OLD DISEASES

OLD DISEASES.
'05 NEWS
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See the page for news before 1-1-05.

Injuries such as spinal; & infections: African sleeping sickness, Anthrax, Colds, Cancer, Chagas disease, Dengue Fever, Flu, Leishmaniasis, Leptospirosis, Leprosy, Malaria, Muscular Dystrophy, Multiple Sclerosis, Plague, Smallpox, Typhus, Plague, Typhus, metapneumovirus; rhinoviruses; coronaviruses, parainfluenza; respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)...
. . "Flu" comes from Italian: influenza di freddo --influence of the cold (wrong idea). It's also known somewhere/when, I think, as the "grip".
. . NON-HUMAN, but can jump: mousepox!, Bird Flu, Parvo virus

Dec 27, 05: Women with heart disease discount the severity of their problem compared to men with the exact same cardiac symptoms and conditions, new research shows. Heart disease kills six times as many women each year as breast cancer, and 8 million American women currently are living with heart disease, according to the National Coalition for Women with Heart Disease.
. . Recovery comes hard for women too -—they are almost twice as likely as men to die after bypass surgery. Women tend to get less treatment for heart disease and comprise only a quarter of the participants in heart-related research studies. And while 25% of men will die within a year of a first heart attack, that figure rises to 38% among women.

Dec 9, 05: Two Indiana geneticists are playing key roles in a national effort to map the DNA of body lice —-the tiny, biting insect that spreads typhus in developing nations.
. . A detailed map of the insect's genome could help researchers develop improved pesticides to control the pest or better drugs to hamper its ability to spread diseases to humans. It's the smallest insect genome known to date —-a fact that could speed along the project. The mapping project will begin within the next year and take at least two years to complete.
. . Typhus has killed millions in developing nations, particularly during times of war or famine. The yellowish, rice grain-sized insects are a growing concern in such nations because they are becoming resistant to pesticides. Aside from typhus, body lice spread relapsing fever, trench fever and other ills by feeding on the blood of human hosts. They are close relatives of head lice, which do not spread disease.

Dec 9, 05: The rise of deadly new diseases such as SARS and bird flu could be linked to the destruction of the environment, the World Health Organization said. It said natural resources such as water, food, fuel and climate were important to prevent diseases and sustain good health as many human diseases originated in animals.
. . Such diseases, including influenza, tuberculosis and measles, established themselves in human populations after crossing from domesticated animal species, including chickens, cattle and dogs. "As a result of human actions, the structure and the world's ecosystems changed more rapidly in the second half of the twentieth century than at any other time in human history", the report said.
. . About 60% of the benefits that the global systems provided to support life on Earth were being degraded and used substantially, said the report, which involved more than 1,300 experts worldwide.

Dec 8, 05: Babies born with a larger head may have an increased risk of childhood brain cancer, research suggests. However, the overall risk was still small. The researchers said their work suggested that brain cancers might begin to develop before birth.

Nov 30, 05: At least 8.9 billion gallons of untreated sewage flows yearly into Lake Erie and the rivers that feed it during storms that overwhelm sewer systems —-the same as if 2.5 billion toilets flushed simultaneously into the lake, an environmental group reported. Records weren't available for many smaller municipal systems, so the real amount dumped is likely greater.
. . Many communities in the 1800s combined sewer pipes from buildings with storm drains. During rainstorms and snow melts, the mixed precipitation and sewage is too much to handle, and excess goes straight to rivers and lakes.

Nov 21, 05: Wyoming wildlife biologists and federal researchers have identified the chemical responsible for the death of hundreds of elk in southern Wyoming last year. "They'd look at you, but they couldn't move. You could pat them on the head." They say usinc acid, a substance found in lichen the elk ate, is responsible for the deaths of perhaps as many as 600 elk in a die-off that began in February 2004.
. . Usinc acid was once widely used by bodybuilders to burn fat. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned its use after tests showed it caused liver damage and some human deaths.

Nov 21, 05: What even Leviticus failed to proscribe, medical research now looks set to ruin for all of us. Several recent international studies have provided evidence of a link between mouth cancer and one of the many unedifying strains of the human papilloma virus --a virus that can be spread by oral sex.
. . A dentist and researcher found that 36% of the 132 individuals with mouth cancer she tested were carrying HPV, compared with 1% of her control group.
. . A Johns Hopkins team, however, deemed the risk uncovered by their research too low to warrant recommending that people change their behavior.
. . BUT --a few facts should be borne in mind: namely, that the risk of contracting oral cancer via any means is low (about one in 10,000 people will develop the disease), and that by far the greatest risk factors remain oral fixations of another kind; smoking and heavy drinking.

Nov 21, 05: Contaminated fruits and vegetables are causing more food-borne illness among Americans than raw chicken or eggs, consumer advocates said a in report.
. . Common sources of food illnesses include various bacteria such as salmonella and E.coli that can infect humans and animals then make their way into manure used to fertilize plants. The practice of using manure fertilizer is more common in Latin America, which has become a growing source of fresh produce for the U.S.
. . Contaminated tomatoes, sprouts and other produce made 28,315 people sick during 554 outbreaks from 1990 to 2003 --20% of all cases CSPI analyzed. Chicken made 14,729 people sick in 476 outbreaks, and eggs were responsible for 10,847 illnesses from 329 outbreaks.
. . The report found seafood was the largest cause of outbreaks but led to fewer illnesses than other foods. There have been 899 such outbreaks between 1990 and 2003, leading to 9,312 illnesses.

Nov 8, 05: Researchers at Vanderbilt University in Nashville found that type 2 receptors for Transforming Growth Factor-b --a family of proteins that controls key functions such as cell growth and death-- were missing in non-small cell lung cancer victims.
. . A check on mice injected with lung cancer cells confirmed the findings, with much smaller and less aggressive tumors developing in those carrying the type 2 TGF-b receptors.
. . Some 80% of lung cancers are non-small cell cancers, and the overwhelming cause of lung cancer is smoking -- either active or passive.

Nov. 9 (UPI) -- A Columbia University study has reportedly demonstrated Zyflamend, an proprietary herbal extract preparation, suppresses prostate cancer cell growth. The study is detailed in the journal Nutrition and Cancer. The study also found Zyflamend induces prostate cancer cells to self-destruct via a process called "apoptosis."
. . Columbia researchers said their study suggests Zyflamend has the ability, in vitro, to reduce prostate cancer cell proliferation by as much as 78% and confirms Zyflamend has COX-1 and COX-2 anti-inflammatory effects, although its anti-cancer affects against prostate cancer were independent of COX-2 inhibition. That, said the scientists, supports the postulation that some prostate cancer cells are not affected by COX-2 inflammation.
. . "These results were particularly surprising and show great promise in the fight against prostate cancer", said researcher Dr. Debra Bemis of the Columbia University Department of Urology. "We hope that the magnitude of benefits shown in this research will be confirmed in the larger scale trial already in progress."
. . On the strength of the laboratory research, Columbia's department of urology has commenced a Phase 1 human clinical trial testing Zyflamend's ability to prevent prostate cancer in patients with prostatic intraepithelial neoplasia -- a clinical precursor for prostate cancer.
. . WebMD, 12/13/02 - "A number of recent studies point to COX-2 as an important factor in cancer-cell growth. In the Columbia studies, Zyflamend decreased COX-2 activity about as well as a potent COX-2-inhibiting drug ... The herbal mix is called Zyflamend, from New Chapter Inc., and has 10 herbs: holy basil, turmeric, ginger, green tea, rosemary, hu zhang, Chinese goldthread, barberry, oregano, and Scutellaria biacalensis".

Nov 9, 05: A new study calls for doctors, insurance companies and policymakers to recognize cancer survivorship not as the end of the road but as a distinct and vital phase of continuing care. Traditionally, doctors say, they devoted most of their efforts simply to keeping patients alive. Today, with 64% of adults and 80% of children surviving at least five years with the disease, Stovall says, researchers also are trying to improve patients' quality of life. More than 10 million Americans are cancer survivors.

Nov 7, 05: The National Cancer Institute, which recently announced two waves of funding for nanotech training and research, sees nanotechnology as vital to its stated goal of "eliminating suffering and death from cancer by 2015."
. . The average human hair is about 100,000 nanometers wide, and a red blood cell is 4,000.
. . The first cancer nanotech applications will likely involve detection. Nanoparticles could recognize cancer's molecular signatures, gathering the proteins produced by cancerous cells or signaling the presence of telltale genetic changes. Researchers have already used a protein called albumin --considered a naturally occurring nanoparticle-- to detect proteins found in ovarian cancer tissue.
. . Other nanoparticles could adhere to cancerous cells and, when viewed under a magnetic resonance imager or fluorescent light, reveal cancers now hidden to our eyes.
. . "Nanotech gives us the opportunity to detect cancer tumors at 1,000 cells, whereas we're now seeing them at 1 million cells. By the time you detect some cancers today, there's no option of curing them, only of prolonging life."
. . While diagnostic nanoparticles will first be used to analyze blood or tissue samples outside the body, they could eventually be injected into the bloodstream (making it possible to also design particles that will be flushed from the patient unless they stick to cancer cells). But nanoparticles can be made not only to find those cells, but to destroy them.
. . One such application involves metallic molecules that adhere to cancer cells and can then be heated with microwaves, a magnetic field or infrared light, destroying the tumor while leaving surrounding tissues unharmed. Researchers at Rice University have done just this with gold-coated particles and breast cancer tissue cultures.
Also promising is the design of molecular envelopes for chemical compounds that would otherwise be toxic to ingest. Another possibility, as seen in the National Cancer Institute's video, are nanoparticles that carry therapeutics on their surfaces.
Researchers at the University of Michigan have already treated liver cancer in mice with drug-carrying nanoparticles that lodged in the tumor cells' folic acid receptors.
. . Researchers also hope to make particles that combine all these functions. "We call this the mother ship", said Sadik Esener, an electrical and computer engineering professor at the University of California, San Diego. "You can put multifunctional particles on it, like an aircraft carrier transports choppers and planes. It goes into the body, and if it encounters a suspicious region, finds out what that area is about and delivers the therapeutics."
. . Though the NCI's Cancer Nanotechnology Plan calls for clinical trials on out-of-body applications within three years, and trials on in-body therapies and diagnostics within five years, researchers are cautious about promising too much.

Nov 2, 05: Health authorities in northern Brazil are trying to cope with a wave of attacks on humans by vampire bats infected with the deadly rabies virus. Rabies caused by bat bites has killed 23 people in the last two months.
. . It is not the first wave of attacks by vampire bats in the Amazon, but Brazilian authorities say this latest outbreak is unusually serious. Some experts are blaming deforestation in the Amazon region for this latest wave of attacks.

Nov 2, 05: Unusual "wiring" in the cells of the malaria parasite could be a key to developing new treatments for the disease that kills millions of people each year, scientists said. Two teams of researchers in the United States have discovered that sets of proteins, which are essential for cells to function and communicate with each other, interact differently in the Plasmodium falciparum parasite than in other organisms.
. . researchers hope to identify novel drug targets to fight malaria, the third-biggest cause of infectious disease deaths in the world after tuberculosis and AIDS. Finding new drugs against the disease is vital because the parasite has developed resistance to anti-malaria treatments and there is no vaccine. Malaria, which is transmitted by the bite of an infected female mosquito, occurs in more than 100 countries. It kills between 1 million and 2.7 million people each year. 90% of deaths occur in young children in sub-Saharan Africa.

Oct 24, 05: For years now, scientists have been trying to make cancer treatments more effective and reduce their side effects, by packaging drug molecules inside other structures and delivering them only to cancer cells. It's a much-needed effort, since current-day chemotherapy can nearly kill cancer patients, and even the strongest tolerable doses do not destroy some tumors.
. . But, so far, experimental treatments have helped only with the largest tumors, because the packages are too large to exit the bloodstream easily and infiltrate cells.
. . Now a researcher and physician at the University of Michigan has shown that manmade molecules called dendrimers can slip out of blood vessels and precisely deliver a drug to tumor cells, at least in mice. The dendrimers can also advertise their locations, allowing researchers to track their progress. The researcher, James Baker, plans to begin human trials in July.
. . Published last June in Cancer Research, Baker's research helped his laboratory win $2.5 million in a new round of National Cancer Institute (NCI) funding announced last week. His hope is that the funding will push their research to the next level, and eventually give doctors the ability to monitor how individual cells in patients respond to drugs, then tune the treatments accordingly.
. . Baker's funding is part of a five-year, $144 million NCI project designed to foster the use of nanotechnology to fight cancer. According to the president and chief technical officer of Dendritic NanoTechnologies, Donald Tomalia, who was one of the first to build dendrimers and is still exploring their uses for cancer detection and treatment, out of thousands of experiments published about dendrimers, Baker's recent work has provided "one of the most exciting results."
. . Resembling tumbleweeds, dendrimers are clusters of small molecules all linked to a central core. They have multiple attachment sites for other molecules. Baker linked multiple types of molecules to these attachment sites --over one hundred of the sites-- including one that binds selectively to cancer cells, another that fluoresces (revealing the device's location), and another commonly used as a chemotherapy agent.
. . In Baker's experiments, the mice receiving traditional chemotherapy all died, from doses that turned out to be either too low or too high. When he used dendrimers, however, to deliver small doses of the drug directly to the cancer cells, some of the mice survived (the number varied according to the experiment). "A tumor that was not treatable with the free drug [was] treatable with the same drug targeted", says Baker. Because his dendrimers were also fluorescently labeled, Baker was able to see that the drug was indeed being delivered to the cancer cells.
. . So far, the technique has been shown to work only on head and neck squamous cancer in mice; but similar cancers, such as bladder and ovarian cancer, might also respond. Baker's nanotechnology approach overcomes one of the key obstacles to cancer treatment: getting drug molecules inside cancer cells. Because his dendrimers are small --about the size of a hemoglobin molecule (around 5 nanometers)-- they can readily exit the bloodstream to get to tumors. "With nanoparticles, you're working with materials that are small enough to get across mucosal barriers, across vascular pores, and actually find things like tumor cells and get into them and change them directly", says Baker. The dendrimers' small size also means that once they've done their work and the cancer cells break down, they can be safely removed from the bloodstream by the kidneys.
. . Despite their current success, though, Baker's method has drawbacks. For one, attaching many different molecules to one dendrimer is difficult, and, once completed, such a nanodevice will deliver only one drug to one kind of cancer cell.
. . To simplify manufacture, and add flexibility to the device, Baker is developing a way to make multiple dendrimers stick to each other, using complementary strands of DNA that act similar to the hooks and loops in Velcro. Each dendrimer would have just one function, such as drug delivery or targeting. Baker could then select dendrimers with the functions he needs and combine them in a solution. At first, he will link just two dendrimers, but eventually group together several, making it possible to deliver multiple drugs along with fluorescing molecules. A future application could involve tailoring drug combinations for specific people, based on observations of the uptake and effectiveness of each drug.
. . Some tumors have multiple types of cancer cells that require different drugs. The dendrimers could be used to detect which types of cells are present, and deliver the required drugs. They could also potentially track how individual cells respond to the drugs, allowing doctors to modify treatments.
. . Other groups are also working on multipurpose platforms for detecting and treating cancer. However, they have yet to show their devices can get out of the bloodstream and later out of the body. A group led by Mostafa El-Sayed of the Georgia Institute of Technology and his son Ivan El-Sayed of the University of California, San Francisco, has attached antibodies to gold nanoparticles, allowing the particles to selectively bind to certain cancer cells. Then light reflected from these particles reveals their location, and light absorbed by them causes the particles to heat up, destroying the cells they inhabit, but leaving healthy cells unharmed.
. . So far, the group has demonstrated its technology only in cell cultures. Although their particles are about eight times the size of Baker's molecules, Ivan El-Sayed is hopeful that they can be delivered through the bloodstream. Eliminating them from the body is another matter, he admits --it may turn out that the particles can only be used in small doses to avoid a buildup of the gold.
. . Several other groups are also developing nanotech devices for cancer detection and drug delivery, including ones at MIT, Harvard, Virginia Commonwealth University, University of Missouri, University of Washington, and Rice University. "I think there's going to be more and more involvement", says Tomalia of Dendritic NanoTechnologies, because combining detection and treatment using nanotechnology "is a very appealing strategy."
. . "The idea [with nanodevices] is to take advantage of the size of this material, get it into cells, and literally fix them", says Baker.

