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Injuries such as spinal; & infections: African sleeping sickness, Anthrax, Colds, Cancer, Chagas disease, Dengue Fever (break-bone 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, foot-and-mouth, African swine fever, bluetongue
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Dec 30, 08: Many genes linked to various cancers do not appear to raise the risk of getting cancer after all, according to an analysis of hundreds of studies.
Dec 24, 08: A slow, chronic reduction of blood sugar to the brain could trigger some forms of Alzheimer's disease, U.S. researchers said.
Dec 23, 08: The potency of marijuana, measured by the presence of its (psycho)active ingredient, THC, has tripled since 1987, according to the latest figures from the Department of Justice. "In the Netherlands, where marijuana for medical use is sold in pharmacies and grown to government standards of purity and potency, the minimal allowable potency is 15% THC."
. . Marijuana contains an amazing chemical, beta-caryophyllene, and scientists have thoroughly proven that it could be used to treat pain, inflammation, atherosclerosis, and osteoporosis. The natural molecule can activate a protein called cannabinoid receptor type 2. When that biological button is pushed, it soothes the immune system, increases bone mass, and blocks pain signals --without causing euphoria or interfering with the central nervous system.
. . It could turn out to be a nearly ideal medication. The organic compound is also phenomenally cheap. Sigma Aldrich sells it, in kosher form, for forty-two dollars per kilogram.
. . Unfortunately, big pharmaceutical companies tend not to seek FDA approval for natural chemicals, and most doctors are reluctant to prescribe drugs that have not received a green light from the regulatory agency. Thus, it would require a heroic effort by academic researchers to prove that beta-caryophyllene is safe and effective in humans.
Dec 23, 08: Researchers in China and the US have identified mutations of two genes which appear to make ethnic Chinese more susceptible to lung cancer.
Dec 20, 08: Scientists at UCLA modded an ordinary phone into a portable blood analyzer that can detect diseases at a very low cost. The hack could save lives in poorer areas that can't afford expensive equipment.
Dec 18, 08: Leukemia cells use powerful chemical signals to lure healthy blood-forming stem cells into their cancerous lairs, where they lose their power to make healthy blood cells, U.S. researchers said.
Dec 17, 08: Three studies add to evidence that circumcision can protect men from the deadly AIDS virus and the sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer.
Dec 17, 08: Smoke from so-called harm-reduction cigarettes is just as dangerous to developing embryos as smoke from standard cigarettes, and may be even more toxic.
Dec 14, 08: U.S. scientists have developed a tiny sensor that can detect small amounts of cancer-causing toxins or trace the effectiveness of cancer drugs inside living cells.
Dec 10, 08: A rare genetic abnormality found in people in an insular Amish community protects them from heart disease, a discovery that could lead to new drugs to prevent heart ailments, U.S. researchers said.
Dec 10, 08: Cancer is on pace to supplant heart disease as the No. 1 cause of death worldwide in 2010, with a growing burden in poor countries thanks to more cigarette smoking and other factors, global health experts reported.
Dec 10, 08: Taking vitamin C or E does not reduce the risk of prostate cancers --or other forms of the disease, two large US studies suggest.
. . Both trials were set up following some evidence that taking supplements might have a positive effect. But one study of 35,533 men, and a second of 15,000 doctors, found no evidence that cancer rates were any lower in those taking supplements.
. . The researchers found there were no statistically significant differences in the numbers of men who developed prostate cancer in the four groups. In all cases, the proportion of men diagnosed with prostate cancer over a five-year period was 4% to 5%.
. . In the second study, researchers at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital tested the impact of regular vitamin E and C supplements on cancer rates among 14,641 male doctors. Over eight years, taking vitamin E had no impact at all on rates of either prostate cancer, or cancer in general. Vitamin C had no significant effect. She added that eating a diet high in fruit and vegetables was still the best way to get the required vitamins and minerals.
