal physical activity. By merging such full-motion X-rays with computerized representations, orthopedic surgeons will make better diagnoses, suggest more appropriate treatments and get a clearer idea of post-operative successes and failures, he said.
May represent a novel anticancer therapy.
Dr. Anthony E. Oro and colleagues (Stanford University) have identified two key Gli protein degradation signals that directly affect tumor latency in a mouse model of human skin cancer.
Their paper has been made available online ahead of print and will appear on the cover of the February 1 issue of the scientific journal Genes & Development.
Gli proteins are transcriptional mediators of the Sonic Hedgehog intracellular signaling pathway. Aberrant Shh signaling is implicated in a variety of human birth defects and about 25% of human tumors. Dr. Oro and colleagues found two sequences in the Gli1 protein ? called Dn and Dc ? that are recognized by the proteasome and facilitate Gli protein destruction. Mutations in these sequences (or "degrons" as they are called) prevent Gli1 degradation, causing, rather, the Gli1 protein to accumulate, and lead to accelerated tumorigenesis.
Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh, with the help of a team of Pittsburgh high school science teachers, have developed a wireless device that is implanted in the neck to fight depression and epileptic seizures. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration already has approved a wired version of the device, but that one carries risks and several undesirable side effects.
Drugs that treat depression by manipulating the neurotransmitter serotonin in the brain may also affect the user's immune system in ways that are not yet understood, say scientists from Georgetown University Medical Center and a Canadian research institute.
That's because the investigators found, for the first time, that serotonin is passed between key cells in the immune system, and that the chemical is specifically used to activate an immune response. They do not know yet, however, whether these SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) drugs "including the brands Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil and others" could have either a beneficial or a damaging effect on human immunity.
Innovative use of somatostatin receptor scintigraphy (SRS), a nuclear medicine imaging technique looking at how the body functions at the molecular level, may provide near immediate selection of breast cancer patients for endocrine therapy and offers a new tool in fighting the disease, according to a study published in the January Journal of Nuclear Medicine.
Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women and the second leading cause of cancer death in this country. About one in eight women will develop invasive breast cancer some time during her life, and more than 40,000 (1 in 33) of those die from the disease each year in the United States. Advanced or metastatic breast cancer patients receive either hormonal or chemotherapy treatment, depending on the hormone sensitivity of a woman's tumor. In some women, the female hormone estrogen promotes the growth of breast cancer cells. Endocrine or hormonal therapy removes the influence of estrogen on breast cancer cells, preventing the cancer cells from growing and spreading.
In a multifaceted study involving the Kuna Indians of Panama, an international team of scientists has pinpointed a chemical compound that is, in part, responsible, for the heart-healthy benefits of certain cocoas and some chocolate products.
The researchers, who are from the University of California, Davis; the Heinrich-Heine University of Duesseldorf, Germany; and Harvard Medical School, hope the findings will lead to new dietary or medicinal methods for improving and maintaining cardiovascular health.
Stress at work is an important risk factor for the development of heart disease and diabetes, finds a study published online by the BMJ today.
Stress at work has been linked with heart disease, but the biological processes were unclear. This study provides new evidence for the biological plausibility of the link between work stress and heart disease.
Researchers examined the association between work stress and the metabolic syndrome (a cluster of factors that increases the risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes) in 10,308 British civil servants aged between 35 and 55, over a 14 year period.
Mobile phones are not associated with an increased risk of the most common type of brain tumour, finds the first UK study of the relationship between mobile phone use and risk of glioma. The results are published online by the BMJ today.
The four year study by the Universities of Leeds, Nottingham and Manchester and the Institute of Cancer Research, London found those who had regularly used a mobile phone were not at a greater overall risk of developing this type of tumour.
A Mayo Clinic-led research collaboration has discovered that the protein MDC1 amplifies weak DNA injury signals so genetic repair can begin. Once amplified, even low-level damage signals become strong enough to activate the cell's natural repair processes while the injury is most tractable to repair. How this "distress call" was communicated wasn't clear until this finding, which appears in the January 20 issue of Molecular Cell (http://www.molecule.org/). The research was conducted in collaboration with colleagues from Harvard University and the University of Texas, Austin.
Significance of the Research
"It's important that DNA lesions get repaired because then we don't get mutations," says Junjie Chen, Ph.D., Mayo Clinic oncology researcher and leader of the Mayo Clinic team. "This is just one mechanism involved in communicating injury to the repair processes, but it's an important start to understanding how we might one day design new treatments that help this repair system recover from injury or resist injury."
Scientists at Virginia Tech have developed a single-step process for creating nonwoven fibrous mats from a small organic molecule ? creating a new nanoscale material with potential applications where biocompatible materials are required, such as scaffolds for tissue growth and drug delivery.
"Phospholipids, which are the main component of cell membranes in the human body or in an apple are exquisite in terms of their ability to self-organize," said Long.
Dirt may be a key to how bacteria that infect humans develop a resistance to antibiotic drugs.
In an article in the January 20 issue of the journal Science, McMaster University researchers say that study of bacteria found in dirt may be the key in identifying how and why antibiotic resistance happens in bacteria that infect people, predicting future clinical problems, and testing new antibiotics.
Antibiotic resistance has become an increasing public health concern because the organisms that cause infections in humans and animals are becoming less receptive to the healing aspect of antibiotic drugs.
Scientists believe that despite the current concerns around anti-inflammatory drugs like Vioxx, they may still be the best option for treating some forms of arthritis.
In a Nature Reviews of Drug Discovery article this month the researchers from Imperial College London and Queen Mary, University of London examine the use of selective inhibitors of cyclo-oxygenase-2 (COX-2).
Using a relatively new technique that relies on silver nanoparticles to amplify a diagnostic fluorescent signal and low power microwaves to accelerate binding of a diagnostically important molecule with the protein used to detect it, researchers at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, have created a new type of assay that could speed the detection of cancer at its earliest stages.
Complex natural products usually adopt precisely defined spatial structures that are of critical importance to their biological function. A substrate must fit precisely into the ?pocket? of an enzyme in order to be converted. The same is true of drugs meant to influence the function of enzymes. The biggest challenge in this is to develop effective methods for the synthesis of agents with tailored three-dimensional structures.
A team of British and American researchers headed by Eric Meggers is using metal atoms to give their agents the right shape. They have now successfully used this concept to develop a specific inhibitor for protein kinase Pim-1 based on a ruthenium complex.
Investigating the harmful health effects of excess fat, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified a protein that triggers death in mammalian cells overloaded with saturated fat.
When the researchers halted production of this protein, called EF1A-1, the cells were able to thrive in ordinarily damaging amounts of the saturated fat palmitate, a fat abundant in Western diets. At the same concentration of palmitate, normal cells still producing EF1A-1 rapidly died. The study will be published in the February 2006 issue of Molecular Biology of the Cell.
A group of Northwestern University researchers is developing a novel gene therapy aimed at selectively turning off one of the genes involved in the development of Parkinson's disease.
The gene therapy, described in the January online issue of the journal Experimental Neurology, was designed by Martha Bohn and her laboratory group at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
Bohn is Medical Research Council Professor and director of the neurobiology program at Children's Memorial Research Center and professor of pediatrics and of molecular pharmacology and biological chemistry at the Feinberg School. The gene technique the Bohn lab developed removes a protein known as alpha-synuclein from the diseased dopamine-producing neurons that die in Parkinson's disease. Alpha-synuclein is abundant in structures known as Lewy bodies ? a diagnostic hallmark of Parkinson's disease.
The findings might therefore lead to new strategies for the treatment and early detection of lung cancer, a disease that killed an estimated 163,510 Americans in 2005. The study could also lead to a better understanding of the molecular changes that occur in tumor cells during lung-cancer progression.
Tumor-suppressor genes are genes that normally prevent cells from growing out of control. The loss or silencing of one or more tumor-suppressor genes is believed to be an important part of cancer development.
Could Promote Safe Delivery of Drugs and Pesticides, Filter Toxins from Wastewater and Improve Chemical Production.
Tiny chemical cages created by researchers at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, show potential for delivering drugs to organs or tissues where they?re needed without causing harm elsewhere.
These cage-like molecules, called nanocontainers or nanoscale capsules because they measure a mere 3.2 nanometers (billionths of a meter) wide, also could make pesticides less hazardous to handle, filter toxic substances out of wastewater and regulate the pace of reactions in chemical production.
?While the concept of chemical cages is not new, we?ve created new components and advanced the assembly process to increase the chance that they?ll become practical,? said Ralf Warmuth, associate professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers and lead researcher. ?We?ve shown a way to securely link molecules together in a cage using an efficient, one-step process.?