Oct 25, 05: Two genes that are turned off in ovarian cancer cells could provide an early test for the illness known as the silent killer, Austrian scientists said. They've identified five genes that have very low activity in ovarian cancer. Two, called N33 and NFA6R, do not work in most cases.
. . Although exactly what N33 and NFA6R do is not known, Krainer and his team suspect they may be involved with the progression of ovarian cancer which kills 114,000 women worldwide each year.
. . They suspect the genes have been turned off by a process called methylation, a form of gene inactivation, which may help identify patients with early signs of the illness. "This is perhaps the basis for a blood test", he said. "It is not there yet but this is the clinical implication of this basic research", Krainer said.
. . If the gene is methylated in the tumor, it may be possible to detect it relatively easily, he added, with a blood sample and a technique called polymerase chain reaction (PCR). "This is perhaps the basis for a blood test", he said. "It is not there yet but this is the clinical implication of this basic research."

Oct 22, 05: An outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease has apparently spread to cattle in Parana state from neighboring Mato Grosso do Sul in Brazil, the world's top cattle producer, the federal government's agriculture minister said. "We are 90% certain that they have the disease."
. . At least 41 countries have restricted imports of Brazilian beef since the first outbreak was discovered on October 10.
. . Health officials have suggested that vaccines used in the area were poorly handled or administered, making them less effective or even useless against the disease. Ranchers have also said that the disease originated from across the nearby border in Paraguay, as all of Brazil's herd in the state has been vaccinated. The Paraguayan government has denied this.
. . Brazil is the world's leading beef exporter. Its commercial cattle herd slightly outnumbers its 184 million citizens.

Oct 19, 05: In studies described as "stunning", researchers reported that a drug already used to treat advanced cancer can prevent half of all breast tumors from reappearing after standard therapy. But the treatment only works in women whose breast tumors carry excessive amounts of a protein known as HER2 that makes the cancer particularly aggressive, and on occasion may cause serious side effects. About one in five women with breast cancer have such tumors, so 42,000 U.S. women could benefit from the treatment.
. . The drug is trastuzumab, sold under the brand name Herceptin. Only tamoxifen, a mainstay of cancer treatment, produces such good results.

Oct 17, 05: Researchers have studied the fungal contamination of our pillows for the first time in 70 years and discovered that they were hot beds of fungal spores, with some species able to cause diseases and even death. They've "identified several thousand spores of fungus per gram of used pillow —-more than a million spores per pillow."
. . Aspergillus fumigatus, the species most commonly found in the pillows, is most likely to cause disease; and the resulting condition Aspergillosis has become the leading infectious cause of death in leukaemia and bone marrow transplant patients. Fungi also exacerbate asthma in adults.
. . The typical pillow contains more than a million fungal spores, researchers found. That's several thousand spores for every little gram of material.
. . Other studies have shown pillows and other bedding harbor dust mites, microscopic spider-like creatures that feed on flakes of human skin. "We know that pillows are inhabited by the house dust mite which eats fungi, and one theory is that the fungi are in turn using the house dust mites' feces as a major source of nitrogen and nutrition (along with human skin scales)", says study leader Ashley Woodcock at the University of Manchester. "There could therefore be a 'miniature ecosystem' at work inside our pillows."
. . The most common fungi found is called aspergillus fumigatus, which is also the most likely to cause disease, the researchers say. It is in fact the leading infectious cause of death in leukemia and bone marrow transplant patients.
. . The NIEHS suggests:
. . * Put allergen-impermeable covers on pillows & mattresses.
. . * Wash bedding at least weekly in hot water.
. . * Vacuum carpets regularly and steam clean periodically.

Oct 16, 05: Two new mouse experiments may show how to obtain human embryonic stem cells without ethical hurdles, a step that could allow federal funding for such research, scientists reported. Currently, scientists must sacrifice human embryos to harvest such cells.
. . In the study, researchers plucked a single cell from eight-cell mouse embryos, which were about two days old. While fertility clinics use such a cell for genetic testing, the researchers cultured the plucked cells and found they behaved like embryonic stem cells. The embryos, meanwhile, went on to produce mice.
. . The result suggests that when clinics do PGD, they could let the cell they remove divide into two, and use one resulting cell for genetic testing and the other to establish a stem cell line.

Oct 8, 05: The Spanish flu virus that killed up to 50 million people in 1918-19 was probably a strain that originated in birds, research has shown. US scientists have found the 1918 virus shares genetic mutations with the bird flu virus now circulating in Asia.
. . A second paper in Science reveals another US team has successfully recreated the 1918 virus in mice. The virus is contained at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under stringent safety conditions. It is hoped to carry out experiments to further understand the biological properties that made the virus so virulent.
. . Working on virus samples from the remains of victims of the 1918 pandemic, the researchers were able to piece together the entire genetic sequence of the virus. They found the virus contained elements that were new to humans of the time --making it highly virulent.
. . And analysis of the final three pieces of the virus' genetic code has revealed mutations that have striking similarities to those found in flu viruses found only in birds, such as the H5N1 strain currently found in south east Asia.
. .
. . The researchers believe the two other major flu pandemics of the 20th century --in 1957 and 1968-- were caused by human flu viruses which acquired two or three key genes from bird flu virus strains. But they believe the 1918 strain was probably entirely a bird flu virus that adapted to function in humans.

Oct 2, 05: Two research projects by Philips Electronics (PHG.AS) aim to make testing of blood samples for diseases instantaneous, to allow earlier and more effective treatment, researchers said.
. . At an innovation fair in the Dutch city of Eindhoven, Philips presented a prototype biosensor that the company hopes can eventually be built into a handheld device for doctors to perform standard blood tests on the spot.
. . Researchers envisage a device that would have replaceable cartridges to test for various diseases. Doctors would put a drop of blood on the sensor and immediately get a positive or negative response. The finished product, still three to five years of development work away, could allow testing for certain bacteria or viruses or for proteins that indicate a high risk of a heart attack.
. . A second research project is targeted at the developing world, with the specific aim to diagnose malaria more reliably. The mosquito-borne disease strikes up to 500 million people a year, killing between 2 million and 3 million, 90% of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
. . Malaria is hard to diagnose from symptoms alone and the best tools now available in areas with few laboratories are biochemical test strips similar to pregnancy tests. But heat and humidity can damage these strips.
. . Laubscher foresees a handheld device that would analyze blood and give a result within minutes. If the research goes well, this could be only two or three years away, he said.

Oct 2, 05: A moose killed by a hunter in northern Colorado has tested positive for chronic wasting disease, the first time the deadly affliction has been found outside of wild elk and deer herds, state wildlife officials said.
. . Chronic wasting disease was previously been found only in wild deer and elk in 10 U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. The fatal neurological disease eats away at the brains of infected animals and is similar to mad cow disease found in cattle or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans.
. . There is no evidence that chronic wasting disease can be transmitted to humans, although health officials have cautioned hunters not to eat the meat from infected game.

Sept 27, 05: The New Canine Flu, which has killed so many greyhounds, is now in the domestic dog population. There is no treatment and no vaccine. It has jumped species, (by feeding greyhounds raw horse meat, which was infected with horse influenza), (horse influenza is avian flu, which jumped species from birds (avian flu), to horses (horse influenza). The avian flu has now moved to racing greyhounds and domestic dogs and the indications are that there may be a potential problem for humans. It is deadly and it is on the loose. It may just be a matter of time. The CDC is watching the disease.
. . There is no central tracking agency with report and stat capability for dogs that will get the word out to all vets in the US.

Sept 26, 05: Pomegranate juice, a deep red juice becoming popular as a health drink, works against prostate cancer cells in lab dishes and in mice, U.S. researchers reported. Prostate tumors shrank in mice infected with human prostate tumors who drank pomegranate juice.
. . The juice is rich in antioxidants -- chemicals that give fruits and vegetables their deep colors and which also act against the chemicals that damage cells, leading to cancer and other disease.
. . "There is good reason now to test this fruit in humans -- both for cancer prevention and for treatment."
. . Prostate cancer is the second-biggest cancer killer of men after lung cancer, killing 30,000 this year. It will be diagnosed in more than 230,000 U.S. men, many of whom will choose not to be treated but rather to watch a slow-growing tumor carefully.

Sept 26, 05: Left-handed women are more than twice as likely as right-handers to suffer from breast cancer before reaching menopause, Dutch scientists said.
. . More than a million women are diagnosed with breast cancer worldwide each year. Three-quarters of cases occur after menopause, which usually begins around the age of 50.
. . Researchers at the University Medical Center in Utrecht in the Netherlands speculate that there is a shared origin early in life for both left handedness and developing breast cancer, possibly exposure to hormones in the womb.
. . "If we take pre-menopausal and post-menopausal breast cancer then there was a 40% increased risk. We found that left-handed women are more than twice as likely to develop pre-menopausal breast cancer as non-left handed women." About 8% to 9% of women are left-handed.

Sept 23, 05: A couple of brilliant engineers at the University of Warwick along with some doctors at the Heart of England hospital in Birmingham, UK, have come up with a Electronic Nose, trained specifically to sniff out infections. It was developed to tackle outbreaks of an antibiotic-resistant superbug called MRSA, which would usually take a 2-3 day-long culture test to detect (and by then, the infection might have spread, or gotten worse). They’ve since developed a 2-hour DNA test for it, but with this E-Nose, it’ll only take 15 minutes to spot that bug. It analyzes gas samples over an array of electrodes and assigns a particular “smell print” to a certain recognized pattern. About the size of a desktop PC, this probably doesn’t look like any nose you’ve ever seen, and it costs a bundle as well — about 60,000 British pounds. There are some downsides though; the E-nose can’t distinguish between the superbug and a MRSA-susceptible strain, which suggests the E-nose is really just for a quick screening before an actual test. Scientists hope to develop the technology further so that it’ll also detect pneumonia in intensive care patients.

Sept 23, 05: Scientists have transplanted a nearly entire human chromosome in mice in a medical and technical breakthrough that could reveal new insights into Down's syndrome and other disorders. The genetically engineered mice carry a copy of the human chromosome 21. It is the smallest of the 23 pairs of human chromosomes with about 225 genes. Although the mice look normal, they show various features associated with Down's syndrome.
. . Children suffering from Down's syndrome, which is one of the most common genetic disorders, inherit three copies of the chromosome instead of two.
. . The achievement caps 13 years of research by scientists at the National Institute for Medical Health in London and the Institute of Neurology. Dr Elizabeth Fisher, of the Institute of Neurology, said the technology will help scientists tease out the genes that cause the different aspects of Down's syndrome and susceptibility to other diseases.

Sept 21, 05: An ingredient in green tea that researchers think might fight cancer may also protect the brain from the memory-destroying Alzheimer’s disease, a new study said.
. . Scientists injected mice with an antioxidant from green tea called epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG) and said it decreased production of beta-amyloid, a protein that forms the plaques that clog the brains of Alzheimer’s victims. Several months of injections reduced plaque formation by as much as 54%.
. . Drinking ordinary green tea may not lead to the same plaque reduction seen in the study because other ingredients in the beverage appear to block EGCG’s benefits. Supplement pills containing EGCG might help, he said. Scientists are also trying to develop a tea with a high concentration of EGCG that could offer health benefits. Other studies have shown EGCG may prevent certain cancers.

Sept 20, 05: Injections of human stem cells seem to directly repair some of the damage caused by spinal cord injury, according to research that helped partially paralyzed mice walk again. The experiment isn't the first to show that stem cells offer tantalizing hope for spinal cord injury —-other scientists have helped mice recover, too. But the new work went an extra step, suggesting the connections that the stem cells form to help bridge the damaged spinal cord are key to recovery.
. . Surprisingly, they didn't just form new nerve cells. They also formed cells that create the biological insulation that nerve fibers need to communicate. A number of neurological diseases, such as multiple sclerosis, involve loss of that insulation, called myelin.
. . They used fetal neural stem cells, a type that are slightly more developed than embryonic stem cells because they're destined to make cells for the central nervous system. The researchers injured the spinal cords of mice and nine days later injected some with the human neural stem cells. Four months later, the treated mice could again step normally with their hind paws. Mice given no treatment or an injection with an unrelated cell showed no improvement.
. . The researchers analyzed the actual mouse spinal cords to see what the human stem cells had turned into. The hope was that they would make neurons, or nerve cells, and some did. But the bulk of the injected stem cells formed oligodendrocytes, a different type of cell that forms myelin, the insulation coating that is key for nerve fibers to transmit the electrical signals they use to communicate.
. . Much more research must be done before testing stem cells in people with spinal cord injuries, cautioned Anderson. One question is how soon after an injury cells must be administered to have any effect — no one knows how nine days in a mouse's life correlates to the post-injury period for a person. Also, the mice were bred to avoid immune system destruction of the human cells, and suppressing a person's immune system because of similar transplant rejection risk poses big problems.

Aug 16, 05: Scientists in the US have managed to get single cells to ferry objects up and down tiny chambers. Harvard University experts say, in the future, cells could be harnessed to perform micro-scale mechanical work. The researchers attached a cargo of polystyrene beads to the backs of green algae cells and used light to guide them up and down the chambers. The loads were unhitched by exposing the algae to ultraviolet light, which broke apart molecules in the coating on the beads.
. . Dr Weibel said the technique had many potential uses in areas such as molecular medicine. "You could have a bead that picks up a toxin. So you send them to swim off into a sample of liquid, and when they return, you can carry out analysis on the bead."

Aug 16, 05: The world's first pure nerve stem cells made from human embryonic stem cells has been created by scientists at the Universities of Edinburgh and Milan. Nerve stem cells are those which help build the brain and central nervous system.
. . It is hoped the newly-created cells will eventually help scientists find new treatments for diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, & the cells should help researchers test the effectiveness of new drugs.
. . Robert Meadowcroft, of the Parkinson's Disease Society, welcomed the news: "The purity of these cells should prove particularly valuable in studying the possibilities for transplantation and replacement of damaged tissue." The Alzheimer's Society echoed this view, saying that the inability to grow nerve cells from human embryonic stem cells had previously been a major obstacle to progress in this area.

Aug 15, 05: People tend to love garlic or hate it, but few probably associate it with pain. Nonetheless, it turns out that pain-sensing nerves respond to the sulfur-based chemicals in garlic. Indeed, the same mechanism the body uses to react to the sharpness of chili peppers and hot mustards like wasabi is the one that detects garlic, according to a study. The neurons that respond to garlic compounds are only a subset of those that respond to the capsaicin in hot peppers. A separate study had found that baking garlic eliminated its ability to stimulate the TRPA1 channels.

Aug 15, 05: Some types of brain cancer may start with specialized stem cells, researchers said in a report that could lead to new treatments for hard-to-treat brain tumors.
. . Studies in mice showed that certain incurable types of brain tumor may be initiated by the primitive stem cells, which are a kind of master cell for blood and tissue, they reported. "Continued research into the biology of adult stem cells will aid in the understanding of how cancers originate and develop and may lead to possible new therapies for treating aggressive, currently incurable brain tumors", said Dr. Luis Parada of the University of Texas.
. . Stem cells share some properties with cancer cells, including an ability to live a very long time without self-destructing, as a normal cell does as it ages. There are primitive liver cells and primitive brain cells. Some of these primitive brain cells may be predisposed to form tumors, Parada's team found. "Our results challenge current dogma, which assumes that tumors of this type arise from glial cells located throughout the brain", Parada said.
. . This could help explain why these tumors are so hard to cure. Surgery and radiation therapy my remove the tumor, but the cancer could be replenishing itself from the stem cells, Parada said.