Dec 10, 08: A brain swelling condition related to low oxygen levels in the air may have caused many of the deaths of people climbing Mount Everest, researchers said.
Dec 9, 08: Scientists believe a transplant of brain cells may one day be able to reverse a common form of hearing loss. Damage to hair cells in the inner ear due to ageing and overstimulation causes hearing problems in 10% of people worldwide.
. . The cell loss is irreversible, but US scientists believe it may be possible to replace them with stem cells from a region of the brain. They share characteristics with inner ear hair cells --but crucially, unlike them, they have the ability to reproduce.
. . The researchers, led by Dr Dongguang Wei, from the U of California at Davis, believe the brain cells could potentially be transplanted from a person's brain into their ear, where they would take on the role of hair cells, and restore hearing.
Dec 8, 08: A new type of imaging compound can literally light up spreading cancer cells and may offer a way to track the deadly spread of the disease, Japanese and U.S. researchers reported. They used a new compound to monitor the spread of breast and ovarian cancer cells in living mice, using a tiny camera known as an endoscope.
. . "These compounds may allow clinicians to monitor a patient's response to cancer therapy by allowing them to visualize whether a drug hits its target and whether hitting the target leads to shrinkage of the tumor."
. . The researchers made their imaging compound by linking a fluorescent compound to Herceptin, which is itself a genetically engineered antibody that homes in on cells with mutated EGFR. It only attaches to living cells, making it possible to specifically find living cancer cells.
Dec 5, 08: U.S. researchers have discovered a gene switch that could lead to better treatments for sickle cell disease and thalassemia, two inherited blood disorders that affect millions of people. Learning how to activate this switch might help doctors direct the body to make healthier blood cells --in this case, replicating conditions found in the womb.
. . People with these blood disorders either make too little or abnormal forms of hemoglobin, the protein in red blood cells that is vital for carrying oxygen to the body's tissues. A developing fetus uses one gene to make hemoglobin, but switches to another after birth, and problems with this adult gene are what lead to sickle cell disease and thalassemia.
. . Orkin said some people continue to make fetal hemoglobin after they are born, and those who do and have sickle cell disease have much milder symptoms. In experiments on normal human cells, Orkin said his team was able to turn off the activity of this gene, and the cells produced more fetal hemoglobin.
. . In sickle cell disease, blood cells become stiff and sickle-shaped, causing them to block blood vessels and starve tissues of oxygen. In thalassemia, the body struggles to make enough hemoglobin, resulting in anemia that can leave the body prone to infection.
. . Sickle cell disease is the most common inherited blood disorder, affecting about 70,000 people in the US, mostly African Americans. It affects millions of people worldwide.
Dec 4, 08: The most commonly used breast cancer drug may cause tumors to spread in a small number of women with low levels of a protein which makes cells stick together, British researchers said.
Dec 4, 08: U.S. researchers have discovered a gene switch that could lead to better treatments for sickle cell disease and thalassemia, two inherited blood disorders that affect millions of people.
Dec 4, 08: Cancer researchers may have underestimated the power of some cancers to spread and cause new tumors, say US researchers. They found just one skin cancer cell was often enough to generate a whole new tumor. The finding undermines hopes that only certain types of cancer cell could fuel the spread of the disease. When single melanoma cells were used on mice, they discovered that roughly one in four of them went on to seed new tumors.
. . The view of many scientists is that not all cancer cells could trigger a new tumor, and that this ability was confined to a smaller number of specialist "cancer stem cells".
Dec 3, 08: The controversial idea that all tumors are created by cancer stem cells received a setback. The theory holds that a tiny percentage of cancer cells —-perhaps one in a million or one in 10,000-— are responsible for creating tumors. Like evil relatives of standard organ-forming stem cells, cancer stem cells build tumors. It's an appealing idea because it provides a new, well defined target for treatment.