In an article slated for an upcoming issue of the chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition, now available on the journal?s Web site at www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/112223539/PDFSTART, Warmuth and colleagues describe how they?ve used common organic chemicals and straightforward techniques to create nanocontainers. These octahedral (eight-sided) capsules, with their cavity volume of almost two cubic nanometers, could enclose one or more molecules of a medicine, pesticide or intermediate in a chemical manufacturing process that, if left uncaged, might prematurely decay or interact with other substances in passing.
A new mechanism for regulating brain function.
Non-coding regions of the genome ? those that don't code for proteins ? are now known to include important elements that regulate gene activity. Among those elements are microRNAs, tiny, recently discovered RNA molecules that suppress gene expression. Increasing evidence indicates a role for microRNAs in the developing nervous system, and researchers from Children's Hospital Boston now demonstrate that one microRNA affects the development of synapses ? the points of communication between brain cells that underlie learning and memory. The findings appear in the January 19th issue of Nature.
Researchers have found stronger evidence for a link between a parasite in cat faeces and undercooked meat and an increased risk of schizophrenia.
Research published today in Procedings of the Royal Society B, shows how the invasion or replication of the parasite Toxoplasma gondii in rats may be inhibited by using anti-psychotic or mood stabilising drugs.
Researchers have labored for decades to understand blindness-inducing neurodegenerative diseases such as age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and retinitis pigmentosa (RP).
It has been a painstaking scientific journey as AMD and RP each belong to a complex family of disorders, in which every disorder has many forms and each form is encoded with a distinct genetic recipe. Even AMD, a major cause of vision loss in people over 60, is actually a collection of more than 50 diseases.
New research suggests that inhaling hypertonic saline, a water-based concentrated salt solution, could provide long-term benefits for lung health in patients with cystic fibrosis (CF). Researchers at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill tested the effects of inhaling the saline four times daily for 14 days in 24 older patients with CF (ages 14 years or older). The treatment significantly improved mucus clearance, lung function, and breathing symptoms. If confirmed, the findings could lead to a new and inexpensive treatment for CF. The study was funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.
Researchers have identified a new area of the brain that responds to the fat hormone leptin in regulating body weight and energy expenditure. They said that the region seems to be particularly important in enabling the body to resist weight gain from a high-fat diet. Their discovery, they said, indicates that leptin acts on more brain areas than previously believed, to regulate body weight.
Leptin is secreted by fat tissue into the bloodstream, where it travels to the brain and other tissues. It acts on leptin receptors in areas of the hypothalamus to trigger fat loss and decreased appetite.
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An analysis of previous studies indicates that use of aspirin significantly reduces the risk of cardiovascular events in women and in men, due to reducing the risk of stroke in women and reducing the risk of heart attack in men, according to a study in the January 18 issue of JAMA.
Although the benefits of aspirin therapy for reducing the risk of heart attack (myocardial infarction ? MI), stroke, and vascular death among men and women with preexisting cardiovascular disease are well established, the role of aspirin in primary prevention is less clear, according to background information in the article. And it has not been clear if there is a differential beneficial effect between men and women.
Oregon Health & Science University Cancer Institute researchers have identified a protein fragment in some human breast cancers that may help predict a patient's chances of survival.
The presence of the fragment, called p95HER-2, in breast cancer tissue correlates closely with lymph node metastasis and earlier recurrence of the disease, suggesting that p95HER-2 is a marker and perhaps even involved in metastasis.
"By studying this marker we have a better chance to identify the patients who are more likely to have a longer disease-free survival," said Edward Keenan, Ph.D., one of the authors of the study. Keenan is professor of physiology and pharmacology and associate dean for medical education, OHSU School of Medicine.
The ideal substance to prevent cancer would block tumor growth without causing unpleasant or dangerous side effects. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis now report that a compound related to vitamin A shows promise in preventing or slowing tumor growth in mice prone to lung cancer. The compound, called bexarotene, doesn't cause the severe skin irritations that have limited the use of other vitamin A derivatives in cancer therapies.
"In the cancer prevention field, you look for drugs that can be given to healthy patients who have a higher risk of developing cancer," says Ming You, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Chemoprevention Program at the Siteman Cancer Center. "These patients wouldn't want to take a medication that makes them feel sick when they don't have cancer. So the drugs should be very well-tolerated and not cause harmful side effects."
The hearts of people who follow a low-calorie, yet nutritionally balanced, diet resemble those of younger people when examined by sophisticated ultrasound function tests, and they tend to have more desirable levels of some markers of inflammation and fibrosis, according to a new study.
"Eating less, if it is a high-quality diet, will improve your health, delay aging, and increase your chance of living a long, healthy and happy life," said Luigi Fontana, M.D., Ph.D., from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri and the Italian National Institute of Health in Rome, Italy. "This is the first paper to show that long-term calorie restriction with optimal nutrition has cardiac-specific effects that ameliorate the age-associated decline in diastolic function in humans. In other words, this is the first report ever to show that calorie restriction with optimal nutrition may delay primary aging in human beings."
Regular exercise is associated with a delay in the onset of dementia and Alzheimer's disease, according to a Group Health Cooperative/University of Washington study that will appear in the January 17 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. The study--the most definitive investigation of exercise and dementia to date--also found that the more frail a person is, the more he or she may benefit from exercise.
"Even those elderly people who did modest amounts of gentle exercise, such as walking for 15 minutes three times a week, appeared to benefit," says Eric B. Larson, director of Group Health Cooperative's Center for Health Studies and the lead investigator for the study.
In healthy volunteers, the equivalent of two cups of coffee reduced the body's ability to boost blood flow to the heart muscle in response to exercise, and the effect was stronger when the participants were in a chamber simulating high altitude, according to a new study in the Jan. 17, 2006, issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
"Whenever we do a physical exercise, myocardial blood flow has to increase in order to match the increased need of oxygen. We found that caffeine may adversely affect this mechanism. It partly blunts the needed increase in flow," said Philipp A. Kaufmann, M.D., F.A.C.C., from the University Hospital Zurich and Center for Integrative Human Physiology CIHP in Zurich,.
A team of Georgia Institute of Technology researchers is developing an inexpensive, handheld device that could help medical personnel provide faster and more accurate injections. The devices uses Doppler ultrasound to locate veins.
When medics are treating trauma patients, every second counts. Yet bruises, burns, and other physical conditions often make it difficult to locate veins and administer lifesaving drugs or solutions.
In response, a team of Georgia Institute of Technology researchers is developing an inexpensive, handheld device that uses Doppler ultrasound technology to find veins quickly.
Researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center say they have jumped a significant hurdle in the use of RNA interference (RNAi), believed by many to be the ultimate tool to both decode the function of individual genes in the human genome and to treat disease.
Reporting in the journal Genes and Development, investigators have developed a simple way to use the RNAi approach to silence a selected gene in a specific tissue in a mouse to determine the function of that targeted gene.
There's one more reason not to smoke during pregnancy. A mother's cigarette smoking increases the risk that her newborn may have extra, webbed or missing fingers or toes, according to a study in the January issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.
Although the overall risk of these abnormalities in fingers and toes is relatively low, just half a pack of cigarettes per day increases the risk to the baby by 29 percent, compared to non-smokers. Because limbs develop very early in pregnancy, the effect may occur even before a woman knows she is pregnant.
Researchers identify a compound in cocoa responsible for improving blood flow.
While a growing number of studies has shown a link between flavanol-rich cocoa and cardiovascular health, scientists have now substantiated a causal relationship between specific compounds present in cocoa and cardiovascular health. Published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) , this new study identifies the flavanol, (-)epicatechin, as one of the bioactive nutrients in cocoa that can improve the ability of blood vessels to relax.
An international team of scientists from the University of Dusseldorf, Germany; the University of California, Davis; Mars, Incorporated; and Harvard Medical School conducted a series of studies examining the role of specific cocoa flavanols in cardiovascular health.
Immune cells help to maintain cognition and brain cell renewal.
A team of scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science, led by Prof. Michal Schwartz of the Neurobiology Department, has come up with new findings that may have implications in delaying and slowing down cognitive deterioration in old age. The basis for these developments is Schwartz's team's observations, published today in the February issue of Nature Neuroscience, that immune cells contribute to maintaining the brain's ability to maintain cognitive ability and cell renewal throughout life.
Photodynamic therapy (PDT), which uses a light-sensitive chemical known as a photosensitizer to produce cell-killing ?reactive oxygen,? has become an important option for the treatment of esophageal cancer and non-small cell lung cancer. Current photosensitizers, however, produce significant side effects, including sensitivity to the sun, that limits their wider use in treating cancer.