Aug 15, 05: Women who take higher doses of common, over-the-counter painkillers such as ibuprofen and even Tylenol have higher blood pressure than women who do not, U.S. researchers reported. Only aspirin did not raise the risk of high blood pressure among the women, who were followed for three to four years.
. . The researchers said their findings add to a growing list of research that suggests all painkillers, prescription and non-prescription, carry health risks and should be used carefully. This includes acetaminophen or paracetamol, sold under the brand name Tylenol.
. . "In our study, women who took 500 milligrams or more of acetaminophen per day, on average, were about twice as likely to develop high blood pressure. In addition, older women, ages 51 to 77, who used an average of 400 mg or more per day of ibuprofen were about 80% more likely. This could explain why high blood pressure, which itself raises the risk of stroke, heart attack and heart failure, is so common in the United States.
. . While aspirin has been shown to prevent heart disease, the research is murkier on the other drugs, known as non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs or NSAIDS. Acetaminophen was not believed to affect heart risk either way. But Forman's team noted that acetaminophen and NSAIDS can affect endothelial function --altering the healthy workings of the linings of blood vessels. NSAIDS, except for aspirin, do this by affecting compounds produced in the body called prostaglandins.
. . "Although aspirin also inhibits prostaglandin synthesis, it has not been associated with endothelial dysfunction. On the contrary, aspirin may improve endothelial function, as has been documented in patients with atherosclerosis."

Aug 15, 05: The new anti-smoking ads from Britain's National Health Service really stink. Several hundred thousand leaflets are being distributed with the sharp stench of tobacco embedded in them to dissuade teenagers from picking up the cigarette habit. Similar ones are appearing in women's magazines Heat, OK! and Cosmopolitan.
. . "The research suggests that women of that age are unmoved by messages about health but are much more likely to be moved by issues concerning appearance." [So vanity is more important than death!]

Aug 15, 05: Human bones are both organic and inorganic. The organic part is made of collagen, the most abundant protein in mammals. The inorganic component is hydroxyapatite, a type of calcium crystal. The collagen forms a sort of natural scaffold over which the calcium crystals organize into bone.
. . Carbon nanotubes, incredibly strong molecules just billionths of a meter wide, can function as scaffolds for bone regrowth. The chemical bonds (in carbon nanotubes) are nature's strongest. Man cannot envision a molecule that will be stronger along its length.

Aug 15, 05: Of the British-grown chickens analysed in a study, over half were contaminated with multi-drug resistant E.coli which is immune to the effects of three or more antibiotics. According to the latest figures, British animals consume 15 tons of Trimethaprim a year.
. . The Health Protection Agency scientists testing the meat also found 12 chickens had antibiotic resistant Campylobacter. Bacteria in chicken is killed if the meat is cooked properly and hygienically but one in three people in the UK get food poisoning each year --and the most common cause of food poisoning is the bug Campylobacter.
. . The survey's results could partly explain a rise in the number of women whose bladder infections did not respond to standard treatments. "We've known for years there've been outbreaks of bladder infections in different parts of the world but we haven't really known where the germs have been coming from."
. . The World Health Organization has named antibiotic resistance as one of three major threats for the future.

Aug 9, 05: Airline pilots may be at increased risk of eye damage because of their exposure to cosmic radiation, warn experts. The Icelandic researchers found commercial pilots were three times more likely than normal to develop cataracts --clouding of the lens of the eye. Cosmic rays have already been linked to cataracts among astronauts.
. . The longer the men had worked as pilots and the more cosmic radiation they had been exposed to, the more likely they were to have developed nuclear cataracts. The researchers also confirmed that the findings could not be explained by other factors known to increase the risk of cataracts, such as UV light exposure and smoking.
. . The average person in the UK is exposed to 2.7 millisieverts (mSv) of radiation each year, according to the Health Protection Agency. In comparison, research has suggested that air crews are exposed to an average of 4.6 mSv of radiation each year, while nuclear workers are exposed to 3.6 mSv.
. . Airline pilots and astronauts have also been found to have an increased risk of mutations to genes in their blood cells and certain cancers, which, again, have been linked to cosmic radiation.
. . Like some cancer treatments and medical scans, it is ionizing, which means it can displace charged particles from atoms. This can lead to the disruption of molecules in living cells.

Aug 8, 05: The incidence of two types of skin cancer has nearly tripled among women under age 40, a sign that tanning is still popular among the young despite warnings about the harm it can cause, researchers said. The rate of basal cell and squamous cell cancers rose to 32 per 100,000 women under 40 in 2003 from 13 per 100,000 in the late 1970s. [from 13 to 32]. Basal cell and squamous cell cancers are the two most common forms of the disease and can be removed and treated more easily than the deadlier melanoma type.
. . "Tan is still accepted as a sign of health and a sign of beauty and so changing that message is going to be important to accept fair skin as very healthy and beautiful", said the study author. Young women, especially, still use tanning beds and lie in the sun despite health warnings about cumulative skin damage from sun rays.
. . Basal cell cancer usually appears as a pink bump on the skin, which can be superficial or bleed and does not go away. Squamous cell cancer can also look very pink, but it is usually scaly and appears as a rough, raised bump.
. . In the United States, there were 800,000 new cases of basal cell and 200,000 cases of squamous cell cancers diagnosed in the year 2000.

Aug 8, 05: People who die in their sleep may stop breathing because they have lost too many brain cells, U.S. researchers reported. Sleep apnea --a condition in which people stop breathing for long stretches of time in their sleep-- may sometimes be caused by the destruction of cells in the brain stem, where autonomic functions such as breathing are controlled, they said.
. . Tests on rats showed that the loss of key brain stem cells that die off with age caused such disrupted sleep that the animals eventually stopped breathing completely. "We speculate that our brains can compensate for up to a 60% loss of pre-Boetzinger cells, but the cumulative deficit of these brain cells eventually disrupts our breathing during sleep. There's no biological reason for the body to maintain these cells beyond the average lifespan, and so they do not replenish as we age."

Aug 8, 05: A 2003 outbreak of monkeypox in the United States has helped prove that smallpox vaccinations can protect for decades, U.S. researchers said. The study could help officials trying to come up with a plan for mass vaccination against the often deadly smallpox virus and its relatives, should such a virus ever be used in a biological attack.
. . The researchers found three people who were evidently infected by the monkeypox virus, spread mostly by pet prairie dogs in the Midwest, who never had any symptoms. The three had last been vaccinated against smallpox before the jabs were discontinued. One was vaccinated 13 years ago, another 29 years ago and the third 48 years ago.
. . "These individuals were unaware that they had been infected because they were spared any recognizable disease symptoms", Mark Kenneth Slifka of Oregon Health & Sciences University and colleagues wrote in their report, published in the journal Nature Medicine. "Together, this shows that the U.S. monkeypox outbreak was larger than previously realized and, more importantly, shows that cross-protective antiviral immunity against West African monkeypox can potentially be maintained for decades after smallpox vaccination." Studies have shown that immunity lasts as long as 75 years.
. . Smallpox was eradicated in 1979 after a global vaccination program. But experts fear the virus or a related virus could be used as a biological weapon. They also found that the pox viruses spread even without direct contact -- something to be aware of should there ever be a smallpox attack. The virus apparently can be carried in the air and by tiny sneezed droplets.

Aug 4, 05: A Duke University study unveiled this week suggests that the club drug Ecstasy reversed Alzheimer & Parkinson's-like effects in bio-engineered mice.

Aug 4, 05: Australian scientists say they have identified a toxin which plays a key role in the onset of Alzheimer's, raising hope that a drug targeting the toxin could be developed to slow the degenerative brain disease. The toxin, called quinolinic acid, kills nerve cells in the brain, leading to dysfunction and death, the scientists said. "Quinolinic acid may not be the cause of Alzheimer's disease, but it plays a key role in its progression."
. . They've also found quinolinic acid neurotoxicity in the brains of dementia patients. Quinolinic acid is part of a biochemical pathway called the kynurenine pathway which is also found in other brain disorders, including Huntington's disease and schizophrenia.
. . The scientists said there were several drugs in an advanced stage of development for other conditions which targeted this pathway and that these drugs, which still need to be tested, could be used to complement other treatments for Alzheimer's.

Aug 3, 05: Man can now reproduce his best friend --South Korean scientists announced they had created the world's first cloned dog. This is the same technique used to create Dolly, the world's first cloned mammal, and other animals.
. . Snuppy, short for Seoul National University puppy is a male born by caesarean section weighing 530 grams (19 ounces) on April 24 after a normal, full-term pregnancy in a yellow Labrador surrogate mother.
. . Both puppies were created from an adult skin cell taken from a male Afghan hound using somatic cell nuclear transfer. Sheep, mice, cows, goats, pigs, rabbits, cats, a mule and horse have been cloned in the same way. Aug 2, 05: Nanotechnology has been harnessed to kill cancer cells without harming healthy tissue. The technique works by inserting microscopic synthetic rods called carbon nanotubules into cancer cells. The carbon nanotubules used by the Stanford team are only half the width of a DNA molecule, and thousands can easily fit inside a typical cell.
. . Under normal circumstances, near-infra red light passes through the body harmlessly. But the Stanford team found that if they placed a solution of carbon nanotubules under a near-infra red laser beam, the solution heated up to about 70C in two minutes. They then placed the tubules inside cells, and found they were quickly destroyed by the heat generated by the laser beam. Dr Dai said: "It's actually quite simple and amazing. We're using an intrinsic property of nanotubes to develop a weapon that kills cancer."
. . The next step was to find a way to introduce the nantubules into cancer cells, but not healthy cells. The researchers did this by taking advantage of the fact that, unlike normal cells, the surface of cancer cells is covered with receptors for a vitamin known as folate. They coated the nanotubules with folate molecules, making it easy for them to pass into cancer cells, but unable to bind with their healthy cousins. Exposure to the laser duly killed off the diseased cells, but left the healthy ones untouched.
. . But their work so far has focused on cells that have been grown in culture in the laboratory. "Further research will be crucial to see whether these effects can be reproduced in the more complex environment of a tumour and, ultimately, the human body."

Aug 1, 05: Tuberculosis vaccines being tested in developed countries will not protect people living in parts of the developing world where they are most needed because they trigger a different body response, researchers said. Scientists at University College London, who looked at variations in immune system responses around the globe, found that in countries near the equator the tuberculosis bacteria turn the body's normal protective response into a harmful one.
. . So, like the BCG, or bacille Calmette-Guerin vaccine, used against TB in some countries, the latest vaccines which use the same approach will not work in developing countries, according to the researchers. "What we have done is identify the mechanisms that we think lead to the fact that BCG vaccine does not work close to the equator, where the problem really is."
. . In countries in the northern hemisphere, the immune system protects the body against TB with TH1 cells. BCG and new candidate TB vaccines are designed to boost the TH1 cells. But in people living near the equator, the TH1 cells are already on alert, so the protective mechanism is switched on but does not work because another inappropriate response is also turned on which undermines it.
. . TB is a contagious airborne disease that affects about 9 million people each year and kills 2 million. The World Health Organization has warned that TB has reached alarming proportions in Africa where co-infection with HIV makes a lethal combination. July 28, 05: Stem cells from bone marrow may serve as a source of egg cells, at least in mice, and scientists said their study may lead to new fertility treatments if the same proves true in people. The study challenges long-held scientific belief that mammals including mice and humans generate egg cells only when they are fetuses --and are born with all the eggs they will ever have.
. . "Here we show that adult mouse ovaries can produce hundreds of new oocytes within 24 hours", the researchers wrote. They also found evidence that these egg-generating stem cells also exist in human bone marrow. "This could lead to new treatment approaches based not on drugs but on regenerative medicine through adult stem cells."
. . The same team of researchers had earlier been puzzled to report that female mice sterilized with chemotherapy spontaneously regenerated their ovaries and egg cells. They looked in the ovaries but could not find any evidence of oocyte stem cells --immature "master" cells that might be able to give rise to ovary tissue and oocytes.
. . Then they looked in the bone marrow, a rich source of adult stem cells which have matured somewhat, but not as much as fully developed tissue. They found markers --protein signatures --of germ cells-- the kind of stem cells that give rise to eggs and sperm. "Everyone had missed finding female germline stem cells because they are not in the ovaries, where everyone would have looked for them."
. . So they gave bone marrow transplants to some sterilized mice. Just 24 hours later, the sterilized mice had new egg cells and follicles, which hold and nurture the eggs. Two months later, the researchers could hardly tell the sterilized mice from unsterilized mice.
. . They have yet to show that the mice can produce babies with their new egg cells --but they have checked human bone marrow and found similar "markers" for germ cells.
. . Now his team is looking to see if the ovary sends a molecular signal to the bone marrow to "call" for the stem cells and if so, what it is. It might be possible to use this molecular signal to generate new egg cells.

July 27, 05: Genetically engineered stem cells can help rats' severed spinal cords grow back together, according to a new study. Rats given the treatment, using stem cells taken from rat embryos, could move their legs again after their spines were severed in the lab. Two-thirds of the rats in the study regained some hind limb movement. The scientists hope the approach, which generated a new fatty cover for the spinal cord cells called the myelin sheath, also could be shown to work in people.
. . Spinal cord injuries can be caused by accidents or infections and affect 250,000 people a year in the United States alone, costing $4 billion annually.
. . They genetically engineered these cells to do a little extra work by producing a compound called a growth factor --in this case, a new one called multineurotrophin. It was designed to coax immature neural stem cells to mature and become specialized cells called oligodendrocytes. Oligodendrocytes help myelin grow onto nerve fibers, which cannot grow or function without this fatty protective coating.

July 27, 05: Scientists have developed a cancer drug that kills with James Bond stealth. It breaks its way into a cancer cell, seals the exit, cuts off the cell's blood supply, and then detonates a chemotherapy bomb. All that without harming healthy cells. Tests show the crafty drug has safely treated specific cancers and prolonged survival in mice.
. . The new technique uses nanoparticles to create what scientists call a vascular shutdown. But cutting off the blood supply raises two other problems. First, the tumor will get hungry and undergo angiogenesis, the process in which the tumor branches out new vessels to find blood.
. . Secondly, chemotherapy is needed to fully kill the tumor, but "you can't deliver chemotherapy to the tumors if you have destroyed the vessels that take it there", Sasisekharan said. Knowing this, Sasisekharan and his group designed a drug that would both stop angiogenesis and supply chemotherapy. Using drugs that were already available, they created a nanoparticle that is layered like a Tootsie Pop -- the candy shell delivers an anti-angiogenic drug while the candy center is made up of a chemotherapeutic drug. Once inside the cell, the anti-angiogenic outer layer quickly begins to dissolve, cutting off the blood supply and trapping the particle inside the cell. Next, the inner layer slowly releases a chemotherapeutic drug, killing the cell from the inside out. The particle combines stealth and small size to invade the tumor cell. The outermost surface of the nanoparticle has surface chemistry that tricks the tumor. The particle's small size allows it to easily pass through the tumor's pores. Although the particle is tiny --about 500 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair-- it is too large to squeeze into healthy cells. This ensures that only tumor cells, which have larger pores than healthy cells, are killed.
. . Of the mice treated with the nanoparticle drug, 80% survived beyond 65 days. Mice treated with the best available existing therapy survived only to 30 days and untreated mice died at 20 days. As usual, human trials are far off.