. . But a new study casts doubt on the idea that only a few cancer cells are able to generate tumors. By tweaking the experimental design other cancer researchers had been using —-the new study used a different type of mice-— a highly-respected stem cell oncologist found that as many as 25% of melanoma cells were capable of reproducing.
. . "There will be some cancers like melanoma where lots of cells will be tumorigenic and it won't be possible to treat those cancers by treating a small subset of cells."
. . The cancer stem cell theory of tumor creation had taken the field of oncology by storm. It promised an entirely new class of cancer treatments. In fact, a raft of new drugs designed to attack cancer stem cells are just entering clinical trials. Now, the underlying premise of those studies and drugs is being called into question.
Dec 2, 08: Babies born by Caesarean section are more likely to develop asthma than children delivered naturally, Swiss researchers said.
Dec 1, 08: The brains of autistic children react to sounds a fraction of a second slower than those of normal children, which may help explain the communication problems associated with autism, researchers said.
Dec 2, 08: A British team of scientists have pinpointed a "tumor suppressor" gene which protects against lung cancer.
Dec 1, 08: Scientists have halted the advance of heart disease in mice --and even reversed some of its effects. The study provides hard evidence that tiny pieces of genetic material called microRNA can play a key role in the development of heart disease. The therapy targets and blocks microRNA in heart cells.
. . A US specialist said that, with trials under way in other animals, human tests may be only a few years away.
. . The importance of microRNAs to heart disease --and a host of other diseases-- has already been suggested by other scientists. Their job is to regulate the activity of our genes, but with many different types present in the cell, scientists are trying to establish which plays the biggest role.
. . The US and German scientists are focusing on one type labelled microRNA-21, and their role in a type of heart cell called the cardiac fibroblast, which helps provide the structure of the organ, and plays a critical role in the progressive scarring which stops it working properly in heart disease.
. . In mice, they used a chemical which blocked microRNA-21, and found that not only that this pathway was interrupted, but that cardiac function in the animals improved.
Nov 29, 08: Mice fed junk food for nine months showed signs of developing the abnormal brain tangles strongly associated with Alzheimer's disease, a Swedish researcher said. A diet rich in fat, sugar and cholesterol could increase the risk of the most common type of dementia.
Nov 27, 08: An experiment in mice has raised hopes of halting some of the effects of Down's syndrome before birth. Down's starves developing nerve cells of two key proteins, leading to problems with mental development. But when US researchers injected the proteins into mice pregnant with "Down's" pups, the offspring seemed free of these problems.
. . However, experts warned success in mice was no guarantee of the same in humans. Down's syndrome in humans is caused in children who inherit an extra copy of one of the body's chromosomes --bundles of genetic material which help control how we develop and live.
Four genetic variations appear to determine the speed at which people burn up food, researchers said, a finding that could one day see doctors offer their patients more individual care.
Nov 27, 08: Distinctive genetic changes occur in the cancer cells that trigger relapse in patients with the most common type of childhood cancer, according to a study that may offer new hope for beating the disease.
Nov 27, 08: Scientists have identified a fatty substance made in the gut that signals the brain when it's time to stop eating --a discovery that could inspire new approaches to fighting obesity.
. . U.S. researchers said experiments with mice and rats showed that a naturally occurring fat-derived chemical messenger called NAPE regulated how much the animals ate. It is present in people and may do the same thing.
. . When the rodents were fed a fatty meal, their small intestine made a lot of NAPE and put it into the bloodstream. It then traveled to the brain and shut down hunger signals. NAPE levels shot up after the rodents ate a fatty meal, but not when they ate only protein or carbohydrates.
. . The researchers then synthesized NAPE and injected it into the abdomen of the animals, whose appetites diminished greatly. When NAPE was delivered in much smaller amounts directly to the brain, it had the same effect on appetite as a larger dose injected into the bloodstream. NAPE concentrated in the hypothalamus, an important brain structure known to regulate hunger, and inhibited neurons that stimulate appetite, they said.
. . These findings could help guide efforts to create better drugs to suppress appetite and reduce obesity.