Discovery may help improve bone marrow stem cell transplantation and the treatment of several blood disorders.
Scientists at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Center for Regenerative Medicine and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HCSI) have defined a molecule that dictates how blood stem cells travel to the bone marrow and establish blood and immune cell production. The discovery may help improve bone marrow stem cell transplantation and the treatment of several blood disorders.
"This is another remarkable example of how bone and bone marrow interact. A receptor known to participate in the body's regulation of calcium and bone also is critical for stem cells to engraft in the bone marrow and regenerate blood and immune cells," says David Scadden, MD, director of the MGH Center for Regenerative Medicine and co-director of the HSCI. "It reminds us how tissues interact and how looking closely at where stem cells reside may tell us a lot about how to manipulate them." Scadden is senior author of the report, which will be published in the journal Nature and has received early online release.
Obese and overweight individuals suffering metabolic syndrome and Type 2 diabetes showed significant health improvements after only three weeks of diet and moderate exercise even though the participants remained overweight.
"The study shows, contrary to common belief, that Type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome can be reversed solely through lifestyle changes," according to lead researcher Christian Roberts of University of California, Los Angeles.
Measurement of a certain protein in urine can increase the ability to detect bladder cancer recurrence, with test results available during the patient's visit, according to a study in the January 18 issue of JAMA.
Bladder cancer is the fifth most common malignancy in the United States, according to background information in the article. In 2005, there were an estimated 63,210 new cases and more than 13,000 deaths. There are 500,000 patients in the United States with a history of bladder cancer, making its prevalence higher than that of lung cancer.
Scientists generally agree that all cloned animals are biologically flawed. But they don't agree about what that means for stem cells derived from cloned embryos, the basis for therapeutic cloning.
Also known as somatic cell nuclear transfer, therapeutic cloning is a promising approach to create individually customized cellular therapies for treating certain disorders. Demonstrated in mice but not in humans, it begins with stem cells derived from a cloned embryo. But if cloned embryos can't produce normal organisms, how can they produce normal stem cells?
It doesn't matter how old you are, whole grain bread is better for you than white bread.
A new study led by University of Maryland assistant professor Nadine Sahyoun, an expert in nutrition for older adults, shows, that among older adults, those who eat whole grains foods instead of refined grain products may be at lower risk of having health conditions that can lead to diabetes and heart disease. In addition, they have a lower mortality rate from cardiovascular disease than people who don't eat whole grain.
Using technology that allows DNA from thousands of genes to be collected and surveyed on a 3 x 1?-inch chip, University of Utah medical researchers have confirmed that a region on a single chromosome probably harbors a gene that causes autism. The researchers at the U School of Medicine made the finding by tracing variations in the DNA of an extended Utah family that has a high occurrence of the disorder and whose members are descended from one couple.
As part of the study, the researchers also ruled out one gene that appeared to be a good candidate for being linked to autism. They're now looking at other genes for a connection to the disorder.
By deleting a single gene in a small portion of the brains of mice, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center found that the animals were affected in a way resembling schizophrenia in humans.
After the gene was removed, the animals, which had been trained to use external cues to look for chocolate treats buried in sand, couldn't learn a similar task, the researchers report in a paper appearing in today's issue of The Journal of Neuroscience.
The researchers deleted the gene, which codes for a part of a protein involved in passing signals between nerve cells needed for learning and memory. When a similar protein is blocked by drugs in humans, it leads to a psychotic state similar to schizophrenia.
Researchers have identified a gene which produces a chemical "cry for help" that attracts beneficial insects to damaged plants.
Corn plants emit a cocktail of scents when they are attacked by certain pests, such as a caterpillar known as the Egyptian cotton leaf worm. Parasitic wasps use these plant scents to localize the caterpillar and deposit their eggs on it, so that their offspring can feed on the caterpillar. Soon after, the caterpillar dies and the plant is relieved from its attacker. In the case of corn, only one gene, TPS10, has to be activated to attract the parasitic wasps. This gene carries information for a terpene synthase, an enzyme forming the sesquiterpene scent compounds that are released by the plant and attract wasps toward the damaged corn plant. Since this mechanism is based only on a single gene, it might be useful for the development of crop plants with a better resistance to pests.
A new study in mice suggests that Alzheimer's disease (AD) may be triggered when adult neurons try to divide. The finding helps researchers understand what goes wrong in the disease and may lead to new ways of treating it.
The absence of a key protein may lead to infertility.
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign report that experiments involving mice -- to be detailed in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences -- indicate that the transcription factor protein C/EBPb must be present in the uterus for pregnancy to occur. The study appears online this week at the PNAS Web site.
Without it, they say, an embryo cannot survive in uterine tissue or attach to a mother's blood supply. Other genes also play roles, but C/EBPb is critical for implantation of an embryo, said Milan K. Bagchi, a professor of molecular and integrative physiology.
Rutgers researchers have found that the curry spice turmeric holds real potential for the treatment and prevention of prostate cancer, particularly when combined with certain vegetables.
The scientists tested turmeric, also known as curcumin, along with phenethyl isothiocyanate (PEITC), a naturally occurring substance particularly abundant in a group of vegetables that includes watercress, cabbage, winter cress, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, kale, cauliflower, kohlrabi and turnips. "The bottom line is that PEITC and curcumin, alone or in combination, demonstrate significant cancer-preventive qualities in laboratory mice, and the combination of PEITC and curcumin could be effective in treating established prostate cancers," said Ah-Ng Tony Kong, a professor of pharmaceutics at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.
A research team at UT Southwestern Medical Center has discovered a cell-signaling mechanism instrumental in the most common brain cancer in adults.
The study, published in today's issue of the journal Cancer Research, opens an avenue to develop therapeutic drugs to target the epidermal growth factor receptor genes that play a major role in the development of deadly brain tumors, researchers said.
In their latest finding on the brain's role in controlling appetite and weight, researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine have shown that reducing levels of fatty acids in the hypothalamus causes rats to overeat and become obese. Their results suggest that restoring fatty-acid levels in the brain may be a promising way to treat obesity.
The brain's hypothalamus keeps track of the body's nutritional status by monitoring the blood levels of several different hormones and nutrients. Taking this information into account, the hypothalamus regulates our energy intake and metabolism.
In a study published last year in Science, Dr. Rossetti and his colleagues showed how the hypothalamus monitors and regulates glucose levels in the body. The present study shows that this brain region also monitors fatty acid levels and responds by controlling appetite.
Since sleep apnea is associated with heart failure, patients who take a single dose of acetazolamide--a mild diuretic and respiratory stimulant--before going to bed exhibit less sleep apnea, improved blood oxygen levels and fewer daytime symptoms of sleepiness.
Shahrokh Javaheri, M.D., of the Pulmonary Service in the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center and Department of Medicine at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine in Cincinnati, Ohio, studied 12 male patients with stable heart failure who had more than 15 episodes per hour each night of sleep apnea (breathing pauses during sleep lasting 10 seconds or more.)
Nerve cells store and transmit information via special contact sites called synapses. Synapses also play a role in determining what we remember and what we forget. When we learn, both the structure and the functional characteristics of these contact sites change. Scientists are only now beginning to understand the molecular processes which cause that change.
Researchers led by Michael Kiebler at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tabingen (now at the Center for Brain Research, University of Vienna) have identified a protein that is essential for the maintenance of synapses: if the protein Staufen2 is removed in a nerve cell, the cell loses a large portion of its synapses. Moreover, signalling at the remaining contact sites is significantly impaired. Staufen proteins are involved in the transport of molecular blueprints (mRNAs) to specific locations in a cell. The disturbance in the structure and function of synapses without Staufen2 protein suggests that mRNA transport to synapses is crucial to their maintenance and the storage of memory.
Several researchers from Sandia National Laboratories, led by principal investigator Susan Rempe, are part of a multi-institutional, multidisciplinary team developing a nano-size battery that one day could be implanted in the eye to power an artificial retina.
They are among the recipients of a five-year, $6.5 million grant recently awarded by the National Eye Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to establish a new center, the National Center for Design of Biomimetic Nanoconductors. Based at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign under the direction of principal investigator Eric Jakobsson, the center is designed to rapidly launch revolutionary ideas in the use of nanomedicine.
The center will design, model, synthesize, and fabricate nanomedical devices based on natural and synthetic ion transporters ? proteins that control ion motion across the membranes of every living cell.
Scientists say they have discovered a variant gene that increases the risk of Type 2 diabetes.