July 21, 05: Scientists have found high levels of arsenic in the hair of King George III and say the deadly poison may be to blame for the bouts of apparent madness he suffered. In 1969, researchers proposed the strange behavior of the monarch who reigned during the American Revolution resulted from a rare hereditary blood disorder called porphyria. However, a study this week in The Lancet medical journal found high concentrations of arsenic in the king's hair and contends the severity and duration of his episodes of illness may have been caused by the toxic substance.
. . The 18th-century king, under whose reign Britain mastered the oceans, defeated Napoleon and expanded its empire to superpower dimensions, was best remembered for the humiliating loss of the American colonies and for the periods when he lost his mind. While on the throne, George had five episodes of prolonged and profound mental derangement. At the time, his malady was thought to be a psychiatric disorder.
. . But in 1969, psychiatrists investigating his documented symptoms such as lameness, acute abdominal pain, red urine and temporary mental disturbance, proposed he suffered from porphyria. Subsequent studies that examined records of his ancestors, descendants and other relatives refined the diagnosis to a certain type of porphyria. However, the research did not explain the unusual persistence, severity and late onset of attacks.
. . Warren and his team set out to examine a sample of the king's hair on display at London's Science Museum for traces of mercury or lead, metals known to make porphyria worse. "What surprised us was there were very high levels of arsenic. Arsenic is also known to push porphyric patients into a worse state", Warren said. The semi-metallic element was found to be at 17 parts per million in the hair. Levels are normally found at less than one part per million. Arsenic interferes with the production of heme, a key element of blood and the central problem of porphyria. The blood then gets toxic, which can cause mental disturbance and severe pain.
. . John Henry, a toxicologist at Imperial College in London, said he was cautious about interpreting the findings. "It's a nice theory, but it's just that —-a theory." Museums sometimes spray artifacts with arsenic to preserve them, but the arsenic was evenly distributed along the whole length of the hair, which is consistent with the toxin being within the hair rather than dusted on it. Wig powder and skin ointment were other possibilities, but the levels were too high for that to be a plausible explanation, Warren said.
. . The king's medical records revealed he had been consistently given a medicine containing antimony, a mineral often found in the ground with arsenic. "The way antimony was extracted 200 years ago means that it was often quite contaminated with arsenic", Warren said. "The king was given large doses of antimony for his abdominal pains and that was probably the source of the arsenic." He could have received several milligrams of arsenic a day (a lethal dose is between 60 and 80 mgs). The body can expel arsenic, but over time, a chronic toxicity develops.

July 20, 05: Scientists have discovered a molecular link between obesity and type 2 diabetes that could be a potential target for new drugs to treat the disease. They found that a protein released by fat tissue in mice causes insulin resistance, a primary risk factor for diabetes. The protein is called retinol binding protein (RBP4). Elevated levels of the protein had also previously been detected in patients suffering from diabetes. "And in the absence of diabetes, insulin resistance is a major risk factor for heart disease and early mortality."
. . Insulin, which is produced by the pancreas, regulates blood sugar levels. People with type 1 diabetes, which accounts for 10-25% of cases, do not produce any insulin that helps glucose, or sugar, from food get into cells.
. . Type 2 diabetes, the most common form of the disease, is caused by an inability to make enough, or to properly use, insulin. About 90% of diabetes sufferers have type 2, which is linked to being overweight or obese.
. . About 150 million people worldwide suffer from diabetes and the number may double by 2025, according to the World Health Organization.
. . They also discovered that increasing levels of RBP4 caused insulin resistance while decreasing levels relieved the condition. In people who are obese or suffer from type 2 diabetes, excess amounts of RBP4 are linked to the severity of insulin resistance.

July 19, 05: A new study of human bones reveals microscopic shock absorbers that hold healthy bones together under stress and help repair minor cracks. The work could point to new therapies to reduce the effects of aging on bones and help fix broken bones.
. . The process is the same as one they'd found previously in abalone shells, known to be among the toughest natural material possible. Inside your bones are mineralized collagen fibrils, which are held together by an adhesive. That much was known. In healthy bones, the glue contain springs of some sort that uncoil when the bone is stressed, which helps absorb shock, the scientists found in some of the highest-resolution images ever made of bones. When the stress is over, the springs recoil back to normal.
. . The newfound mechanism gives young, healthy bone tremendous resiliency and resistance to fracture, the scientists say. It also helps heal small cracks. "What we found is that there is a glue in bone that holds these mineralized collagen fibrils together, and this glue works along the same principles that our interdisciplinary research group found in abalone shells", said professor Paul Hansma, in whose lab the work was done. "This glue involves sacrificial bonds (with hidden length) that uncoil when the bone is stressed."
. . Now that exact molecules have been identified with this mechanism, the researchers say, new diet or drug therapies can be designed for conditions such as osteoporosis, which is a severe deterioration of bone strength. Mineral density in human bones peaks around age 30 for all of us and declines through old age.
. . "We're especially interested in learning how these molecules change and become depleted with age as well as in certain diseases", said Daniel Morse, another collaborator. "A potential benefit from these discoveries is the prospect that we might now learn how to protect bone from these deleterious changes, and perhaps actually reverse some of the changes."

July 19, 05: Most testicular cancer patients who try to father children after completing their treatment succeed, scientists said. Men who have surgery to remove the tumor have the least problems but even patients who have radiotherapy and chemotherapy are able to have children. Men who had surgery and no follow-up treatment had an 85% success rate, followed by 82% for patients following radiotherapy and 71% after chemotherapy. For patients who had both chemotherapy and radiotherapy the fertility rate dropped to 67%.

July 19, 05: Dark chocolate can not only soothe your soul but can lower blood pressure too, researchers reported. "Previous studies suggest flavonoid-rich foods, including fruits, vegetables, tea, red wine and chocolate, might offer cardiovascular benefits, but this is one of the first clinical trials to look specifically at dark chocolate. Nutritionists urge people to be cautious because chocolate is high in fat, sugar and calories.
. . White chocolate has no flavonoids. The dark chocolate had a high level of flavonoids, giving it a slightly bittersweet taste. Most Americans eat milk chocolate, which has a low amount.
. . When the volunteers ate the special dark chocolate, they had a 12 mm Hg decrease in systolic blood pressure (the top number in a blood pressure reading) and a 9 mm Hg decrease in diastolic blood pressure (the bottom number) on average. Blood pressure did not change when the volunteers ate white chocolate.

July 18, 05: High outdoor levels of nitrogen dioxide apparently raise the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), according to California-based researchers. The incidence of SIDS cases went up and down with average carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide levels, but only the latter was significant from a statistical standpoint. High levels of nitrogen dioxide more than doubled the risk of SIDS, even after accounting for tobacco smoke exposure.

July 14, 05: [Is aging a disease?] The buildup of mutated DNA triggers aging in mice, according to a new study that could help advance research into human aging. As a lifetime of small mutations in the genetic code build up, cells begin to die. These deaths lead to such things as graying hair and weight changes, hearing and vision impairment, loss of muscle and weakened bones.
. . The DNA mutations accumulate specifically in each cell's mitochondria –-the energy plant for a cell. When these mitochondria shut off, so do the cells, leading to the signs of aging. They used mice that were genetically altered to lack the protein necessary to repair mitochondrial DNA. These mice accumulated mutations at a higher rate than seen in unaltered mice.
. . These findings lend support to the theory that cell death is the cause of aging. The other theory, called oxidative stress, says that the aging process is the result of a lifetime of oxygen reacting with free radicals --cell-damaging molecules that are produced naturally throughout the body.
. . Prolla's team found no evidence indicating oxidative stress is the cause of aging. In fact, they discovered less oxidative stress than normal in tissues like the liver, suggesting that the damage to mitochondria was so severe that the mice's metabolism was lagging and producing fewer free radicals.
. . This research suggests that someday anti-aging drugs could be developed that would prevent mutations from occurring in mitochondrial DNA –-either for the whole body, or just for specialized areas, like the ears or hair follicles.

July 14, 05: Tests on mice suggest the brain damage caused by Alzheimer's disease may be at least partly reversible, researchers reported. Their genetically altered mice regained the ability to navigate mazes after the genes that caused their dementia were de-activated. "When I saw the memory getting better I actually thought I had done something wrong in the experiment."
. . Alzheimer's is a brain-destroying disease that affects an estimated 4.5 million people in the US alone and millions more globally. As the population gets steadily older, experts estimate this number will balloon to as many as 16 million by 2015 in the US. Outward symptoms start with memory loss, which progresses to complete helplessness as brain cells are destroyed. In the brain, neurons die as messy plaques and tangles of protein form. The two proteins involved are unhealthy forms of natural brain compounds called amyloid beta and tau protein. Ashe's team worked with mice genetically engineered to develop the mutant tau, but this mutation could be stopped --or de-activated-- with use of a drug called doxycycline.
. . And when the engineered gene was turned off, memory loss stopped, as expected. But the mice did not merely stop getting worse. They got better.
. . The other interesting finding, Ashe said, was that the tangles of brain cells were not in themselves, evidently, toxic to surrounding brain tissue. "The neurofibrillary tangles, which are one of two major pathological hallmarks of Alzheimers disease, turn out not to be involved in causing memory problems, at least in mice", she said. Some process may be going on at a microscopic level, and the tangles may be a result but not a cause of the brain damage, she said.

July 14, 05: Scientists have mapped the genes of a trio of parasites that sicken and kill millions in poor countries and found they share a surprising amount of DNA, even though they cause markedly different illnesses and are spread by different insects. The research opens the possibility of finding drugs that would fight all three ancient scourges: African sleeping sickness, Chagas disease and leishmaniasis.
. . Despite their toll, these "trypanosome" parasites largely have been neglected — there are no vaccines and inadequate drugs — because they are mostly a problem of the developing world. "Because of their distinct evolution, the trypanosomes present a plethora of potential drug targets, and potential drugs are almost certainly languishing in the chemical libraries of pharmaceutical companies."
. . The parasites are:

_Trypanosoma brucei, which causes sleeping sickness. Spread by the tsetse fly throughout equatorial Africa, this parasite is thought to infect between 300,000 and 500,000 people a year. It is fatal if untreated. Therapies are scarce, can be toxic and often fail if given too late.
_Trypanosoma cruzi, which causes Chagas disease. It is spread by bloodsucking triatomine bugs, which commonly are known as the "assassin bug" throughout Latin America. Some 18 million people are infected, and 45,000 die annually. Symptoms may not appear for years. There is no cure and the parasite eventually causes heart failure. It also can be spread through blood.
_Leishmania major, which causes a variety of leishmaniasis, spread by the sand fly. Twelve million people from Latin America to the Middle East are thought to be infected and tens of thousands die from various strains; the Leishmania major strain usually causes disfiguring skin lesions.

Comparing those maps uncovered 6,200 genes that the three parasites share. Their genetic similarities outweigh their differences, concluded researchers led by the University of Washington and The Institute for Genomic Research in Rockville, Md. That suggests it may be possible to find common treatments.

July 13, 05: A treatment called Lorenzo's Oil can prevent the onset of a rare but devastating neurological disease in young boys, U.S. researchers reported on Monday. The study is the first to use validated scientific methods to test whether the substance, a combination of two fats extracted from olive oil and canola or rapeseed oil, actually works, the researchers said.
. . They tested the oil on 89 boys who had been diagnosed with X-linked adrenoleukodystrophy or X-ALD, but who had not yet begun to show symptoms. They said it prevented symptoms from ever beginning in most of the boys.
. . X-ALD affects 16,000 patients in the US. Patients cannot metabolize big fat molecules called long-chain fatty acids -- either made inside the body or eaten in food. The condition causes the breakdown of myelin, the fatty substance that coats and insulates nerve fibers. The most dangerous type is the childhood cerebral form, in which brain cells are destroyed. Up to 40% of cases are this type, which usually appears between 4 and 8 years of age. There is no cure, but potential treatments include the cholesterol drug lovastatin and bone marrow transplants.
. . Then there is Lorenzo's Oil, a treatment invented by Augusto and Michaela Odone after their son, Lorenzo, was diagnosed with ALD. Lorenzo's Oil normalizes the concentrations of very long chain fatty acids. The Odones said the treatment stopped the progression of Lorenzo's disease and their son, now 27, is alive though severely disabled.

July 13, 05: Stem cells may protect the brain and nervous system against damage from tumors and conditions such as multiple sclerosis, researchers at Milan's San Raffaele Scientific Institute found. Experiments with mice with a disease similar to multiple sclerosis showed that stem cells injected into the blood stream migrated to inflamed areas in the brain and spinal cord, killing inflammatory cells, the researchers said.
. . This means a single injection of stem cells could be used to treat many different areas of damage in the body, reducing the clinical signs of the disease. "There is a therapeutic potential in this discovery, but it's still too early to talk about a cure for humans."
. . The researchers said the stem cells could also potentially be used as a natural anti-inflammatory drug to treat damage by diseases such as stroke, brain tumors, and spinal cord injuries. "The interesting thing is that adult stem cells grow in vitro without becoming specialized, they are injected and the find the damaged organ by themselves and decide autonomously how to treat it."

July 13, 05: Gold-colored bacteria that cause more disease than colorless strains do so because they carry antioxidants to protect themselves against immune system attack, U.S. researchers reported.
. . Their findings, published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, suggest a potential new way to treat some serious infections. Gold-colored strains of Staphylococcus aureus bacteria, which get their color from antioxidant compounds called carotenoids, tend to cause more disease than colorless strains. Carotenoids also give carrots their color and include the vitamin A precursor beta-carotene. Victor Nizet of the University of California San Diego and colleagues found that the carotenoids help defend Staph aureus bacteria from the toxic molecules made by immune system cells called neutrophils. When they removed the carotenoids from the bacteria, they were easier to kill.
. . Drugs that interfere with the bacteria's ability to make carotenoids might help in fighting antibiotic-resistant staph infections, which are on the rise globally, Nizet said.

July 13, 05: Supporters and opponents of human-embryo research wielded politics and science on Tuesday in last-minute battles to push some kind of stem cell legislation through the Senate.
. . One method, being tested in mice by Massachusetts-based Advanced Cell Technology, would involve taking a single cell from an embryo in a lab dish and using it to create a batch, or line, of stem cells. Called blastomere transfer, the procedure is already used sometimes to test IVF embryos for severe genetic defects.
. . Another approach backed by the President's Council on Bioethics would, in theory, use cells from embryos that have stopped dividing, which the council regards as technically dead. The Council also backs a method in which the cell being cloned would be genetically altered so it could never grow into a human being.

July 6, 05: The mental boost smokers get from nicotine is linked to the same area of the brain in mice as its addictiveness and the two are probably inseparable, French scientists said. Receptors on cells in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) of the brain are involved in nicotine's addictive and cognitive qualities in mice. The VTA is involved in responses to natural rewards such as food, sex and the effect of drugs. Addictive drugs activate the release of dopamine, a chemical linked to pleasurable sensations, which is made in cells of the VTA.
. . Scientists have known that a family of receptors, or doorways into cells, called nicotinic acetylcholine receptors are involved in addiction to smoking. Changeux and his team genetically engineered mice so they lacked a gene for a portion of a nicotine receptor, to discover the impact it would have on how the mice functioned. The mutant mice had a mild learning impairment and unlike normal mice, which had learned to press a lever to self-administer nicotine, they showed no interest in getting nicotine. But when the scientists re-injected the gene, the mice's cognitive function was restored. The rodents were also more likely to seek out nicotine.
. . "Given the intricacies of the brain, it is striking that reintroduction of a single molecule to just one small area of the brain should so dramatically affect behavior", said Julie Kauer of Brown University.
. . If researchers could find a way to stop nicotine attaching to brain cells, it may be possible to prevent addiction.

July 1, 05: The British government launched a series of tough anti-cigarette adverts Friday with the message that smoking is bad for your sex life because it makes men impotent and women ugly. The campaign is designed to target young Britons' fears about their sexual attractiveness --an area the government says is more effective than highlighting general health concerns.
. . "We know 70% of smokers want to stop smoking, however, with younger people, fears about attractiveness and fertility can be a stronger motivation to quit than fears about health", said Public Health Minister Caroline Flint. The government says smoking increases the risk of erectile dysfunction by around 50 percent for men in their 30s and 40s and that up to 120,000 British men in this age group were impotent as a result of smoking.
. . A recent survey by NHS Smoking Helpline also found two-thirds of young men and women, and over half of smokers, said smoking reduced sexual attractiveness.

June 30, 05: Scientists in Hong Kong have shed new light on why cell repair is less efficient in older people after a breakthrough discovery on premature aging, a rare genetic disease that affects one in four million babies. Premature aging, or Hutchison-Gilford Progeria Syndrome (progeria), is obvious in the appearance of a child before it is a year old. Although their mental faculties are normal, they stop growing, lose body fat and suffer from wrinkled skin and hair loss. Like old people, they suffer stiff joints and a buildup of plaque in arteries which can lead to heart disease and stroke. Most die of cardiovascular diseases before they are 20.
. . In 2003, a team of scientists in the United States found that progeria was caused by mutation in a protein called Lamin A, which lines the nucleus in human cells. A team at the University of Hong Kong, led by Zhou Zhongjun, took the research a step further in 2004 and found that mutated Lamin A actually disrupted the repair process in cells, thus resulting in accelerated aging.
. . Having established the link between Lamin A and repair, Zhou is using major findings from other research he did in 2002 to work on his next project, a product which he hopes could kill cancer cells. Zhou & others found in 2002 that the enzyme Zmpste 24 was responsible in converting prelamin A to functional Lamin A.
. . Zhou's laboratory is now developing inhibitors to Zmpste 24, which he hopes to apply to tumors. These inhibitors should theoretically disrupt Lamin A production, thwart the repair function in cancer cells, and bring on their premature aging and death.