Nov 24, 08: A breakdown in a reaction between immune cells and blood vessels in the brain appears to play a key role in epilepsy, Italian researchers said.
Nov 21, 08: A cancer treatment that comes in a pill is as effective as the standard chemotherapy for lung patients who had previously been treated for their cancer, according to a study.
Nov 19, 08: A compound similar to THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, improves memory in rats in low doses, and could help stave off Alzheimer's disease.
Nov 18, 08: Emerging technologies could boost supplies of essential plant-based drugs to combat and ultimately help eradicate malaria, says a report.
Nov 18, 08: Stem cells from tiny embryos can be used to restore lost hearing and vision in animals, researchers said, in what they believe is a first step toward helping people.
Nov 17, 08: CheckMate Tests for Infidelity: Rub the blotting paper in the suspect's underpants, then dip it in the included chemicals —-if the pad turns purple, they've got some explaining to do.
. . Tests for STDs: Some ailments are too embarrassing for the family doc. This kit, part of the CDC's Infertility Prevention Project, lets you swab your privates in private. Send in the sample and a lab runs free tests for chlamydia, gonorrhea, and trichomoniasis.
Nov 16, 08: Tiny sacs released from tumor cells and circulating in the blood carry genetic information about the tumor, offering a new way to track and treat the cancer, U.S. researchers said. "They contain a little piece of the tumor cell in the blood stream. If you just look at these packets, you basically know what kind of mutations are in the tumor cell."
. . These membrane-covered packets, called exosomes, represent a new way of getting information about a cancer, offering a means of choosing the best therapy, seeing how a patient responds to treatment, and possibly offering a way to deliver therapies back to the tumor, Breakefield said.
. . Many current blood tests, such as the prostate specific antigen, or PSA, test for prostate cancer, simply check for elevated levels of a specific protein. By using exosomes, doctors might be able to get specific information about a cancer from a simple blood test. "It's a blood biomarker", she said.
. . Many types of cells release exosomes as part of normal cell-to-cell communication, and several types of tumors are known to shed exosomes containing proteins that can alter the environment to make it more favorable to tumor growth. When they exposed these exosomes to normal cells in the lab, the tumor RNA delivered its genetic message into the cells.
. . The first step would be to develop a blood test, but eventually Skog thinks it may be possible to use the exosomes to deliver therapies to the cancer.
Nov 14, 08: Nearly one in five cancer drugs entering development now reach the market, a remarkably good success rate given the high level of failures in other disease areas, British researchers said --an 18% probability. The last time this was measured, in 2004, the figure was estimated at 5%.
. . In the past, most cancer drugs were cytotoxic agents, designed to kill cancer cells. Such cytotoxic drugs also kill healthy cells that multiply rapidly, resulting in serious side effects such as sickness, hair loss and risk of infection.
. . By contrast, modern drugs are much more precise weapons because they target specific molecular switches involved in tumor growth, giving rise to fewer side effects.
Nov 13, 08: A small fragment of genetic material may mean the difference between an easily treated local tumor and an aggressive cancer that spreads throughout the body, U.S. researchers said.
. . They found that when a bit of ribonucleic acid or RNA known as microRNA-101 goes missing, a protein called EZH2 starts to proliferate. EZH2 has been linked with aggressive forms of breast, prostate, skin and bladder cancer, but until now it has not been clear what triggers overproduction of EZH2. "What this study shows is why that protein is elevated in metastatic cancers."
. . EZH2 causes cancer to spread by shutting down other genes that keep cancer in check. And he now thinks microRNA-101 or miR-101 is what keeps EZH2 from overproducing in cells. With this RNA bit missing, EZH2 causes cancer to spread.
. . Chinnaiyan said in some cancers, miR-101 gets deleted from the genome, giving rise to an overproduction of EZH2 and metastatic cancer.