The TCF7L2 gene is carried by more than one-third of the U.S. population, the New York Times reported.
The finding was reported in the journal Nature Genetics by researchers at Decode Genetics, which specializes in finding the genetic roots of human diseases by studying the Icelandic population.
Decode Genetics first found the genetic variant in Icelanders and has now confirmed the finding in a Danish and an American population, the newspaper said.
A Seattle study suggests older adults who exercise at least three times a week are less likely to develop dementia than those less active.
The study was led by Dr. Eric Larson and colleagues at the University of Washington, and the VA Puget Sound Health Care System in Seattle.
The researchers followed 1,740 people age 65 or older for an average of 6.2 years between 1994 and 2003. When the study began, the participants -- all of whom were tested and found to be cognitively normal -- reported the number of days per week they engaged in at least 15 minutes of physical activity.
A University of Maryland study suggests watching comedy films boosts blood flow to the heart.
Researchers asked 20 healthy young adults to watch 15 to 30 minute segments of sad movies, such as the opening scene from "Saving Private Ryan," and humorous films such as "There's Something About Mary."
Researchers found brachial artery blood flow -- a good indicator of the body's blood flow -- was reduced in 14 of the 20 participants after watching movie clips that caused distress. But it was increased in 19 of the 20 participants after watching movie clips that elicited laughter. The difference in flow between sad and comedic films exceeded 50 percent.
A University of Alabama study suggests impotency drugs, such as Viagra and Cialis, may produce an increased risk of optic nerve damage in certain men.
The small study by the Birmingham school suggests men with a history of heart attack or high blood pressure should be warned before taking such drugs.
The findings are based on a study of 76 men with optic nerve damage diagnosed as non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuropathy. NAION is the most common form of optic nerve damage in older U.S. adults, with up to 6,000 people developing the condition every year.
A common virus that causes meningitis and heart inflammation takes a "back door" approach to evade natural barriers, then exploits biological signals to infect human cells. Broadening knowledge of how viruses cause infection, a new study describes elaborate methods that the virus has evolved to bypass the body's defenses.
"This study helps to explain how group B coxsackieviruses infect cells," said Jeffrey M. Bergelson, M.D., a pediatric infectious diseases specialist at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "We found new steps in the virus life cycle."
Key molecule involved in RNA interference.
A team of Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) scientists has peeled back some of the mystery of how cells are able to turn off genes selectively to control critical events of development. The new insights arise from the first clear molecular images of the structure of Dicer, an enzyme that enables cells to dissect genetic material precisely.
The finding, which is reported in the January 13, 2005, issue of the journal Science by an HHMI research team at the University of California, Berkeley, provides scientists with new information about a mechanism that enables cells to silence genes, a process that governs key developmental events ranging from brain development to stem cell differentiation.
Researchers for the first time have created a three-dimensional image of apolipoprotein E, a protein long associated with cardiovascular disease and more recently with Alzheimer's disease, as it appears when it is bound to fat-like substances known as lipids.
Using the technique known as x-ray crystallography, scientists at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease (GICD) have created the highest-resolution x-ray structure of a lipoprotein particle to date.
The work focuses apoE4, one of three specific forms of apolipoprotein E, commonly known as apoE. The breakthrough has already answered long-standing questions about the configuration of apoE4 in its active, or native, state. A complete understanding of the protein's functioning will be a key factor for development of future therapeutic interventions, according to the researchers.
Insight may help in fight against hospital infections
Researchers have discovered a cluster of 45 genes coding for antibacterial drug resistance in the bacterium, Acinetobacter baumannii, a major cause of hospital-acquired infections worldwide. The study was reported in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics.
"We expected to find resistance genes," said lead author, Pierre-Edouard Fournier, researcher at the Structural and Genomic Information Laboratory at France's National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). "But the grouping of most of these genes within a single genomic island was totally unexpected." The resistance island--a group of resistance genes clustered close together on a chromosome--is the largest discovered to date.
Middle-age individuals without high blood pressure or high cholesterol levels but who are obese have an increased risk in older age for hospitalization or death from coronary heart disease, cardiovascular disease, or diabetes, compared to individuals of normal weight, according to a study in JAMA.
Eating a very low-calorie yet nutritionally balanced diet is good for your heart. Studying heart function in members of an organization called the Caloric Restriction Society, investigators at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis found that their hearts functioned like the hearts of much younger people. The researchers report their findings in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
Healthy individuals who are at risk of Alzheimer's disease show reduced activity in the hippocampal region of the brain when performing tasks related to forming new memories. In a study published today in the open access journal BMC Medicine, individuals carrying the apolipoprotein E (APOE) epsilon4 allele, which has previously been associated with high risk of developing Alzheimer's disease (AD), showed altered brain activity compared to APOE epsilon3 homozygotes. According to the authors of the study, this supports the idea that certain regions of the brain exhibit functional decline associated with the AOPE epsilon4 allele, and this decline begins before the onset of AD symptoms.
A team of researchers, led by investigators at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has found that a gene variant for a bitter-taste receptor on the tongue is associated with an increased risk for alcohol dependence. The research team studied DNA samples from 262 families, all of which have at least three alcoholic individuals. The families are participating in a national study called the Collaborative Study of the Genetics of Alcoholism (COGA). COGA investigators report in the January issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics on the variation in a taste receptor gene on chromosome 7 called TAS2R16.
"In earlier work, we had identified chromosome 7 as a region where there was likely to be a gene influencing alcoholism risk," says principal investigator Alison M. Goate, D. Phil., the Samuel and Mae S. Ludwig Professor of Genetics in Psychiatry at Washington University. "There's a cluster of bitter-taste receptor genes on that chromosome, and there have been several papers suggesting drinking behaviors might be influenced by variations within taste receptors. So we decided to look closely at these taste receptor genes."
Molecular biologists, developmental biologists and computer scientists at the Universtity of Helsinki, Finland, came together to advance towards cracking the code for how gene expression is controlled. The results of this work are published in Cell, in January 2006.
A genome milestone was reached in 2001 when sequencing of the human genome was completed. This has been followed by complete chemical read-outs of DNA sequence for several species, for example mouse, dog, cow and chicken, in the recent years. But without a code or 'grammar' to reveal the message behind the sequence, the genomic DNA is merely a list of millions and millions of base pairs, A's, C's, G's and T's one after the other.
Just as a pocket watch requires a complex system of gears and springs to keep it ticking precisely, individual cells have a network of proteins and genes that maintain their own internal clock -- a 24-hour rhythm that, in humans, regulates metabolism, cell division, and hormone production, as well as the wake-sleep cycle. Studying this "circadian" rhythm in fruit flies, which have genes that are similar to our own, scientists have constructed a basic model of how the cellular timekeeper works. But now, a new report in this week's issue of the journal Science turns the old model on its head: By providing a glimpse into living cells, Rockefeller University researchers have uncovered a previously undetected clock inside the circadian clock. The scientists made the finding with a rarely used technique called FRET, which enabled them to follow circadian proteins over an extended period of time and watch the clock as it ticks away in a living cell.
Men and women may share more similarities than previously thought when it comes to the risk factors for major depression, according to a new study by Virginia Commonwealth University researchers.
In the January issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry, researchers reported that although there is a wide range of risk factors for depression that can act at different stages of development, the patterns of causes of depression for men and women are fairly similar. Some of these risk factors include childhood sexual abuse, poor parent-child relationships, childhood anxiety disorders, marital problems, low educational attainment and low social support.
Italian researchers have found that blockade of the hormone leptin, which is primarily produced in fats cells, has beneficial effects on the induction and progression of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) in mice ? the animal model of human multiple sclerosis (MS). In their study appearing online on January 12 in advance of print publication in the February 2006 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Giuseppe Matarese and colleagues from Universit? di Napoli "Federico II" suggest that leptin neutralization may be a potential way to both prevent and treat MS.
Multiple sclerosis is an inflammatory disease of the brain and spinal chord characterized by muscle weakness, numbness, and loss of coordination. These symptoms result in part from destruction of the nerve-insulating material myelin by activated T cells.
Pathway differentiates between remembering for an hour or for a day.
Harvard University biologists have identified a molecular pathway active in neurons that interacts with RNA to regulate the formation of long-term memory in fruit flies. The same pathway is also found at mammalian synapses, and could eventually present a target for new therapeutics to treat human memory loss.
The findings will be presented this week on the web site of the journal Cell.
Even for a fruit fly, learning and memory are important adaptive tools that facilitate survival in the environment. A fly can learn to avoid what may do it harm, such as a flyswatter, or in the laboratory, an electric shock that happens when it smells a certain odor.