June 29, 05: Exposure to everyday sources of radiation, mostly medical X-rays, raises the risk of cancer but not by much and there is no clear line between a harmless dose and a disease-causing dose, an expert panel reported.
. . People should think twice about having unnecessary high-dose X-rays such as the full-body CAT scans being offered by some clinics, the panel advised, but otherwise should be reassured by the findings.
. . A low dose of about 100 millisieverts of radiation --the equivalent of 10 chest X-rays-- can be expected to cause cancer in one out of every 100 people, the report finds. "About 42 additional people in the same group would be expected to develop solid cancer or leukemia from other causes. Roughly half of these cancers would result in death."

June 28, 05: More than 40% of Americans surveyed in a study falsely believed surgery can allow cancer cells to spread through the body, researchers said. And up to a quarter believed there is a drug industry plot to cover up a cure for cancer. "The most prevalent misconception, 'Treating cancer with surgery can cause it to spread throughout the body,' was endorsed as true by 41% of the respondents", the researchers wrote.
. . "The second most prevalent misconception, 'The medical industry is withholding a cure for cancer from the public in order to increase profits,' was identified as true by 27%."
. . But most people --68%-- correctly rejected the idea that pain medications are ineffective against cancer pain and 89% knew it takes more than a positive attitude to treat cancer. 87% knew there were effective treatments for cancer. More than 60% of cancer patients are still alive 5 years later.
. . The results show that the American public is significantly ill-informed about cancer, and that most people overestimate how much they know about the disease.

June 27, 05: Fitting patients with a brain pacemaker could switch off hard-to-treat depression, believe UK experts. The technology, already used to treat Parkinson's disease, uses wires and a battery source to stimulate deep parts of the brain with electric currents. As well as helping depressed patients who have failed on all other therapies, it might also be helpful for treating obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). UK neurologists said they planned to test this after promising US trials.
. . By looking at brain scans of people with severe depression that could not be alleviated with drugs, psychotherapy or other available treatments, she found they tended to have very high activity in an area of the brain within the limbic system, which is known to be involved with mood.
. . Her team implanted the device, under local anaesthetic, into six patients with severe, treatment-resistant depression. A year later, four of the patients say they have noticed big improvements in their mood with no side effects. Brain scans show that they now have lower brain activity in area 25 and more activity in the frontal lobe. "The effects were immediate. One patient told me she felt suddenly relieved. These are the sickest of the sick. They are not just having a bad day."
. . About 10% of people will have an episode of major depression in their lifetime. Conventional treatment will fail in about 10% of these. It is these patients who might benefit from DBS, said Professor Mayberg. Similarly, some patients with hard-to-treat OCD - an anxiety disorder characterised by intense, recurrent, unwanted thoughts and rituals that are beyond the person's control --might also benefit.

June 27, 05: A cancer pill noted for its effectiveness in stopping leukemia in some patients can also help delay the deadliest effects of a pox virus in mice --offering the prospect of using similar drugs to treat or prevent smallpox, scientists said. The drug, known generically as imatinib or STI-571, also prevented infection in the mice and slowed the spread of the virus in the body when given after infection.
. . Experts fear terrorists or governments could use old samples to launch biological attacks. Once a dreaded disease with a fatality rate of 30%, smallpox was wiped out by using the first-ever vaccine --based on the related vaccinia virus. With the risk of biological attacks, researchers are working on a better, more modern vaccine and also exploring treatments for both smallpox and the side-effects of the existing smallpox vaccine, which is crude.
. . Kalman's team discovered that the smallpox virus uses an enzyme called tyrosine kinase to move from cell to cell. New cancer drugs target this enzyme, which is also used by cancer cells to spread.
. . The approach may work against other viruses and some bacteria, the researchers said. For instance, when E. coli takes on a dangerous form, it uses tyrosine kinases, as does a virus called polyoma, which has been associated with cancer.

June 22, 05: Before the arrival of Spanish colonizers some 500 years ago, Indians in what is now Ecuador dipped their arrowheads in venom extracted from the phantasmal poison frog to doom their victims to convulsive death, scientists believe.
. . More recently, epibatidine --the chemical which paralyzed and killed the Indians' enemies-- has been isolated to produce a pain killer 200 times more powerful than morphine, but without that drug's addictive and toxic side effects.

Plague. After Tut’s death, his young wife Ankhesenamen soon disappeared from the historical record and may have died. Significantly, after a Hittite prince who had come to marry the widowed queen was murdered, the Hittites attacked Egypt and brought back prisoners who soon died of plague. The disease then spread and persisted among the Hittites, according to an ancient text. Possibly, some speculate, Tut and his wife had succumbed to the same plague.
. . As to the so-called "mummy’s curse", it seems no longer operative. In fact the inscription, "Death shall come to he who touches the tomb", was non-existent. In 1980, the site’s former security officer admitted the story of the curse had been circulated to frighten away would-be grave robbers. Balancing the list of misfortunes touted by curse proponents is the fact that ten years after the tomb was opened, all but one of the five who first entered it were still living. Carter lived until 1939, when he was sixty-six, and Derry lived to be over eighty years old.

June 16, 05: Australian scientists say they have found a way to make blood cells in volume out of human stem cells, which could eventually lead to production of safe blood cells for transfusions and organ transplants. Synthetically produced red blood cells would, in theory, overcome the concerns about dangerous infections that can be transmitted from blood donors to patients worldwide. But researchers said it would probably take years for scientists to get to the stage where blood cells could be made in large enough quantities for transfusions. The team's system was able to stimulate the stem cells specifically into becoming red or white cells.

June 14, 05: An experimental cancer drug has halted and then reversed damage caused by traumatic brain injury in rats, Georgetown University researchers report. "We used a drug that has never been used before in brain trauma."

June 13, 05: Scientists working in mice said they had found a way to identify master cells in the brain and grow them in large batches --a potential way of helping patients grow their own brain tissue transplants. The scientists said they had found a process to make the cells multiply, which would be crucial in fighting degenerative brain diseases like Parkinson's and Huntington's.
. . The study is one of many focusing on stem cells --the elusive progenitor cells that are found in all tissue and in blood, but which are difficult to identify. In theory, once isolated and cultivated with the right compounds and under the right conditions, they should be able to grow out into large lines, or batches, of the desired tissue. These so-called adult stem cells could come from a patient himself so no donor and no immune system suppressing drugs would be needed. Such cells may also play an important role in cancer, so understanding how they work is important.
. . "We used a special microscope that allows us to watch living cells over long periods of time through a method called live-cell microscopy, so we've actually witnessed the stem cell give rise to new neurons. We can basically take these cells and freeze them until we need them. Then we thaw them, begin a cell-generating process, and produce a ton of new neurons."

June 13, 05: One in five women would consider having both their breasts removed to reduce their odds of developing cancer, according to a survey. More than 1,500 women around the world were questioned in the poll about what choices they would make if told they were at high risk of the disease. "It is extremely rare for women to undergo a double mastectomy for preventive reasons and, as an option, it is most relevant to women with a very strong family history of breast cancer."
. . Each year, more than a million women worldwide are diagnosed with breast cancer. It accounts for 10% of all cancers and 23% of female cancer.

June 10, 05: Scientists know that our brains shrink with aging, but does less gray matter really matter? Apparently not, according to a new study of 446 people in Australia. The conclusion was based on questionnaires and brain scans. "We found that, on average, men aged 64 years have smaller brains than men aged 60", said Helen Christensen of the Australian National University. "However, despite this shrinkage, cognitive functions --like memory, attention and speed of processing-- are unaffected."
. . The study yielded another surprise. Previous studies had indicated that higher levels of education or continuing intellectual activity could serve as a sort of Pilates for the brain, keeping an aging mind fit. "Our findings do not support these beliefs", Christensen said. "In the present study, we found no relationship between brain shrinkage and education level."

June 8, 05: Sixteen Nobel laureates as well as doctors, scientists and charities called for a global plan to develop drugs to treat neglected diseases that are killing millions of the world's poorest people. Asking for a fund of $3 billion a year, the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative said major drug firms did not put enough effort into potential cures for mega killers like malaria and tuberculosis because medicines to fight them make no money.
. . The world spends more than $100 billion per year on health research and drug development, but less than 10% is spent on 90% of the world's health problems affecting the poor of Africa, Asia and Latin America, the campaigners said.

June 6, 05: The mutated, drug-resistant "superbugs" that cause an increasing number of hospital infections and deaths can live for weeks on bed linens, computer keyboard covers and under acrylic fingernails, U.S. researchers reported. The study supports other research that shows super-strict hygiene is needed to battle the bacteria, some of which are now nearly impossible to kill even with the strongest antibiotics.
. . A team at sanitation-services company Ecolab Inc. dabbed methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus onto samples of bed linen, keyboard covers and acrylic fingernails. June , 05: MRSA could be detected eight weeks later on acrylic fingernails, six weeks later on computer keyboard covers and five days later on bed linens. It's usually harmless and very common, found on skin or in the noses of about 30 percent of people. It can cause stubborn problems such as rashes and boils and an infection is often mistaken for a spider bite. It resists almost everything but an intravenous antibiotic called vancomycin. [so far...]

May 30, 05: Infestation: Honeybees aren't the only pollinators in their field: Butterflies, moths, and garden flies --just about any insect that likes the taste of nectar - are helpful, too. But easily domesticated honeybees, by virtue of their sheer numbers, are the farmer's best hired hand. With up to 80,000 individuals per hive, busy worker bees flower-hop for nectar, spreading pollen from plant to plant in the process, which allows the flowers to turn into fruit. And by letting farmers focus an overwhelming number of insects on a specific area, honeybee pollination brings about both better quality and bigger yields of fruit and veggies. "If honeybees ceased to exist, two thirds of our citrus would disappear."
. . This has been one of the worst-ever winters for bees --ravaged by mites, half of America's 2.5 million colonies perished. The shortage has farmers scrambling. The stakes were raised this winter, when Asian "vampire" mites, grown immune to pesticides, ravaged the hibernating hives.
. . There's a faint buzz of hope: While bee laboratories struggle to find new "mitecides", some states are starting to subsidize beekeeping, and potential beekeepers are swarming to sign up for classes such as next weekend's "To bee or not to bee" course. A program to study and introduce Russian and Italian bee queens at North Carolina State University had hundreds more applicants than there were free hives.

May 31, 05: The earliest days of life could determine if risky genes will go on to trigger cancer, scientists claim. Genes such as BRCA1 and BRCA2 for breast cancer significantly increase the risk of developing the disease, but not all carriers develop tumors. A University of Texas study on rats suggested exposure to the hormone estrogen just after birth could determine if tumors will develop. It suggests exposure to estrogen may reprogram tissue and set it on a path towards the eventual development of disease.

May 27, 05: New research has uncovered how a class of compounds can shut down reproduction in cold-causing viruses by wiggling inside and altering their behavior. The breakthrough may point the way toward future drug development aimed at averting colds.
. . One reason a cure for the common cold remains elusive is that the offending viruses are shape-shifters --they mutate from one cold season to the next. You may succeed in beating one version, but then you’re unprepared for the next incarnation. "The common cold virus can hide in a crowd because it always looks like someone else –-it's the bug of a hundred faces."

May 19, 05: South Korean scientists who cloned the first human embryo to use for research said on Thursday they have used the same technology to create batches of embryonic stem cells from nine patients. Their study fulfills one of the basic promises of using cloning technology in stem cell research --that a piece of skin could be taken from a patient and used to grow the stem cells.
. . Researchers believe the cells could one day be trained to provide tailored tissue and organ transplants to cure juvenile diabetes, Parkinson's disease and even to repair severed spinal cords. Unlike so-called adult stem cells, embryonic stem cells have the potential from the beginning to form any cell or tissue in the body.
. . They report their process is much more efficient than they hoped, and yielded 11 stem cell batches, called lines, from six adults and three children with spinal cord injuries, juvenile diabetes and a rare immune disorder.
. . They also say their method may be less controversial than other work with embryonic stem cells because, by their definition, a human embryo was never actually created. "There is no fertilization in our process. This result is not an embryo but a nuclear transfer construct."

May 19, 05: The evolutionary path that separated humans from chimps 5 million years ago may have made human sperm survive better but paradoxically may have made humans prone to cancer. A comparison of chimpanzee genes to human genes shows a concentration of genes unique to people in areas associated with sperm production and cancer, and suggests the changes that make humans unique also make us uniquely prone to cancer.
. . In cancer, cells lose their ability to self-destruct when they become faulty, a process called apoptosis. Cell cycling --the process by which cells activate, divide, and grow into two separate cells-- is also disrupted in cancer. Apoptosis also kills many developing sperm cells before they mature. But evolution could have interfered with this process, allowing more sperm to reach maturity, thus carrying the mutation into the next generation. Cancer in people usually occurs in late adulthood, after they have reproduced, and thus has not been removed by natural selection --the process that leads to evolution.
. . Clark said chimpanzees get cancer, too, but no one has been able to study enough of them in captivity to see if they do so at the same rate and in the same ways as humans do.

May 18, 05: US scientists are developing a combination vaccine to protect against the deadliest form of plague. A team from Wake Forest U has completed successful tests on mice --and the scientists are confident it will protect humans too. Mice immunized with the new vaccine survived when exposed to a lethal dose --and remained protected for at least three months.
. . The researchers initially injected a protein taken from the plague bacteria into a mouse --but this did little to trigger the animal's immune system. However, when a protein called flagellin was added to the vaccine, the immune system began producing antibodies to fight off the plague bacteria at 500,000 times the previous level.
. . Another advantage of the new vaccine is that it is heat stable, and so does not require refrigeration. It is also so powerful that just a few drops in the nose provide protection, ruling out the need for a jab.
. . Plague ravaged Europe in the Middle Ages, and there is concern the bacterium could be used in a modern day bio terror attack. There are still sporadic outbreaks of plague in the developing world. Recent cases have been reported in India and Madagascar.

May 17, 05: The specific acoustics of a baby's cry can indicate health problems and even indicate the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), a scientist said today. Studies have shown the cry of an infant can indicate medical risk. They might cry at a higher and more variable frequency than normal, but at lower amplitude, and with short utterances. The signals can point to respiratory problems or increased tension and instability of neural control of the vocal tract.
. . "The cry signal has enormous potential diagnostic value; for example, very high pitched cries can tell us that something may be wrong with the infant, so the cry signal can be an early warning that leads to further neurological testing", said Linda LaGasse of Brown Medical School.
. . "At-risk infants have undetected neurological damage and that cry analysis may be able to identify these infants when no other symptoms are present", said co-author Barry Lester, also of Brown.
. . Other signals, such as high resonance, can mark infants at risk for SIDS. Resonance is a quality of richness and depth that makes a note from a piano sound different from the same note on a guitar. Noisy, broken-sounding cries can be a similar indicator.
. . Cry diagnoses are best left to professionals, however. "Resonance is identified by a computerized analysis of the cry signal", LaGasse said. "A detailed analysis of the cry signal is an important part of understanding the 'full message' of the cry."

May 16, 05: A low-fat diet and aspirin, both shown to help reduce the risk of cancer, may also help keep it from coming back in some patients, researchers reported. Breast cancer patients who followed a modest low-fat diet, cutting oils, margarine and red meat, were 24% less likely to have their cancer come back. Winer said he would need more data from studies showing it was really the low-fat diet that had the effect.
. . In another study, colon cancer patients who took regular aspirin were 50% less likely to have a relapse.
. . The researchers were surprised by one thing. About 80% of breast cancers are fueled in part by the hormone estrogen, which is made by fat cells. Studies have shown that low-fat diets reduce the risk of breast cancer and doctors had thought it might be because fat cells produce estrogen. But in Chlebowski's study, the most pronounced effect was in the 20% of women whose tumors were hormone-receptor negative, meaning they do not respond to estrogen. In that group, the low-fat diet reduced the risk of cancer coming back by 42% over the five years the patients have been watched so far and 8% fewer of them relapsed after four years.
. . The women lost an average of 2 kg, so the weight loss could be a factor, he said. The study should fuel more research, experts agreed.