. . Knowing a cancer is likely to spread could guide the way doctors treat it. It also could lead to new therapies that restore miR-101, giving the body back a natural defense against the spread of cancer.
. . Chinnaiyan said currently there are few good ways to deliver microRNAs to human cells, but many companies are working on this. If they succeed, it may be possible to arrest the spread of certain forms of cancer.
Nov 12, 08: Men and women who get heart transplants are more likely to die when the donor was of the opposite sex, U.S. researchers said.
Nov 12, 08: Scientists have pinpointed the molecular on-off switch that the powerful drug tamoxifen uses to attack breast cancer and which prevents it from working in some women.
Nov 10, 08: Brain scans of people with an abnormality that is a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease are strengthening the notion that greater education levels somehow protect against this common form of dementia.
Nov 6, 08: Scientists have found a way to get damaged nerve cells in the brains of mice to repair themselves, a finding that may lead to new treatments for spinal cord and brain injuries.
Nov 6, 08: In a puzzling twist, women who have a history of migraine headaches are far less likely to develop breast cancer than other women, U.S. researchers said. "We found that, overall, women who had a history of migraines had a 30% lower risk.
. . Li said the reduction in risk was for the most common types of breast cancers --those driven by hormones, such as estrogen-receptor positive breast cancer, which is fueled by estrogen, and progesterone-receptor positive breast cancer, which is fueled by progesterone.
. . Hormones also play a role in migraines. Women are two to three times more likely than men to get migraines. Women who get migraines "may have a chronically lower baseline estrogen. That difference could be what is protective against breast cancer."
Nov 5, 08: Scientists for the first time have decoded the entire genome of a cancer patient, identifying a series of genes never before linked to the type of white blood cell cancer that ultimately killed the woman.
Nov 3, 08: A new trial will assess the impact of mood stabilizer Lithium-carbonate as a treatment for motor neurone disease.
Nov 3, 08: More than 400,000 people are poisoned by snakebites worldwide each year and 20,000 of them die, with most cases occurring in the poorest countries, researchers say.
Nov 3, 08: Scientists have found clues in the brains of people with major depression that might help explain why so many depressed people also battle chronic pain, according to a U.S. study.
Nov 3, 08: An international research team has identified two genetic variations that appear to increase a person's risk of developing lung cancer by up to 60%.
Oct 30, 08: Researchers combing the human gene map have found four more areas that affect the risk of Alzheimer's disease and believe the studies are starting to point to new and better treatments.
Oct 29, 08: Storing donated blood too long increases the chance of an infection, US researchers claim.
Oct 27, 08: Researchers might have discovered how schizophrenia affects part of the brain by carrying out tests with "Special K", a popular club drug that mimics the symptoms of the mental illness.
. . Their work may lead to the development of new drugs to treat the condition and to a better understanding of how existing treatments work. The findings also underscore the dangers of abusing ketamine.
. . Researchers do not know what causes schizophrenia, but most experts believe both genetic and environmental factors play important roles. The team showed how the drug disrupted the same electrical brain wave patterns in rats that go haywire in humans with schizophrenia. Specifically, the drug blocked so-called NMDA receptors in the brain, preventing them from working properly by causing a certain type of brain cell to malfunction.
Oct 26, 08: A monthly injection with an antibody drug could halt rheumatoid arthritis in half of all patients, trial data suggests.
Oct 23, 08: The most complete survey yet of the genes which go wrong when lung cancer takes hold has been carried out by US researchers.
Oct 22, 08: Researchers have discovered stem cells in the prostates of mice and grown complete prostates from them, a big step toward regenerating organs from a patient's own cells.
Oct 21, 08: A new blood test will allow doctors more accurately to pinpoint patients likely to develop the symptoms of tuberculosis, researchers said.
Oct 21, 08: A good education and a mentally demanding job may help protect the brain against Alzheimer's disease, research suggests.
Oct 21, 08: Researchers believe the lack of a specific bacterium in the gut may be a cause of Crohn's disease. A shortage of naturally-occurring bacteria is thought to trigger the inflammatory gastrointestinal disorder by over-stimulating the immune system.