Like a family of petty criminals gone wrong, researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) were surprised to find that bacterial pathogens found in a number of troublesome diseases are actually related. Not only that, their wrong-doing is carried out by disguising themselves, then hijacking their hosts.
Jack E. Dixon, Ph.D., Dean for Scientific Affairs and Professor of Pharmacology and Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the UCSD School of Medicine; Neal M. Alto, Ph.D., UCSD postdoctoral fellow and lead author, and their colleagues have identified a 24-member family of bacterial proteins. Called effector proteins, they are found in bacteria, including Salmonella, Shigella and pathogenic E. coli, that cause gastrointestinal diseases.
UCLA researchers knew - based on two clinical trials - that a subset of kidney cancer patients responded well to an experimental targeted therapy, but they didn't know why. If they could determine the mechanism behind the response, they would be able to predict which patients would respond and personalize their treatment accordingly.
Extrapolating from the clinical responses, Jonsson Cancer Center scientists uncovered the cascade of molecular events by which the cancer cells in a subset of patients became sensitized to the experimental drug CCI-779. Armed with this information, UCLA researchers are developing a test to identify which patients will benefit from receiving CCI-779.
The cure rate for the once almost universally fatal childhood cancer acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) could reach 90 percent in the near future, thanks to improvements in diagnosis and treatment over the past four decades, according to investigators at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Almost 4,000 cases of ALL are diagnosed in the United States each year, about two-thirds of which are in children and adolescents, making this disease the most common cancer in this age group.
The progressive improvement in the cure rate since 1962, when only 4 percent of children with ALL survived, reflects in large part the more effective use of existing drugs and the incorporation of sophisticated genetic technologies to personalize treatments, the authors said. Research findings at St. Jude have enabled clinicians to identify patients for whom standard treatment is most likely to fail, and who should therefore be treated more aggressively; these findings have also allowed clinicians to choose the optimal drugs and drug dosages for individual patients.
By the time they reach early adulthood, a large proportion of American youth have begun the poor practices contributing to three leading causes of preventable death in the United States: smoking, overweight and obesity, and alcohol abuse. This finding is according to an NIH-funded analysis of the most comprehensive survey of adolescent health behavior undertaken to date.
The analysis also found that significant health disparities exist between racial groups, and that Americans are less likely to have access to health care when they reach adulthood than they did during the teenage years.
A protein that undesirably shields a skin poxvirus from the immune system may become the key ingredient in a new topical treatment for inflammatory diseases, say medical researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
In a study appearing this month in the Journal of Virology, the scientists revealed both the function of the protein (MC160) and how it works on a molecular level to inhibit inflammatory responses.
MC160 is so named because it was the 160th gene of the molluscum contagiosum virus (MCV) sequence. "This is a really important protein for a couple of reasons," said Joanna L. Shisler, a professor of microbiology in the U. of I. College of Medicine at Urbana-Champaign who studies poxviruses.
Study suggests that standard anti-inflammatory therapy may not be appropriate for many interstitial lung disease patients.
In an article in the Jan. 15 issue of the American Journal of Respiratory Critical Care Medicine, University of Pittsburgh researchers report that a serious, life-threatening form of pulmonary fibrosis, called idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, lacks all the hallmarks of inflammation and is probably unnecessarily treated with anti-inflammatory drugs. Moreover, in a related study, the investigators identified a protein found in excess amounts in the lung tissue of patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, which may be a more appropriate target for therapy.
Magnetic resonance imaging is a better diagnostic tool for cochlear ear implants than the more commonly used high-resolution computed tomography, a UT Southwestern study shows.
A cochlear implant, sometimes called a "bionic ear," allows patients with congenital hearing loss to bypass the problem and again perceive sound. Surgeons conduct radiologic studies using either an MRI or CT scan prior to implantation to determine abnormalities in the inner ear, conditions of related nerves and any obstructions in the ear ducts.
One in five patients taking diuretics commonly prescribed for high blood pressure or heart conditions end up with reduced sodium and potassium levels, according to a study published in the January issue of the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology.
Yet recent evidence suggests that perhaps as few as a third of patients on the drugs ? used by one in eight adults ? have their electrolyte levels tested, despite the fact that reduced levels can lead to a wide range of health problems.
Environmental and genetic factors lead to neural tube defects in 1 in every 1,000 births and cause 1 in 20 of every spontaneous abortion. One cause of these defects is the failure of cells within the neural tube to migrate to the middle of the developing neural tube.
A study in this week's issue of Nature is the first to report on the molecular mechanism that directs cells to migrate to the correct local within the developing neural tube of vertebrates.
By borrowing mathematical tools from theoretical physics, scientists have recently developed a theory that explains why the brain tissue of humans and other vertebrates is segregated into the familiar "gray matter" and "white matter."
The theory is based on the idea that maximum brain function requires a high level of interconnectivity among brain neurons but a low level of delays in the time it takes for signals to move through the brain ("conduction delays").
Based on no fewer than 62 mathematical equations and expressions, the theory ("Segregation of the Brain into Gray and White Matter: A Design Minimizing Conduction Delays") provides a possible explanation for the structure of various neurological regions including the cerebral cortex and spinal cord.
The research was carried out at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island by theoretical neuroscientist Dmitri Chklovskii and graduate student Quan Wen.
The study was published in the December issue of PLoS Biology and is available at: http://compbiol.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pcbi.0010078
Scientists at the University of Michigan Medical School have discovered that a protein called cryopyrin responds to invading bacteria by triggering the activation of a powerful inflammatory molecule called IL-1beta, which signals the immune system to attack pathogens and induces fever to protect the body against infection.
The discovery could help scientists understand what causes autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis where the immune system attacks and destroys tissue in the patient's body.
Imagine grabbing two snakes by the tail so that they can't wriggle off in opposite directions. Scientists at the Hamburg Outstation of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and collaborators from King's College in London have now discovered that something similar happens to a protein that is crucial in the formation of muscle tissue. Their work appears in the current issue of the journal Nature.
Under the microscope, muscle looks like millions of tiny pistons, stacked end-to-end into long rows. These structures, called sarcomeres, permit the contraction and relaxation of muscle that allow our bodies to move. Sarcomeres are connected at the ends by Z-disks, thick bands of densely-packed molecules. "Sarcomeres are very complex structures, and for many years we've been investigating the steps by which they are formed," says Matthias Wilmanns, Head of the EMBL Hamburg Outstation. "That probably starts when proteins link up to each other in very big assemblies. The meeting point is the Z-disk, but unraveling the connections has been difficult."
A new method to mine existing scientific data may provide a wealth of information about the interactions among genes, the environment and biological processes, say researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine, Lucile Packard Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Like panning for gold, they used the powerful technique to sift through millions of bits of unrelated information - in this case, gene expression data from so-called microarray experiments - to pinpoint genes likely to be involved in leukemia, aging, injury and muscle development.
"This is just the tip of the iceberg," said bioinformatics specialist Atul Butte, MD, PhD, who is also a pediatrician at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford. "Nearly 100 different diseases have been studied using microarrays, spanning all of medicine. This is a new way to explore this type of data. We can study virtually everything that's been studied." Butte is the first author of the study, which is published in the Jan. 6 online issue of Nature Biotechnology.
Genistein, a major component of soy, was found to disrupt the development of the ovaries in newborn female mice that were given the product. This study adds to a growing body of literature demonstrating the potentially adverse consequences of genistein on the reproductive system.
"Although we are not entirely certain about how these animal studies on genistein translate to the human population, there is some reason to be cautious," said Dr. David A. Schwartz, Director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). "More clinical studies are needed to determine how exposure during critical windows of development can impact human health."
Researchers at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center have uncovered a clue to explain the invasive nature of an aggressive kind of brain tumor called glioblastoma multiforme, or gliomas, and their findings are published in this week's online edition of the journal Oncogene.
Reid Thompson, M.D., director of Neurosurgical Oncology, and his colleague, Moneeb Ehtesham, M.D., assistant professor of Neurological Surgery and Cancer Biology, found a key receptor plays a role in the spread of this tumor.
"We looked at CXCR4, a molecule which has been shown to play a role in other cancers, and found that the more metastatic aggression relates to this molecule. So, we looked at whether this molecule governed this invasion in gliomas," said Ehtesham.
An international team of researchers, led by investigators at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, are zeroing in on a gene that increases risk for Alzheimer's disease. They have identified a region of chromosome 10 that appears to be involved in risk for the disease that currently affects an estimated 4.5 million Americans.