May 16, 05: A difficult birth or a history of mental illness in a parent may put a baby at greater risk for autism, according to a new study. Researchers found a disproportionately high number had been born before the 35th week of pregnancy, had suffered from low birth weights and were in a breech position at birth. Previous research had suggested that perinatal factors, parental psychiatric history and socioeconomic status might represent or include risk factors for autism.
. . About one out of every 250 babies in the nation is born with the disability, which usually appears in the first three years of childhood.
. . Some parents have claimed that their children developed autism due to exposure to childhood vaccines containing the preservative thimerosal, an organic compound that is 49% mercury. Thimerosal was used routinely in the United States between the 1930s and the 1990s to prevent bacterial and fungal contamination of a wide range of infant vaccines, including those for hepatitis B. Thimerosal is no longer used in childhood vaccines in the United States, but remains in the influenza vaccine and in vaccines in other countries. The CDC said it has found no proof of a link between autism and vaccines.

May 16, 05: Combining an MRI scan and a mammogram is the most effective way to detect breast cancer in women with a high risk of the disease, scientists said. Women who have mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes are more likely to develop cancer and at a younger age. Detecting the disease with just a mammogram can be difficult because younger women have denser breasts.
. . They found that MRI was nearly twice as effective as mammograms in finding signs of the disease. Mammograms picked up 40% of tumors in the women but MRI detected 77%. When the two methods were combined, 94% of tumors were identified.
. . Inherited genetic mutations account for only a small percentage of breast cancer cases but women with the defects have about a 60% chance of developing the disease by the age of 70.

May 16, 05: An experimental vaccine against nicotine helped smokers kick the habit, Swiss researchers reported. Larger tests are needed but the test of heavy smokers suggested that 40% were able to quit smoking for nearly six months after receiving the vaccine. Zurich-based Cytos Biotechnology AG plans phase III trials aimed at showing the vaccine is not only safe but also works, and is aiming to get it on the market by 2010.
. . The vaccine was based on a bacteriophage, a type of virus that attacks bacteria. Cytos designed a vaccine that uses part of a protein from the virus, genetically engineered to attract an immune system response to nicotine. Patients who get the vaccine generate antibodies that neutralize nicotine. "They don't feel that they have to take a cigarette to feel better."
. . Those who produced the most antibody after receiving the vaccine were also the most likely to be able to stop smoking -- 57% of them did. All the smokers who got the vaccine had some sort of anti-nicotine antibody response. None of the smokers given a placebo produced any anti-nicotine antibodies, although 31% of them were able to stop smoking for 24 weeks.
. . Smoking is extremely addictive and on average, it takes 11 tries to quit. Tobacco use is the single largest cause of cancer and heart disease and kills 5 million people a year.

May 16, 05: Scientists believe they can make cancer drugs from the humble sea squirt. A microbe that lives within this sea animal produces compounds that may fight some tumors. Using laboratory techniques they say it should be possible to produce enough of the compounds without having to destroy a large number of sea squirts.

May 13, 05: Chemotherapy and hormone treatment have dramatically reduced the death rate from early breast cancer, according to a major international analysis that indicates the often arduous regimens do cure many women.
. . The latest data from an extensive ongoing project involving 145,000 women with early breast cancer found that chemotherapy and hormone treatment continue to protect many women from dying from the disease for at least 15 years. The protection often gets stronger over time, increasing the likelihood that the therapy is truly eradicating cancer from their bodies.
. . The analysis showed, for example, that a middle-aged woman with a diagnosis of early-stage breast cancer cuts her risk of dying by about half by undergoing six months of chemotherapy and taking hormone treatment for five years, if she is medically eligible for both.
. . Every year, breast cancer is diagnosed in about 211,240 women in the United States and about 40,410 die from the disease, making it the most common cancer among women and second-leading cancer killer, after lung cancer.
. . For most women, it is now standard practice to treat early breast cancer with surgery and radiation, followed by chemotherapy to reduce the risk of a recurrence by attempting to wipe out any cancer cells lurking elsewhere in the body. If their tumors are sensitive to the hormone estrogen, many women also take the estrogen-blocking drug tamoxifen for about five years to further reduce the risk of recurrence. (A new generation of hormone therapy has begun to replace tamoxifen.)

May 12, 05: Leprosy, a disease widely believed to have been spread out of India, in fact appears to have originated in Africa or the Near East, scientists said. The new study suggests that until Europeans explored and conquered much of the world, the disease that carries perhaps more stigma than any other was fairly contained. "Europeans or North Africans introduced leprosy into West Africa and the Americas within the past 500 years."
. . A careful genetic analysis of the bacteria that causes the disease, which attacks the nerves and skin, suggests that colonial-era explorers and slave traders spread leprosy across the rest of Africa and into the Americas in relatively recent times. They found very few genetic differences -- a surprising finding in such an old and [now] widespread organism.
. . It has been difficult to study Mycobacterium leprae because the bacillus does not grow well in lab dishes. It grows and spreads slowly in humans, too, and significant studies were only possible after it was found that armadillos are easily infected and can be used to grow large amounts of the bacteria.
. . Now more commonly known as Hansen's disease, leprosy, whose existence can be traced in ancient texts as far back as about 600 BC in Egypt, no longer condemns patients to live in colonies. More than 760,000 new cases were diagnosed in 2002, according to the World Health Organization, and Brazil, Madagascar, Mozambique, Tanzania, and Nepal had 90 percent of all cases.
. . Leprosy causes skin lesions and thickening, and patients can lose extremities because of nerve damage. Fingers and toes can become numb as the bacteria attacks the nerves. As with another bacillus --tuberculosis-- Hansen's disease must be treated with antibiotics for months to be eradicated.

May 10, 05: A pair of new studies confirms recent fears that bacteria are growing increasingly resistant to drugs and that you can be infected anywhere. The number of cases of "superbugs", as researchers call them, has been increasingly steadily in recent years, the reports conclude. The best medicine? Wash your hands a lot.
. . The deadly microscopic creatures evolve to deal with antibiotics, such as penicillin, partly because doctors prescribe the medications inappropriately, scientists say. When antibiotics are used for non-bacterial illnesses, or when prescriptions are not taken for the full cycle, the bugs that endure pass on their drug-resistant traits to subsequent generations.
. . One of the most vexing superbugs is methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA. This bacteria used to be acquired mostly in hospitals, but now more people are getting it elsewhere. It can cause skin infections, severe bloodstream infections and even death. Researchers found that over three years, the number of MRSA infections acquired outside hospitals in Texas had more than doubled. Researchers said the study should "raise red flags for health care workers everywhere. There have been deaths related to this organism, although the vast number are skin and soft tissue infections." And if regular drug-resistant bacteria weren't bad enough, some bacteria have become multidrug resistant (MDR).
. . A study released in March found standard soap and 10 seconds of scrubbing to be among the most effective ways to get rid of bacteria.

Soy (or soya, if you will) has its dark side: it has a weak estrogen effect, and its long-term effects on breast cancer are not known. Soy may also decrease the absorption of thyroid medication, so the combination of the two should be avoided.
. . In a nutshell, at least at this time, there is no clear answer to the question of soy's potential contribution to, or protection from, breast cancer. The experts are split on this question.

May 4, 05: Pregnant women who were traumatized by witnessing the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center may have passed on a biological sign of stress to their unborn babies, scientists said.
. . Researchers found the women and their babies had reduced levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which is a sign someone has been affected by post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Low levels of cortisone have been observed in the children of Holocaust survivors, but researchers had put them down to living with a depressed parent or hearing stories about what had happened to them.
. . The latest study suggests however that a mother can pass on low cortisol levels to her unborn child, researchers at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and the University of Edinburgh in Scotland said. Seckl said it was too early to tell if the children would suffer any ill effects. The researchers plan to follow up the children during their development.
. . Even a year after the children's birth, babies of stressed mothers had lower levels than other children. The low levels were most apparent in babies born to mothers who were in the final three months of their pregnancy on 9/11.

May 4, 05: It is "too soon" to say if an international initiative to combat malaria has had an impact, its leaders say. Roll Back Malaria, an international group of 90 organizations, was set up in 1998 to tackle malaria.

Apr 30, 05: Scientists in Hong Kong and Britain have discovered a gene responsible for hearing, a breakthrough that could eventually lead to a cure for congenital deafness.
. . The scientists worked for 12 years on the project, eventually tracing deafness in mutant yellow mice back to a defective gene. The master gene, called Sox2, is responsible for the development of hair cells and supporting cells in the inner ear that enable hearing. Any mutation or disruption in the gene leads to hearing loss and balance problems in mice, they found. Ears of mice are very similar to those in humans and such findings on the rodent can be applied to humans, who suffer loss of hearing when hair cells in their inner ears die. "The implication is that perhaps we can now explore ways of using Sox2 to help develop new ways of regenerating hair cells in humans. This is in the long term."
. . Deafness is more common than is often known. One in every 800 children is born with a hearing impairment and 60 percent of people over the age of 70 suffer some hearing loss.

Apr 30, 05: On a farm about six miles outside this gambling town, Jason Chamberlain looks over a flock of about 50 smelly sheep, many of them possessing partially human livers, hearts, brains and other organs. The University of Nevada-Reno researcher talks matter-of-factly about his plans to euthanize one of the pregnant sheep in a nearby lab. He can't wait to examine the effects of the human cells he had injected into the fetus' brain about two months ago. "It's mice on a large scale."
. . As strange as his work may sound, it falls firmly within the new ethics guidelines the influential National Academies issued this past week for stem cell research. In fact, the Academies' report endorses research that co-mingles human and animal tissue as vital to ensuring that experimental drugs and new tissue replacement therapies are safe for people. Doctors have transplanted pig valves into human hearts for years, and scientists have injected human cells into lab animals for even longer.
. . But the biological co-mingling of animal and human is now evolving. In the past two years, scientists have created pigs with human blood, fused rabbit eggs with human DNA and injected human stem cells to make paralyzed mice walk.
. . Particularly worrisome to some scientists are the nightmare scenarios that could arise from the mixing of brain cells: What if a human mind somehow got trapped inside a sheep's head? The "idea that human neuronal cells might participate in 'higher order' brain functions in a nonhuman animal, however unlikely that may be, raises concerns that need to be considered", the academies report warned.
. . In January, an informal ethics committee at Stanford University endorsed a proposal to create mice with brains nearly completely made of human brain cells. Stem cell scientist Irving Weissman said his experiment could provide unparalleled insight into how the human brain develops and how degenerative brain diseases like Parkinson's progress.
. . Stanford law professor Hank Greely, who chaired the ethics committee, said the board was satisfied that the size and shape of the mouse brain would prevent the human cells from creating any traits of humanity.
. . Weissman, who has already created mice with 1% human brain cells, said he has no immediate plans to make mostly human mouse brains, but wanted to get ethical clearance in any case. A formal Stanford committee that oversees research at the university would also need to authorize the experiment.
. . Few human-animal hybrids are as advanced as the sheep created by another stem cell scientist, Esmail Zanjani, and his team at the University of Nevada-Reno. They want to one day turn sheep into living factories for human organs and tissues and along the way create cutting-edge lab animals to more effectively test experimental drugs.
. . Zanjani is most optimistic about the sheep that grow partially human livers after human stem cells are injected into them while they are still in the womb. Most of the adult sheep in his experiment contain about 10% human liver cells, though a few have as much as 40%. Because the human liver regenerates, the research raises the possibility of transplanting partial organs into people whose livers are failing.
. . Zanjani and other stem cell scientists defend their research and insist they aren't creating monsters —-or anything remotely human. Years ago, two researchers applied for a patent for what they called a "humanzee", a hypothetical —-but very possible-— creation that was half human and chimp.
. . The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office finally denied their application this year, ruling that the proposed invention was too human: Constitutional prohibitions against slavery prevents the patenting of people. Newman and Rifkin were delighted, since they never intended to create the creature and instead wanted to use their application to protest what they see as science and commerce turning people into commodities. And that's a point, Newman warns, that stem scientists are edging closer to every day: "Once you are on the slope, you tend to move down it."

Apr 27, 05: Empathy allows us to feel the emotions of others, to identify and understand their feelings and motives and see things from their perspective. How we generate empathy remains a subject of intense debate in cognitive science. Some scientists now believe they may have finally discovered its root. We're all essentially mind readers, they say. [They do NOT mean this literally!]
. . A curious cluster of cells is in the premotor cortex, an area of the brain responsible for planning movements. The cluster of cells fired not only when the monkey performed an action, but likewise when the monkey saw the same action performed by someone else. The cells responded the same way whether the monkey reached out to grasp a peanut, or merely watched in envy as another monkey or a human did.
. . Because the cells reflected the actions that the monkey observed in others, the neuroscientists named them "mirror neurons." Later experiments confirmed the existence of mirror neurons in humans and revealed another surprise. In addition to mirroring actions, the cells reflected sensations and emotions.
. . Mirror neurons have been implicated in a broad range of phenomena, including certain mental disorders. Mirror neurons may help cognitive scientists explain how children develop a theory of mind (ToM), which is a child's understanding that others have minds similar to their own. Doing so may help shed light on autism, in which this type of understanding is often missing. For autistic individuals, experience is more observed than lived, and the emotional undercurrents that govern so much of our human behavior are inaccessible. They guess the mental states of others through explicit theorizing, but the end result is a list-- mechanical and impersonal-- of actions, gestures and expressions void of motive, intent, or emotion.
. . Several labs are now testing the hypothesis that autistic individuals have a mirror neuron deficit and cannot simulate the mental states of others. One recent experiment by Hugo Theoret and colleagues at the University of Montreal showed that mirror neurons normally active during the observation of hand movements in non-autistic individuals are silent in those who have autism.

Apr 27, 05: Regular exercise can slow the development of Alzheimer's disease by changing the way brain-damaging proteins take up residence in the brain, researchers said. Their study of mice helps explain a growing body of evidence that keeping busy, physically and mentally, and eating certain foods can delay or even prevent the brain-destroying illness.

Apr 21, 05: Mice forced to breathe hydrogen sulfide --known best for its rotten egg smell-- go into a kind of suspended animation, U.S. researchers said, in a finding that may help save human lives. Finding a safe way to do this in humans could lead to new ways to treat cancer and prevent injury or death from blood loss, or help people undergo and recover from surgery better. It could help buy time for critically ill patients on organ-transplant lists and in operating rooms, emergency rooms and on battlefields.
. . Although hydrogen sulfide gas is toxic in high doses, it may activate some of the mechanisms that cause other animals to go into hibernation. "We are, in essence, temporarily converting mice from warm-blooded to cold-blooded creatures, which is exactly the same thing that happens naturally when mammals hibernate. We think this may be a latent ability that all mammals have --potentially even humans." . "It's simply an agent that all of us make in our bodies all the time to buffer our metabolic flexibility. It's what allows our core temperature to stay at [37C] degrees."
. . Many cases have been documented of small children, and the occasional adult, reviving from near-drownings in icy water after their body temperatures had dropped and they had stopped breathing for more than an hour.
. . "When mice were exposed to 80 parts per million of hydrogen sulfide, their oxygen consumption dropped 50 percent and their carbon dioxide output dropped by 60 percent within the first five minutes. If left in this environment for six hours, their metabolic rate dropped by 90 percent."