"There are a few genes that have been implicated in the development of early-onset Alzheimer's disease, but other than APOE, no genes have been found that increase risk for the more common, late-onset form of the disease," says principal investigator Alison M. Goate, D. Phil., the Samuel and Mae S. Ludwig Professor of Genetics in Psychiatry at Washington University. "The region of DNA identified in our study showed evidence of replication in four independent series of experiments. I haven't seen a putative risk factor show such consistent results since the e4 variant of the APOE gene was identified as a risk factor for late-onset Alzheimer's disease more than 10 years ago."
Some HIV medications lead to the development of drug-resistant HIV when patients take as few as two percent of their medications. For other medications, resistance occurs only when patients take most of their pills. These differences appear to be explained by the different levels of viral "fitness" of the drug-resistant HIV, say AIDS researchers in a new study.
The research, led by David Bangsberg, MD, MPH, an AIDS specialist at the University of California, San Francisco, is reported in the January 9 issue of the journal AIDS.
Viral "fitness" refers to the inherent ability of a virus to replicate and cause disease. Incomplete pill-taking by patients causes HIV to mutate and become resistant to the effects of the medications, while the medications that were consumed, in turn, cause the newly resistant virus to become less fit.
Researchers at the University of Saskatchewan's Vaccine and Infectious
Disease Organization (VIDO) have developed a vaccine candidate for hepatitis C, leading to hope in the fight against a disease for which no vaccines are yet available.
VIDO is the first in Canada to show that this vaccination technique may be
effective against HCV. The study was published in this month's Journal of
General Virology.
The team, funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and
the Canadian Network for Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics (CANVAC), produced a vaccine candidate that decreased the amount of a carrier virus expressing hepatitis C virus (HCV) protein in mice by 100,000 times compared to the control.
Yale School of Medicine researchers report in Nature Immunology how infection fighting mechanisms in the body can distinguish between a virus and the healthy body, shedding new light on auto immune disorders.
The infection fighters in question, toll-like receptors (TLRs), function by recognizing viral, bacterial or fungal pathogens and then sending signals throughout the immune system announcing that an infection has occurred.
A large international study demonstrates that patients world-wide with atherothrombosis (coronary artery disease, cerebrovascular disease, peripheral arterial disease) often have cardiovascular risk factors such as obesity and hypertension that are undertreated and undercontrolled, according to a report in the January 11 issue of JAMA.
Atherothrombosis is the leading cause of cardiovascular illness and death around the globe, according to background information in the article. To date, no single international database has characterized the atherosclerosis risk factor profile or treatment intensity of individuals with atherothrombosis. The Reduction of Atherothrombosis for Continued Health (REACH) Registry was designed to provide these data from the most geographically and ethnically diverse population yet surveyed.
Effects of sleep inertia as bad or worse than being legally drunk, say researchers.
A new University of Colorado at Boulder study shows that people who awaken after eight hours of sound sleep have more impaired thinking and memory skills than they do after being deprived of sleep for more than 24 hours.
The study showed test subjects had diminished short-term memory, counting skills and cognitive abilities during the groggy period upon awakening known as sleep inertia, said CU-Boulder Assistant Professor Kenneth Wright, lead study author. The new study has implications for medical, safety and transportation workers who are often called upon to perform critical tasks immediately after waking, since cognitive deficiencies following 24 hours of sleep deprivation have previously been shown to be comparable to the effects of alcohol intoxication, he said.
The brain plays a major role in the ability of insulin therapy to lower blood sugar in animals with diabetes, according to a new study in the January 11, 2006, Cell Metabolism.
"Our findings suggest that, in individuals with diabetes, the ability of insulin to lower blood sugar involves the brain," said senior author of the study, Michael Schwartz of the University of Washington at Seattle. "This effect is not trivial; the brain makes a substantial contribution to insulin response."
The findings in rats suggest that therapies that boost the brain response to insulin in patients with diabetes might improve blood sugar control while lowering the required dose of the hormone, the researchers said. That advance, in turn, might help to reduce side effects of insulin treatment, such as weight gain, they added.
Obesity in middle age ? even without established cardiovascular disease risk factors such as high blood pressure or high cholesterol levels ? greatly increases risk of hospitalization for and death from heart disease and diabetes in older age, according to a study in the Jan. 11 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Lijing Yan, assistant professor of preventive medicine, and colleagues at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine assessed the relationship of body mass index (BMI) earlier in life with hospitalization for and death from cardiovascular disease and diabetes in older age (65 years and older). BMI is a measure of body fat based on height and weight.
Study participants were classified according to low, moderate, intermediate and high risk, based on blood pressure, treatment for hypertension, total cholesterol level, cigarette smoking and weight.
The thin, single-cell boundary where a tumor meets normal tissue is the most dangerous part of a cancer according to a new study by scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The researchers found that tumor cells bordering normal tissue receive signals that tell them to wander away from the tumor, allowing the cancer cells to establish deadly metastatic tumors elsewhere in the body.
The researchers say their discovery demonstrates the importance of the tumor's environment and shows more precisely how the metastatic process occurs and might be stopped. Their study appears in Developmental Cell.
"What actually kills in cancer is not the primary tumor--it's metastasis," says senior author Ross L. Cagan, Ph.D., associate professor of molecular biology and pharmacology and a researcher with the Siteman Cancer Center at Washington University School of Medicine and Barnes-Jewish Hospital. "You can't study that in a laboratory dish. You have to look at the tumor cells in their natural environment--surrounded by normal tissues."
A multicenter international study, including Johns Hopkins, has found that after surgery for thyroid cancer, giving genetically engineered human thyroid-stimulating hormone (rhTSH) before radioiodine treatment avoids the previous need to stop thyroid replacement therapy and the miserable side effects that go with it.
The study, led by Paul Ladenson, M.D., director of the Division of Endocrinology at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and Furio Pacini at the University of Siena in Italy, was reported in the December online edition of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.
Typically, radioiodine treatment for cancer of the thyroid gland requires temporary discontinuation of thyroid hormone replacement for several weeks, leading to weight gain, constipation, fatigue, slowed thinking, depressed mood, muscle cramps, intolerance of cold temperatures and other symptoms. "This study shows that patients who use a recombinant form of TSH can continue their thyroid replacement therapy and enjoy a better quality of life during their cancer treatment," Ladenson says.
A spoon full of sugar may help the medicine go down, but most dentists would likely encourage parents to skip that step when treating a child?s illness. However, most parents might not realize that even without the sugar, some children?s medicines may cause cavities while they?re fighting other health issues, according to a report in the January/February issue of General Dentistry, the Academy of General Dentistry?s (AGD) clinical, peer-reviewed journal.
Antihistamine syrups are frequently purchased over-the-counter or prescribed to deal with problems such as chronic allergies or the flu. However, many of these syrups contain low pH levels and high acidity which can be a dangerous combination for a child?s teeth. The sugar in the medication combined with the acids dissolve dental enamel, causing erosion.
Obese and overweight individuals suffering metabolic syndrome and Type 2 diabetes showed significant health improvements after only three weeks of diet and moderate exercise even though the participants remained overweight.
"The study shows, contrary to common belief, that Type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome can be reversed solely through lifestyle changes," according to lead researcher Christian Roberts of University of California, Los Angeles.
"This regimen reversed a clinical diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes or metabolic syndrome in about half the participants who had either of those conditions. However, the regimen may not have reversed damage such as plaque development in the arteries," Roberts said. "However, if Type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome continue to be controlled, further damage would likely be minimized and it's plausible that continuing to follow the program long-term may result in reversal of atherosclerosis."
Memantine, a drug approved for the treatment of Alzheimer disease, appears safe and effective in patients with moderate to severe cases of the condition, according to a study in the January issue of Archives of Neurology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Millions of people worldwide have Alzheimer disease (AD), a progressive neurodegenerative disorder, according to background information in the article. Various chemical and other processes in the brain may contribute to the development of the condition. Memantine appears to act on one of those pathways, which involves the neurotransmitter glutamate, the authors report. The drug was approved in the United States in 2003 and also is available in the European Union and Australia.
Scientists characterize large numbers of independently expressed, non-protein-coding RNA genes in the introns of protein-coding genes.
Scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences have performed a comprehensive analysis of small, non-protein-coding RNAs in the model nematode, C. elegans. They characterize 100 heretofore-undescribed transcripts, including two novel classes; they provide insights into the genomic structure and transcriptional regulation of non-coding RNAs; and they underscore the importance of non-coding RNAs in nematode development. Their work appears this month in the journal Genome Research.
"The significance of non-protein-coding RNAs as central components of various cellular processes has risen sharply over the recent years," explains Prof. Runsheng Chen, principal investigator on the study. Excluding microRNAs (miRNAs), or small transcripts that have recently received widespread attention and are known to play important roles in transcriptional regulation, small non-coding RNAs (or ncRNAs) in C. elegans have not been extensively investigated ? until now.
Mayo Clinic Cancer Center researchers report aggressive surgical removal of as much cancer as possible throughout the abdomen in ovarian cancer patients is the best option for most women. Results of the study are published in the January issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology.
"This study provides further evidence that surgery to remove as much tumor as possible at the initial operation is the best option for most patients," says William Cliby, M.D., Mayo Clinic gynecologic oncologist and lead investigator of the study. "It helps to define a topic that is often debated within our specialty -- the benefit of radical surgery for advanced ovarian cancer patients." Dr. Cliby says that data demonstrate many surgeons choose the more cautious route of less surgical intervention, and this results in shorter overall survival.
This week, doctors at the Catholic University of Leuven, connected with the University Hospital - Gasthuisberg, the Stem Cell Institute Leuven (SCIL), and the Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology, are publishing a major breakthrough in the treatment of patients with acute myocardial infarction. Their research shows that the administration of a patient's own stem cells has a significant positive effect on the heart's recovery: in the patients studied, the size of the infarct was clearly reduced. The use of stem cells appears to be safe, and to date no side effects have occurred that can be attributed to the stem cells. This study is a world-first − its exciting results are being published in the prominent medical journal The Lancet.
Substance could add completely new weapon to drugs arsenal.
Sunflowers can produce a substance which prevents the AIDS pathogen HIV from reproducing, at least in cell cultures. This is the result of research carried out by scientists at the University of Bonn in cooperation with the caesar research centre. For several years now the hopes for a completely new group of AIDS drugs have been pinned to what is known as 'DCQA'. However, the substance is only available in very small quantities and is thus extremely expensive. By using the Bonn method it could probably be produced for a fraction of the costs. The researchers have patented their method. Together with the J?lich Research Centre they now want to attempt to manufacture the substance on a large scale. They are looking for partners in industry to help them with this.
Vitamin A, also known as retinol, is present in milk, liver, egg yolk, butter and other foodstuffs and as carotene in vegetables that have a yellow-orange colour, such as carrots and pumpkins.
This vitamin is accumulated in the liver where it is transformed into retinoid. Given that vitamin A, as such, has no effect on our organism, it is the retinoids that are responsible for the physiological activity of the vitamin.
Retinoids take part in three processes: in cell death, in cell differentiation and in cell proliferation.
A cancer diagnosis can be a devastating experience for the person concerned, but for families and loved ones, who later become the primary source of support and care, it can be a stressful, life changing experience. A unique new study will explore the individual experiences of these unsung heroes and identify the support services they need.
The three year project is funded through a prestigious Australian Research Council Linkage grant, and will be led by the Gender, Culture and Health Research Unit (PsyHealth) at the University of Western Sydney, in conjunction with the Medical Psychology Research Unit at Sydney University; Westmead Hospital; The Cancer Council NSW; and Carers NSW.
The study's Chief Investigator, Professor Jane Ussher from UWS, says most of the responsibility for day-to-day emotional support and care of cancer patients falls to partners, family members or friends.
Through an innovative feat of plant biotechnology and vaccine design, researchers in the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University have successfully turned tobacco plants into vaccine production factories to combat the deadliest form of plague. The vaccine elicits a protective immune response in guinea pigs. The results are considered to be a milestone in the future development of a new vaccine for human use.
Plague, caused by a rod-shaped bacterium called Yersinia pestis, no longer invokes the "black death" feared throughout history, having been widely tamed since the advent of antibiotics. But a new concern has emerged in recent years with respect to bioterrorism.
"There have been discovered some resistant strains to antibiotics and that poses a concern, especially if plague would be used as a bioweapon," said Luca Santi, a research assistant professor at the institute and lead author of the study published in the early online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "A new vaccine approach would be the best way to prevent infection."
As the United States continues to grapple with ethical scandals in government and business, researchers at Oregon State University and Texas A&M University are examining the ethical behavior of college students - particularly students' behavior in negotiations.
"Negotiation is defined as the attempt to find an acceptable solution to a conflict between two or more parties," said Greg Perry, an agricultural economist in OSU's College of Agricultural Sciences. "By that definition, everyone is involved in negotiations every day, at work, with family, or in their communities."
UCLA researchers developed a new brain imaging strategy that tracks neural cell loss in the hippocampus, a key memory center of the brain. Using a chemical marker called MPPF and positron emission tomography (PET), researchers measured the amount of serotonin receptors 1A found in neurons abundantly present in the hippocampus. In Alzheimer's disease these neural cells die, causing the hippocampus to atrophy and shrink.
This new imaging method may allow doctors to track neuronal cell reductions in the hippocampus in people that precede clinical symptoms -- offering a new avenue for understanding disease progression and a potentially sensitive new tool for early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease and dementia. The new method is currently under patent application.
Researchers have identified new molecular components of the machinery that regulates formation of the tentacle-like filaments by which immune system T cells grasp other cells. This embrace by such filaments is critical for the T cell to establish communication with cells called "antigen presenting cells" (APCs). Such communication enables the T cell to program itself to target invading microbes for destruction. Antigens are proteins in invading microbes that the immune system detects to trigger a counterattack.
The researchers said their findings of the machinery of formation of such "actin filaments" could offer targets for drugs to induce the immune system to work more effectively to fight infection; or to damp its stimulation in autoimmune disease.
Imaging study establishes two forms of mild cognitive impairment.
Mild cognitive impairment (MCI), a transitional stage between normal cognition and Alzheimer's disease, exists in two different forms, according to a study published today by researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and the University of California, Los Angeles in the Archives of Neurology.
Using a new imaging procedure that creates 3-D maps of the brain, researchers determined specific areas that had degenerated in people with MCI. Depending on the person's symptoms, more tissue was lost in the hippocampus, a brain area critical for memory and one of the earliest to change in Alzheimer's disease, indicating two different paths of progression to Alzheimer's disease. The finding could lead to better diagnosis and treatment of patients with MCI, perhaps delaying or preventing the onset of dementia.
When novel movements are learned--for example, in sports--visual and motor learning take place simultaneously. A karate master not only executes a kick better than a beginner, but he also perceives karate movements much more accurately. A variety of recent studies suggest that motor programs may influence the visual recognition of movements.
However, this idea is difficult to test because--as for the karate expert--visual and motor experience are typically highly correlated. The fact that the karate expert is better in the perception of karate movements could be explained just by the fact that he has much more visual experience with these patterns. In findings reported this week, researchers present an experiment that separates the influences of visual and motor learning during the acquisition of a new motor behavior and demonstrate that motor learning imparts a direct influence on visual perception, independently of visual familiarity with learned movements.
The findings are reported by Antonino Casile and Martin Giese of University Clinic T?bingen, Germany.
Elderly people who complain of stiffness, loss of balance and tremors may be at increased risk for future Parkinson's disease (PD), according to a study posted online today that will appear in the April 2006 print issue of Archives of Neurology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
PD develops over time as neurons in certain areas of the brain that control muscle movement slowly waste away, according to background information in the article. The degeneration occurs in areas that produce a neurotransmitter known as dopamine. Typical symptoms of PD--including severe tremors, rigidity and slow movements--begin when the brain loses more than half of its dopamine production ability.
As the pace of life quickens and it becomes harder to balance home and work, many people meet their obligations by getting less sleep.
But sleep deprivation impairs spatial learning -- including remembering how to get to a new destination. And now scientists are beginning to understand how that happens: Learning spatial tasks increases the production of new cells in an area of the brain involved with spatial memory called the hippocampus. Sleep plays a part in helping those new brain cells survive.
A team of researchers from the University of California and Stanford University found that sleep-restricted rats had a harder time remembering a path through a maze compared to their rested counterparts. And unlike the rats that got enough sleep, the sleep-restricted rats showed reduced survival rate of new hippocampus cells.
People who eat more protein from vegetables tend to have lower blood pressure, according to a new study in the January 9 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Most adults have either high blood pressure (hypertension) or prehypertensive blood pressure levels, according to background information in the article. Previous studies have found evidence that meat eaters generally have higher blood pressure than vegetarians. Other research looked directly at the effect of high overall protein intake and found that people with higher total protein intake are likely to have lower blood pressure, the authors report.
Close contact with sick or dead poultry seems required.