Apr 20, 05: A harmless bacterium that binds to the HIV virus has been discovered by medical researchers. The find may lead to a cheap way to control infection. It's a strain of lactobacillus --a common bacteria in our bodies-- that binds to the sugar envelope on the surface of HIV. The bacterium targets HIV because it uses the sugar as a food source.
. . They've found two strains that specifically trap the virus by eating mannose and --in the lab, at least-- block infection. "If we can find its natural enemy, we can control the spread of HIV naturally and cost-effectively, just as we use cats to control mice. Different bacteria have different sugar preferences", said Tao. "To block HIV, however, we needed to find bacteria that prefer the unusual sugar mannose." It would be safe and easy to use, said Tao, and provide "broad spectrum" protection against all subtypes of HIV (a vaccine would only be specific to a few types).
. . "The developmental cost for a vaccine is about $100 million to $1 billion", said Tao, "but a probiotic may only cost a few million."
. . Soon, the majority of HIV-infected individuals will be women.

Apr 19, 05: A set of 11 genes --dubbed the "death from cancer signature"-- can identify people at the highest risk of dying from cancer, according to research. The genes are associated with cell multiplication and renewal in both stem cells and 10 different types of cancer. The 11 genes will alert physicians to those patients who are at much higher risk for metastatic complications and more severe cancer.
. . The gene panel can also identify patients who are least likely to respond to conventional cancer therapies. Early identification of these patients means that they can be directed to more aggressive, customized treatments or experimental clinical trials that they might otherwise not consider.

Apr 19, 05: Four years ago, a small cut on Mitchell's left heel turned into an diabetes-related infection two inches wide and down to the bone. Another wound developed in her right foot, owing to dry, cracked skin. Doctors tried everything—creams, antibiotics -—but nothing worked. "My doctor told me to give it up, see a psychologist, and have my foot amputated", she recalls.
. . Mitchell had to make a decision soon because the powerful antibiotic that doctors prescribed for her infection was also wreaking havoc on her bones. Mitchell was preparing to undergo a dangerous bone marrow transplant when a friend remembered watching a TV show about European doctors using maggots to treat wounds like hers.W
. . ith nothing to lose, she tried it. She found a dermatologist willing to perform the procedure, and soon had 600 live maggots wriggling inside the wound on her left foot, 400 in her right, where they were sealed in gauze and left for two days.
. . When it came time to remove the maggots, Mitchell's doctor was more than a little repulsed. "He had never dealt with them before and he said it was like watching a Wes Craven movie", Mitchell remembers. He was also impressed, because the maggot treatment seemed to be working. Over the course of 10 such treatments, wounds that months of expensive procedures could not mend began to heal.
. . Today, Mitchell walks normally and both wounds are completely healed. She is now a member of the board for the Biotherapeutics Education and Research Foundation, a non-profit organization that promotes the medical use of maggots.
. . Nowadays, leeches are routinely used to drain blood from swollen faces, limbs and digits after reconstructive surgery. They are especially useful when reattaching small parts that contain many blood vessels, like ears, where blood clots can easily form in veins that normally drain blood from tissues. If the clots are severe, the tissues can die --drowned in the body's own fluid-- because they are deprived of oxygen and other vital nutrients. Leech therapy may lessen the pain and inflammation associated with osteoarthritis, a debilitating disease where bones can grind against one another because the cartilage has been worn down.
. . Maggots and leeches are so effective that the FDA last year classified them as the first live medical devices. The treatments can be relatively inexpensive, according to the National Institutes of Health. A container of 500-1,000 disinfected maggots last year cost $70.
. . Maggots eat dead and infected tissue and other infectious organisms, which are later killed in maggots' guts. They secrete enzymes that break down dead tissue, turning it into a mush they can then slurp up.
. . Leech saliva is made up of a potent cocktail of more than 30 different proteins that, among other things, helps to numb pain, reduce swelling and keep blood flowing.

Apr 14, 05: The innards of most computer keyboards look a lot like the bottom of a restaurant toaster oven. But it's the gunk you can't see that has hospitals increasingly worried about the keyboard's role in spreading disease. A study at Chicago's Northwestern Memorial Hospital found that keyboards make comfy hosts for a variety nasty germs, a growing worry as more hospitals put computers in patient rooms.

Apr 11, 05: Gray hair is all a big mistake. Some stem cells that generate the cells which make pigment --producing blondes, brunettes and redheads-- die off with age. The cells that continue producing hair-coloring cells start making errors, placing them in the wrong location where they're useless.
. . It could lead to a better understanding of melanoma, a skin cancer that will kill about 7,900 people this year. Melanoma and gray hair are related, though not directly. The pigment cells are called melanocytes. When they work right, hair keeps its youthful color. When they die off or develop in the wrong part of the hair follicle, its time to buy some Grecian Formula. And sometimes melanocytes go completely the other way, multiplying out of control to form the tumors of malignant melanoma.

Apr 8, 05: Scientists have worked out how the deadliest malaria parasite is able to "hide" from the body's immune system. The US-led international team said Plasmodium falciparum constantly changes the appearance of a protein it deposits on infected cells. This meant the human immune system did not have enough time to begin making antibodies against the protein before the parasite changed its appearance. The discovery could lead to new avenues for drug research.
. . The P. falciparum parasite has evolved to have a long life because it has to be around long enough to live in a mosquito before it is transmitted to a human. It does this by continuously changing the version of a protein known as PfEMP1 that it deposits on the surface of infected cells. By the time the human immune system learns to recognise the protein and starts making antibodies against it, the parasite has switched to another form of the protein, and the game of "hide and seek" starts again.
. . Malaria causes more than 300 million acute illnesses and at least one million deaths each year, most of them in developing countries.

Apr 8, 05: Lop off a newt's leg or tail, and it will grow a new one. The creature's cells can regenerate thanks to built-in time machines that revert cells to early versions of themselves in a process called dedifferentiation. Researchers who study this mechanism hope one day to learn how to induce the same "cell time travel" in humans. If the cells go back far enough, they become stem cells.
. . Tsilfidis and her colleagues are now trying to pinpoint which genes are responsible for kick-starting newt dedifferentiation. They published findings identifying 59 DNA fragments that seem to play a role in newt forelimb regeneration, and Tsilfidis believes many of those gene fragments have counterparts in humans.

Apr 6, 05: US scientists have designed a bionic eye to allow blind people to see again. It comprises a computer chip that sits in the back of the individual's eye, linked up to a mini video camera built into glasses that they wear. Images captured by the camera are beamed to the chip, which translates them into impulses that the brain can interpret.
. . Human trials will begin within a year, hopes Professor Dagnelie. Although the images produced by the artificial eye were far from perfect, they could be clear enough to allow someone who is otherwise blind to recognize faces, he said. The breakthrough is likely to benefit patients with the most common cause of blindness, macular degeneration.
. . "The retinal implant contains tiny electrodes. If you stimulate a single electrode, the person will see a single dot of light." They have already tested implants containing a handful of electrodes, but the end device will contain 50-100 to give a better overall picture. "We are hoping this will be enough for the person to be able to make their way through a building. Being able to see faces will be quite a bit down the line."

Mar 31, 05: Four tablets of regular strength aspirin each day do a better job at safely preventing small strokes caused by narrowed arteries in the brain than the potent blood thinner warfarin, researchers say. Patients on warfarin must have their blood tested regularly.
. . The partial blockage of arteries in the brain, or intracranial stenosis, is caused by fatty deposits that build up on the inner walls of the arteries and restrict blood flow. The condition causes about 10 percent of the 900 000 strokes and "baby strokes" --transient ischemic attacks-- in the United States each year.
. . A new study, conducted at 59 US medical centers, tried to resolve a long-standing debate over whether aspirin or warfarin was the better treatment. The results indicated that while both drugs were equally effective at preventing strokes caused by intracranial stenosis, aspirin was far safer. Chimowitz noted the results of the study were only relevant to people with intracranial stenosis. People getting warfarin for other conditions, such as irregular heart rhythm or clots in the legs or lung, should not stop, he said.
. . The death rate among the study volunteers taking warfarin was more than twice the rate for the aspirin recipients. Serious bleeding, a well-known side effect of warfarin, was two and a half times more common among patients taking warfarin. So was the risk of heart attack and sudden death. "We think that everyone should be switched to aspirin."

Mar 28, 05: Stem cells found in hair follicles can develop into nerve cells and might be useful in medical treatment, U.S.-based researchers reported. The best known source of stem cells is the bone marrow, but researchers hope to find more easily accessible sites and want to experiment to see if different sources of stem cells may offer cells with different qualities.

Mar 27, 05: Within days of infection, the AIDS virus destroys more than half of the immune cells that might recognize and help fight it --a finding that may force a re-evaluation of how to tackle the deadly infection, two teams of U.S. researchers reported. More than two dozen vaccines are being tested, but experts do not expect any of them to prevent HIV infection in substantial numbers of people.

Mar 25, 05: Your brain cells change channels sort of like a television, scientists say. Specific cells in the noggin can change what they allow through their membranes by swapping one kind of channel, or membrane opening, for another. This lets your brain fine-tune messages and adjust connections to control fine motor skills, like fumbling with your keys. This channel-changing ability has been recognized for a few years, but the mechanism wasn’t known. Now a team at Johns Hopkins U has identified two proteins that flip channels in mice.
. . A brain cell's activity level depends on its neighbors –-the nerves and other cells that connect to it. They don't physically touch, but a cell and its neighbor are close enough that molecules released from one can travel directly to the next. These molecules dock at specific receptors on the cell’s membrane and trigger the opening of gate-like channels. Depending on the receptor and the channel, sodium, calcium, chloride, or other charged atoms will flow into the cell. Researchers applied an electrical shock to a specific channel that normally allows both sodium and calcium to enter the cell. Within minutes the channel had been swapped with one that still let sodium in but kept calcium out.
. . In some cases, protection might be enough of a goal. Muscle-controlling nerve cells in people with Lou Gehrig's disease die because too much calcium gets inside. If doctors could swap the calcium-allowing channels in these cells for the kind that keeps calcium out, it might be possible to prevent the cells from dying.

Mar 24, 05: Scientists have transformed stem cells from adult human bone marrow into nerve cells by transplanting them into damaged chicken embryos. The University of Oslo team hopes the breakthrough could lead to a new source of cells to treat brain diseases such as Parkinson's.

Mar 24, 05: With the help of the Catholic Church, Australian researchers have successfully grown adult stem cells harvested from the human nose, avoiding the ethical and legal problems associated with embryonic stem cells. The adult stem cells taken from inside the nose could potentially be used to grow nerve, heart, liver, kidney and muscle cells.

Mar 22, 05: The World Health Organization (WHO) says less than 1 percent of total public and private funds spent on health research in recent years has been devoted to pneumonia, diarrhea, tuberculosis and malaria, which account for more than 20 percent of the world's disease burden. Malaria and AIDS are similarly neglected, with only $300 million directed to vaccines for HIV/AIDS and $100 million for malaria research out of the $70 billion spent globally on health research in 1998.
. . Researchers say only a relatively small proportion of the money spent on developing vaccines is devoted to diseases like tuberculosis and malaria that claim millions of victims in Africa, with the rest going to drugs aimed at tackling diseases more prevalent among rich, Western consumers.

Mar 22, 05: A UN-backed International Decade for Water has kicked off with addresses, media-friendly demonstrations and awards aimed at drawing attention to the plight of the world's most plentiful but most abused resource. Placed under the banner "Water for Life", the decade seeks to lobby support for the United Nations' Millennium Goals, which hope to halve the number of people without access to clean drinking water or sanitation by 2015.
. . Some 2.4 billion people have no toilets or sewers, and 1.1 billion do not even have drinkable water. Every day, an estimated 22,000 people, half of them children, die of diseases borne by polluted water, such as typhoid, cholera, malaria and diarrhea.
. . Scientists say that the risk of shortages, but also floods, is bound to amplify in the coming years as global warming affects traditional rainfall patterns.

Mar 14, 05: They're like bacteria but an astonishing 100 times smaller. Believing them to be a possible new form of life, Kajander named the particles "nanobacteria", published a paper outlining his findings and spurred one of the biggest controversies in modern microbiology.
. . At the heart of the debate is the question of whether nanobacteria could actually be a new form of life. To this day, critics argue that a particle just 20 to 200 nanometers in diameter can't possibly harbor the components necessary to sustain life. The particles are also incredibly resistant to heat and other methods that would normally kill bacteria, which makes some scientists wonder if they might be an unusual form of crystal rather than organisms.
. . In 1998, researchers observed, through an electron microscope, nanobacteria particles building shells of calcium phosphate around themselves. They began to investigate whether such particles played a role in causing kidney stones, which are also made of calcium compounds. Sure enough, at the center of several stones was a nanobacteria particle.
. . The Mayo study found that nanobacteria does indeed self-replicate, as Kajander had noticed, and endorsed the idea that the particles are life forms. Kajander and Çiftçioglu were further vindicated in Feb 05, when patients with chronic pelvic pain -- thought to be linked to urinary stones and prostate calcification -- reported "significant improvement" after using an experimental treatment manufactured by NanoBac. Kajander: They've "a growth cycle that closely matches typical biological cycles, the ability to form a shell and the "presence of both mammalian and bacterial components." Nanobacteria particles double about once every three days. In comparison, typical bacteria doubles about every 20 minutes.
. . He offered a third option: The particles could be a form of archaea, a relatively new category of tiny organisms whose DNA is vastly different from that found in typical bacteria. Over the past two decades, archaea has surprised scientists by turning up in places where life was least expected, like in sulfurous lakes and hydrothermal sea vents.
. . There's a lot riding on studies like these. Roughly 177,500 patients were discharged from U.S. hospitals with kidney stones and related problems in 2001, according to the NIH. More than 25,000 women in the United States are diagnosed with ovarian cancer each year. In the same period, 14,000 Americans die from complications caused by calcified arteries. "How many kidney stones are caused by this? Are there other calcification-related diseases that are caused by nanobacteria? Is it infectious?"
. . In February, NASA's McKay and Nanobac's Çiftçioglu announced that they had observed nanobacteria growing at five times its normal rate after they placed it in an incubator that simulates the microgravity conditions of space. The findings mean astronauts may be at an elevated risk for kidney stones on long flights --something NASA is extremely worried about in light of its new plans to send humans to Mars.

Mar 11, 05: A variation in a single gene could be responsible for half of all cases of age-related macular degeneration, researchers said, in a finding that could lead to better treatment for a leading cause of blindness. Three separate teams of scientists all pinpointed a gene called CFH for complement factor H. It is involved in a component of the immune system that regulates inflammation.
. . Age-related macular degeneration affects between 10 million and 15 million people in the United States alone and is the leading cause of blindness among the elderly. By the age of 75, as many as 30 percent of Americans have some symptoms of the condition.
. . The macula is a circular area at the center of the retina and is packed with cones, the structures that help in seeing color, detect motion and making out fine detail. As part of the normal aging process, yellowish waste deposits called drusen accumulate around the macula, but in AMD, they are bigger and there are more of them. They kill cells in the eye, affecting central vision.
. . Smoking, obesity, and a high-fat diet are all known to raise the risk of AMD, while eating fruits and vegetables lowers the risk. But there is also a genetic component.

Mar 7, 05: Researchers looking for ways to make safer stem cells for use in medical therapies said they had grown human cells without the use of contaminating animal cells. They said their work, done outside U.S. federal restraints, could bypass problems with existing stem cell batches, which scientists complain are contaminated by animal products and thus of no use in treating people.

Feb 28, 05: Research at the University of Minnesota could help fight a parasite that may have killed up to half the North American bee population in the past year. A breeding program produces queen bees with the ability to rid hives of bee larvae infested with the Varroa mite.
. . The tiny pest has decimated honeybee colonies across the country this year, worrying beekeepers and farmers who depend on the insects to pollinate their crops. [ Wait. They just said "half", which is five times mere decimation!] Two chemicals were used against the mites for the most of the 1990s, but the mite developed a resistance to one about five years ago and the other last year.
. . Honeybees pollinate about a third of the human diet and dozens of agricultural crops. "People don't appreciate it, or think about it much, but one-third of our table foods depend on bees." Even the dairy industry is affected because the feed crops of alfalfa and clover are bee pollinated, unlike most grass crops, which are wind pollinated.
. . Spivak's bees possess what's known as "the Minnesota hygienic trait", which allows daughters of the bees in the breeding program to change behavior in the hives. Bees with this trait clean out the bee larvae infested with the mites. The breeding process is very slow and its enhanced bees may never reach all the different lines of bees found in commercial bee colonies or in those in the wild.

Mar 1, 05: The five Nordic nations called on the European Union today to impose a tighter limit on the strength of sun beds, and warned sun-starved citizens they were at more risk than others of contracting skin cancer from them. "The incidence of skin cancers is steadily increasing in the Nordic countries ... Ultraviolet (UV) radiation is a known main risk for the development of skin cancers."

Feb 22, 05: The U.S. Supreme Court said that it would decide whether the Bush administration can stop Oregon doctors from helping terminally ill patients commit suicide, despite a state law allowing such assistance. Oregon is only U.S. state to allow physician-assisted suicide. Since the state law took effect in 1997, more than 170 people have ended their lives.
. . Under the Oregon law, called the Death with Dignity Act and twice approved by the state's voters, terminally ill patients must get a certification from two doctors stating they are of sound mind and have less than six months to live. A prescription for lethal drugs is then written by the doctor, and the patients administer the drugs themselves.

Feb 17, 05: Scientists have identified the "come hither" scent that female German cockroaches use to lure males, a discovery that may help control one of the world's most troublesome and resistant household pests. Female cockroaches emit a pheromone, or chemical attractant, to let males know they are ready to mate. Researchers earlier identified the courtship chemicals used by other cockroach species, but the romance scent of the German cockroach remained elusive. "The German cockroach is the one we wanted because it is a worldwide pest that gives all the other cockroaches a bad name."
. . Scientists for years could not even identify the gland the female German cockroach used to store and secrete the pheromone. And when the bug did send her mating signal, the chemical was in such a small quantity that it could not be detected and isolated by researchers. The chemical compound in the gland was too heat-sensitive to analyze using gas chromatography. A graduate student developed a low-temperature technique that allowed the chemicals in the mating lure to separate into compounds and then let the male bug show them which compound was the actual fragrance of insect love.
. . The researchers removed an antenna from a male German cockroach and attached two electrodes to it. The antenna was then exposed to the flow coming from the low-temperature chromatograph loaded with pheromone. The pheromone has now been synthesized and tested on male cockroaches. The male bugs love it.
. . The discovery may lead to a new weapon to control the German cockroach, an insect that is a resistant and tenacious pest in virtually every city on Earth. But: "Most of the cockroaches you see running around, about 80 percent, are nymphs (sexually immature cockroaches) that wouldn't be affected by the pheromone", said Rust. As a result, he said, an attractant that improved the efficiency of traps would not have an immediate effect on a typical infestation.

Feb 19, 05: Avian flu poses the single biggest threat to the world right now and health officials may not yet have all the tools they need to fight it, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. It's evolving and can jump directly from birds to people, killing an estimated 72 percent of diagnosed victims. Vaccine efforts are still focused on garden-variety influenza, which kills 36,000 Americans every year, and it would be impossible, in case of an avian flu epidemic, to switch gears quickly to make a special avian flu vaccine.
. . Gerberding said influenza was far more infectious than severe acute respiratory syndrome or SARS. Health experts have also pointed out influenza kills much faster than diseases such as AIDS, taking tens of millions of lives in the space of weeks or months. Avian flu vaccine would be rationed. Health officials would use a "ring vaccination" strategy similar to that used to eradicate smallpox in the 1960s and 1970s, where exposed people and those around them are vaccinated. People transmit flu before they become ill themselves so it would be almost impossible to stop it by watching or isolating sick people.

Feb 19, 05: Egyptian doctors said they removed a second head from a 10-month-old girl suffering from one of the rarest birth defects. It's craniopagus parasiticus --a problem related to that of conjoined twins linked at the skull.The condition occurs when an embryo begins to split into identical twins but fails to complete the process and one of the conjoined twins fails to develop fully in the womb. The second twin can form as an extra limb, a complete second body lacking vital organs, or, in very rare cases, a head.
. . A girl died after similar surgery in the Dominican Republic a year ago --the second twin had developed no body. The head that was removed from Manar had been capable of smiling and blinking but not independent life, doctors said. The dark-haired "parasitic" twin, attached at the upper left side of the girl's skull, occasionally blinking.
. . A separate twin sister, Noora, is healthy after initial problems with the birth on March 30.

Feb 21, 05: Three West African countries at the center of a polio epidemic launched an immunization drive Sunday to help stop the spread of the crippling disease by the end of this year. The presidents of Nigeria, Benin and Niger launched the new initiative, which will cover 23 African countries.
. . A boycott of the vaccine by Muslim leaders in northern Nigeria led to a doubling in the number of Nigerian children paralyzed by polio to 788 in 2004, and helped spread the virus to 12 African countries previously declared polio-free.
. . Muslim clerics backed by politicians rejected the polio vaccine in late 2003, saying they suspected it was contaminated with AIDS and infertility agents by Western powers seeking to depopulate the Muslim world. Immunizations resumed eight months later after northern political leaders, under intense international and domestic pressure, agreed to re-examine the scientific evidence.

Feb 17, 05: Women who take tamoxifen for breast cancer may be getting a benefit from the drug that goes beyond its cancer-fighting properties. Researchers from Boston University found that the drug may also lower the risk of heart attack and angina, a type of chest pain that is a common symptom of heart disease. "The real crux of the finding is that we have found a 50% reduction in risk."
. . The results weren't entirely surprising. Other studies have shown that tamoxifen can reduce levels of cholesterol, homocysteine, and other substances that raise the risk of heart disease.
. . Tamoxifen can have side effects. For example, women who take it are known to be at higher risk for blood clots and certain gynecologic cancers. Furthermore, Jick said more studies are needed to confirm her results and get a better understanding of just how tamoxifen works against heart disease.

Feb 17, 05: In a major step toward one day offering gene-based customized medicine, scientists on Thursday unveiled the first map of common human genetic variations — patterns of DNA differences that may help forecast people's disease risks and best treatments. Even unrelated people share DNA that is 99.9 percent similar. Variations in that last remaining bit are what make us individual, determining traits from our hair color to our risk of different diseases.
. . Until now, most genetics breakthroughs have come when a mutation in a single gene causes illness. But the most common health problems, such as heart disease, diabetes or depression, are caused by complex interactions between numerous genes and environmental or behavioral risks. Teasing out the genetic culprits under such conditions has been almost impossible.

Feb 14, 05: Pig embryos could provide sources of new organ and tissue transplants for people, and they may pose fewer risks than using material from adult animals, Israeli researchers reported. They found that if cells were taken from pig embryos at precisely the right time, they grew into liver, pancreas and lung tissues in mice. Their findings also help explain why earlier experiments did not work. If transplanted at the wrong time, they found the pig embryo cells grew into tumors called teratomas instead of the desired tissue.
. . Not only is there a shortage of whole organs for transplant, but tissue transplants could be used to treat diseases such as diabetes, Parkinson's and liver failure. Other researchers are working to genetically engineer pigs that do not carry the protein responsible for the immune response. And embryos may have less of it.

Feb 1, 05: Scientists are getting more serious about erectile dysfunction. One group calls it a public health concern. Hold on, now. A public health concern? Turns out E.D., as the experts like to call it, can be an early sign of cardiovascular problems, according to a new study. African Americans are 20 percent more likely than whites to suffer ED, making early recognition of the condition among that population particularly important preventative medicine.

To Peter Hunter, the future of medicine looks like this: You visit your doctor after weeks of feeling fatigued and lethargic. She takes a blood sample, records your DNA profile, does a quick CT body scan, then uploads the raw data to a workstation. Within minutes, software stitches together a head-to-toe living, breathing digital reproduction of your innards, which the doc can poke and prod just like the real thing. Rather than focusing on one treatment, your physician can test various scenarios on your digital doppelgänger --surgery, radiation, chemotherapy-- and watch how your system reacts. The cure is the simulation that doesn't kill the virtual you.
. . Hunter, director of the Bioengineering Institute in Auckland, New Zealand, is an expert in biomechanics and in computational physiology, an emerging field. He admits that his vision for health care might be a decade or two away, but it's by no means science fiction.

Feb 8, 05: The British government today gave the creator of Dolly the Sheep a license to clone human embryos for medical research into the cause of motor neuron disease. The experiments do not involve creating cloned babies. The mechanism behind motor neuron disease is poorly understood because the nerves are inaccessible in the brain and central nervous system and cannot be removed from patients.

Feb 4, 05: Japanese scientists have developed a genetically modified strain of rice they say will help alleviate the symptoms of an affliction that causes misery each year for some 10 percent of Japan's population. The new strain of rice contains a gene that produces the allergy-causing protein. The effect was similar to other allergy treatments where a small amount of allergen is released into the body to allow resistance to build up.

Red tide is known to cause breathing problems in people when the algae's toxic spores become airborne. The effects can be serious for people with breathing problems such as asthma.

Jan 31, 05: Stem cells taken from human embryos were coaxed into becoming motor neurons in an experiment that might one day help scientists repair damaged nervous systems, researchers reported. The study supports claims by stem cell researchers that they can train embryonic stem cells to develop on demand into any type of tissue in the body. "You need to teach the (cells) to change step by step, where each step has different conditions and a strict window of time", Zhang said in a statement. "Otherwise, it just won't work."

Jan 31, 05: Cigarette smoking is more harmful to women than to men, cutting more than a decade off female smokers' life expectancy but much less for their male peers, Dutch government research says. The habit cut a Dutch woman's life expectancy by 11 years, versus three for a man. Women who died from lung cancer were younger than men who died from the same cause.

Jan 25, 05: South African authorities say they want to introduce special courts to prosecute people doing botched circumcisions in the Eastern Cape as they try to stamp out a practice that has left boys dead or mutilated.
. . Since 1995, more than 6,000 boys have been admitted to hospital in the province, with over 30 dying and 70 needing their genitals amputated after complications or infections. Circumcision is seen as a crucial initiation step for young men among many of the tribes in Eastern Cape. "It also contributes to AIDS. We had one man who had done 161 boys with the same instrument."
. . South Africa has the highest number of people living with AIDS, with an estimated one in nine of the country's 45 million people believed to be infected.

Jan 22, 05: Cancer treatments could improve by targeting cancer "stem cells" which give birth to all other cells in tumours, say researchers who have devised techniques for identifying and potentially killing two types of cancer stem cell. Killing the stem cells is vital because these cells avoid destruction and trigger regrowth of cancer even when all other cancer cells have been obliterated through standard drug or radiation therapy.
. . By wiping out the stem cell "ringleaders" as well as the other cancer cells, doctors stand a much better chance of eradicating the cancer in a patient for good. "Once we have eradicated the cancer stem cells, in essence we have destroyed the engine responsible for treatment failure and disease recurrence, the major problems for fighting cancer", says Ivan Bergstein, chief executive of Stemline.
. . Now, new techniques to do this have to be developed. It could be five years before the first treatments start to come through.

Jan 20, 05: Rats that were "born to run" not only outpaced their less-talented cousins but also were naturally less prone to heart disease, a finding that may help explain why exercise prevents heart death, researchers said. The study may be bad news for people who hate to exercise, suggesting that not only laziness but also their genes may put them at higher risk of heart disease. "The reality of having a genetic determinant of our existence is that there are some people who are born with less ability to take up oxygen and transfer energy than others."
. . They bred rats for 11 generations to be good or poor runners. Then they tested their ability to exercise, without training them first, so that differences could not be attributed to practice. Their high-capacity runners can exercise on a little rodent treadmill for 42 minutes on average before becoming exhausted, while the low-capacity runners average only 14 minutes. It is a 347 percent difference in capacity.
. . "We found that rats with low aerobic capacity scored higher on risk factors linked to cardiovascular disease --including high blood pressure and vascular dysfunction." It looked like the mitochondria, the powerhouses in each individual cell, were involved. "Compared to high-capacity rats, the low-capacity rats had lower levels of oxidative enzymes and proteins used by mitochondria to generate energy in skeletal muscle."

Jan 20, 05: A team of South Korean and US researchers said they have identified a killer gene that triggers the death of neural cells within the brains of mammals. By inhibiting the gene, known as Bax, the cycle of death of neurons in brains could be prevented so that neurodegenerative illnesses such as Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease could be treated.
. . "We have found that the Bax gene plays a crucial role in the programmed death of neural cells in brains that generate from adult stem cells", said Sun Woong, one of the scientists from Korea University here and Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina.
. . Stem cells producing new neurons exist in the brains of all mammals, including humans and about 70 percent of these neurons meet natural deaths within a month after birth.
. . "We have discovered that in the absence of the Bax gene, brain neurons from adult stem cells simply do not die and all of the neurons keep surviving."

Jan 19, 05: Federally funded researchers at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth who injected quahogs with the botulism toxin reached a startling conclusion — that the shellfish somehow neutralized the poisonous enzyme, which is considered a potential bioterror agent. "So we think there is some sort of antidote in this blood. If we are able to get that molecule —-and this is a long process-— that might be very useful for human beings.
. . They started with small but deadly amounts, then increased the injections until they were pumping the shellfish with enough to paralyze and kill the population of a town of 1,000 people. But the botulism, a muscle relaxant, had little effect on the quahogs. The researchers noticed that the water the quahogs were in became cloudy, a sign that they were secreting some sort of mucous.

Jan 17, 05: A man-machine interface inspired by the spinal cord of the eel-like sea lamprey could someday enable paralyzed people to reliably control their legs, possibly with a joystick at first, and eventually walk again.
. . After spinal cord injuries, many people become paralyzed because their brains are cut off from central pattern generators, or CPGs, which are networks of neurons in the spinal cord that are thought to produce an automatic walking motion in toddlers or allow a chicken to run around without its head.
. . "When a human has a spinal cord injury where the top half of the body … can be controlled, but the bottom half cannot, the circuits that actually control walking are still intact", said Etienne-Cummings. "We just want to kick start those circuits and then fine-tune the behavior of those circuits that already pre-exist in the spinal cord."
. . For help, they've turned to the lamprey, a creature with a removable spine that can remain alive in a dish and be stimulated to move as if it's still inside a swimming animal.

Jan 13, 05: Experts have deciphered the complete DNA sequence for one of the most infectious germs known to science. The genome sequencing work is already speeding up the search for a vaccine against the potentially deadly bug.
. . The Francisella tularensis bacterium is a candidate bioterror weapon, as it takes just 10 microbes to bring on disease in humans. The bacterium causes a disease called tularemia - or "rabbit fever" - in animals, including humans.

A study estimated that 3.3 million people died due to war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1998 to 2002. More than three-quarters of the deaths owed to diseases and malnutrition resulting from the fighting.

Communicable diseases kill millions of people every year (13.3 million 1998, according to the World Health Organization).

Early Jan, 05: Cuba, the land of the cigar, will ban smoking in enclosed public spaces starting next month. The government says it wants to discourage tobacco use. About half of Cuban adults smoke and lung cancer is a major cause of death. The measure seeks to change long-ingrained habits in the communist country of 11 million people where subsidized cigarettes --unfiltered and made of strong dark tobacco-- are still handed out with the government ration book.

It is estimated that nearly 75% of older people have atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries).

Jan 3, 05: Stem cells taken from tiny monkey embryos and implanted in the brain reversed some of the Parkinson's symptoms in monkeys used to study the disease, Japanese researchers reported.
. . They grew stem cells from early monkey embryos and coaxed them into becoming, or differentiating into, neurons. They then transplanted these into the brains of monkeys who had been given a Parkinson's-like condition.
. . Parkinson's is caused when key brain cells that produce the message-carrying chemical dopamine die off. Symptoms start with a trembling and patients can end up paralyzed. There is no cure.
. . Cell transplants have been a big hope of researchers, and many groups have tried transplanting brain cells into patients, including cells from the fetuses of pigs and humans. Proponents of embryonic stem-cell research believe their field offers a good opportunity, as these cells have the ability to become a range of tissues without causing immune reactions.
. . They coaxed monkey embryonic stem cells into becoming neurons and then added FGF20, a growth factor that is produced exclusively in the area of the brain affected by Parkinson disease. Then they transplanted the cells into the brains of macaques. The monkeys showed reduced symptoms from their Parkinson's-like disease and when they were killed, the transplanted cells were found to have grown in their brains.

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