A new study suggests that there is an association between direct contact with dead or sick poultry and flu-like illness in humans and that the transmission is probably more common than expected, according to a new study in the January 9 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Anna Thorson, M.D., Ph.D., from the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden, and colleagues analyzed data from household interviews conducted in FilaBavi, a Vietnamese demographic surveillance site in Bavi district, northwest Vietnam, with confirmed outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in poultry, subtype H5N1. The researchers included 45,478 randomly selected people in the district to answer screening questions about exposure to poultry and flu-like illnesses (defined as a combination of cough and fever). The study was performed from April 1 to June 30, 2004.
A serendipitous comparison prompted by an old scientific image and involving an ancient but understudied molecule may lead to a new treatment strategy for injuries or illnesses in which blood clotting is paramount to survival.
In a paper to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Georgia report that a linear polymer known as polyphosphate speeds blood clotting and helps clots last longer. The paper appears online this week (Jan. 9-14) on the PNAS Web site.
A joint research effort between researchers at the Burnham Institute for Medical Research in La Jolla, CA, and a team from Japan (Iwate University, Osaka City University, Gifu University, Iwate Medical University) has discovered a novel way to treat stroke and neurodegenerative disorders. This approach works by inducing nerve cells in the brain and the spine to release natural antioxidants that protect nerve cells from stress and free radicals that lead to neurodegenerative diseases. Until this discovery, researchers were unable to induce release of these specific antioxidants directly in nerve cells, at the site where damage and degeneration occurs.
Feeding tomato juice to mice kept them from developing emphysema after cigarette smoke exposure that was long enough to induce emphysema in a control group, Japanese researchers report in February issue of the American Journal of Physiology-Lung Cellular and Molecular Physiology.
Researchers at Juntendo University School of Medicine first compared the reaction of two mostly similar mouse strains to inhaled cigarette smoke.
Since the lungs of one of the mouse strains "naturally" age very quickly, the researchers believed that exposure to inhaled cigarette smoke would induce emphysema in that strain much more quickly than in the other strain. And indeed, they found that after eight weeks of breathing 1.5% tobacco smoke through the nose for 30 minutes a day, five days a week, the test strain, called SAMP1, did develop emphysema, while the control strain, called SAMR1, did not.
A screening test for prostate cancer that measures prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels does not improve survival, researchers at the Veterans Affairs (VA) Connecticut Healthcare System and Yale School of Medicine report in the January 9 Archives of Internal Medicine.
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer affecting American men and ranks second in mortality. According to the study, screening tests almost always increase the detection of cancer, but among other requirements for improving survival, the tumors detected must be both fatal (if left untreated) yet curable.
PSA, a protein produced in the prostate, is found in the blood of healthy men. Prostate cancer often increases PSA levels in the blood, but a similar increase can be caused by benign enlargement of the prostate gland (prostatism) or prostate infections.
A drug used to treat symptoms of moderate to severe Alzheimer's disease appears to be effective for one year, according to the results of a new multicenter study that provides additional support for the continuing effectiveness of the treatment, called Namenda?, for patients in the later stages of the disease.
"This study demonstrates that it is possible to alleviate some of the cognitive and functional losses associated with the later stages of Alzheimer's, providing a basis for greater optimism on the part of caregivers," says Barry Reisberg, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry at NYU School of Medicine, the lead investigator of the study, which is published in the January 2006 issue of the Archives of Neurology.
Up to one third of women treated for breast cancer report fatigue symptoms up to 10 years after diagnosis, according to a new study. Published in the February 15, 2006 issue of CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the study--the first 10 year follow-up study of fatigue in breast cancer to be published--reveals women who have concomitant medical conditions, specifically cardiovascular problems and depressive symptoms, or who were treated with combined radiation and chemotherapy, have a higher risk of suffering from fatigue.
People with a brain defect called Arnold-Chiari Malformation often develop sleep apnea, a disorder that causes breathing interruptions during sleep and can lead to daytime sleepiness. In Arnold-Chiari Malformation, abnormalities cause the cerebellum portion of the brain to protrude through the bottom of the skull against the spinal cord. This protrusion can cause compression on the brain stem, including the areas that control breathing.
A new study, published in the January 10, 2006, issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology, shows that surgery to remove the compression on the brain stem can also improve sleep apnea.
Victorian Breast Cancer Research Consortium scientists from The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, using a mouse model, have discovered the rare stem cell that drives the formation of all breast tissue. This discovery lays an important foundation for understanding how normal breast tissue develops. The identification of the breast stem cell is also likely to provide clues about how breast cancer develops and how rogue cells evade current therapies.
Under normal circumstances, the newly identified breast stem cell will produce healthy tissue. But it is believed that an accumulation of genetic errors, perhaps combined with external influences and a family predisposition, could cause the breast stem cell or a "daughter" cell to produce faulty cells. In effect, the errant breast cell can become a tumour factory.
A new study suggests that antibody-based cancer drugs might help patients more if they are given with substances that stimulate the immune system.
This new study is the first to indicate that the drug trastuzumab, also known as Herceptin, may work better when it is followed by injections of interleukin (IL) 2 or IL-12. Both substances trigger the activity of immune cells known as natural killer (NK) cells.
The research, by scientists at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center ? Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute, is published in the Jan. 1 issue of the journal Cancer Research.
The drug trastuzumab consists of an antibody that targets the protein HER2, which is present on cancer cells of many breast tumors. NK cells are the body's first line of defense against many infections, and they also attack tumor cells.
The knowledge that one disease may prevent the onset of another is not new. For example, the discovery that cowpox vaccines can prevent smallpox dates back to 1798.
Dr. E. Richard Stiehm, a professor of pediatrics at the Mattel Children's Hospital at UCLA, researched examples throughout medical history of ways that one disease prevents another.
His findings suggest that genetic, infectious and metabolic influences should be considered when looking for treatments, particularly in regard to HIV/AIDS.
"Clinical observations of disease-versus-disease interactions have led to an understanding of the mechanisms of several diseases," Stiehm said. "In turn, these observations have led to the development of vaccines, therapeutic antibodies, medications and special diets."
Researchers in antidepressant studies look at symptoms, patients consider other factors.
A study from Rhode Island Hospital shows that patients and clinical researchers may have different criteria for defining remission from depression. Depressed patients measure remission based on how they feel; researchers analyze the number of depressive symptoms in order to gauge whether patients are better.
Psychiatric researchers currently look at symptoms of depression ? such as sleeping and eating habits, ability to concentrate, and level of interest in normal activities ? as a way to gauge whether patients are getter better when they participate in clinical trials for antidepressant medication. However, patients feel they're well when they return to their usual, normal self; function normally; and feel optimism and self-confidence. The study is published in the January issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry.
Chances are good that a medication you take is one of several drugs that can be affected by genetic factors, according to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the St. Louis College of Pharmacy. They found that 29 percent of patients seen at local primary-care offices had taken at least one of 16 drugs that can cause adverse reactions in genetically susceptible people.
Finding that so many primary-care patients use such medications suggests that pharmacogenetics?the study of the interplay between genes and drugs?has the potential to benefit a large portion of the population, according to the researchers. Applying information from pharmacogenetics to primary-care practices could reduce the incidence of adverse reactions and optimize treatments, according to the study, published in the January 2006 issue of the journal Pharmacogenomics.
"Until now, researchers looking at the role of genetic variation in drug effects have focused mainly on toxic drugs used by specialists treating cancer or HIV infection," says Howard L. McLeod, Pharm.D., director of the pharmacology core at the Siteman Cancer Center at Washington University School of Medicine and Barnes-Jewish Hospital. "We knew that some of the drugs commonly used in the family practice setting can cause adverse reactions in people who have certain genetic variations, so we measured just how often these drugs are used."
Discovery provides molecular marker to assess risk for patients with papillary thyroid cancer.
Scientists at Johns Hopkins have found that a mutation in the gene that triggers production of a tumor growth protein is linked to poorer outcomes for patients with papillary thyroid cancer (PTC). A report on the study is published in the December issue of The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.
Mingzhao Xing, M.D., Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, led the multi-center study. ?This discovery should help physicians rate risk levels for patients with PTC,? he says.
Largest Study of Its Kind Proves Just Half a Pack per Day Harms Unborn Child
Women have yet another reason to stop smoking while pregnant. In the largest study of its kind, plastic surgeons found smoking during pregnancy significantly elevates the risk of having a child with excess, webbed or missing fingers and toes, according to the January issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery?, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS). In fact, the study found that smoking just half a pack per day increases the risk of having a child born with a toe or finger defect by 29 percent.