. . Now a French team has highlighted the bug, Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, which they show secretes biochemicals that reduce inflammation. The researchers said that if ongoing animal trials prove successful, human patients could benefit from a probiotic treatment with F. prausnitzii.
Oct 20, 08: Controlling the level of a fatty acid in the brain could help treat Alzheimer's disease, an American study has suggested. Tests on mice showed that reducing excess levels of the acid lessened animals' memory problems and behavioral changes. The team said fatty acid levels could be controlled through diet or drugs.
. . There are currently 700,000 people living with dementia in the UK, but that number is forecast to double within a generation.
. . They identified raised levels of a fatty acid called arachidonic acid in the brains of the Alzheimer's mice. Its release is controlled by the PLA2 enzyme. The scientists again used genetic engineering to lower PLA2 levels in the animals, and found that even a partial reduction halted memory deterioration and other impairments.
A US patient left in a coma-like state after a road accident recovered the ability to speak after repeated exposure to a magnetic field. Josh Villa had not been expected to recover from massive head injuries. When "transcranial magnetic stimulation" was aimed at his brain, he could speak simple words, and respond to commands. They plan further research to see if therapy works in other patients.
. . In a six-week study, an electromagnetic coil was held over the front of his head. The idea is to stimulate activity in brain cells, in this case, the cells of the "dorsolateral cortex", a part of the brain which sends stimulating messages to other parts of the brain.
. . After approximately 15 sessions, he would turn his head and look at the person talking to him. Then he started obeying simple commands. After 30 sessions there was no further improvement.
. . TMS has produced promising results when used to treat stroke patients, and those with spinal cord injuries.
Oct 15, 08: Scientists have discovered tuberculosis in 9,000 year-old human bones found submerged off Israel's coast --evidence the disease is at least 3,000 years older than previously thought, researchers said. The findings show how tuberculosis has evolved over thousands of years and provides a better understanding of ways it may change in the future.
Oct 12, 08: Researchers trying to find ways to transform ordinary skin cells into powerful stem cells said they found a shortcut by "sprinkling" a chemical onto the cells.
Oct 12, 08: Scientists have found two new genetic variations that appear to increase the risk of the most common skin cancer among people of European descent.
Oct 11, 08: The human intestine detects potential poisons passing into it --and may take action to reduce the harm they cause.
. . US researchers have found a link between receptors in the gut which detect bitter foods and higher levels of a digestion-slowing hormone. The same hormone also reduces appetite --perhaps to stop us eating any more.
. . The scientists say it means that sweeter-tasting medicines could be more effective. Humans, and other animals, have evolved to dislike bitter tastes, probably because many natural plant poisons carry these flavors.
. . It has been established for some time that the same taste receptors which are found on the tongue, and help us differentiate between sweet and bitter flavors, are found in the gut. While the tongue-based receptors send a message to the brain, those in the gut are thought to trigger other chemical signals involved in digestion, although these have yet to be fully understood.
. . The US team found that when the bitter taste receptors in the gut are activated, this leads to the production of a hormone called cholecystokinin. This is already known to not only slow up "motility", the rate at which food passes through the digestive system from the stomach, but also suppress appetite.
Oct 11, 08: The U.N. health agency says it is investigating a mystery disease that killed three people in the South African city of Johannesburg. The World Health Organization says the disease appears to be a form of hemorrhagic fever. It says tests have proved negative for Ebola, Lassa fever, Rift Valley fever, Marburg fever and other main types of hemorrhagic fever.
. . A WHO spokesman says the first death on Sept. 13 was a tour guide who had fallen ill in Zambia before being evacuated to South Africa. Two further deaths on Sept. 30 and Oct. 4. involved a paramedic and a nurse who treated the woman.
Oct 8, 08: After a study of 200 Dutch men, scientists found that those with a premature ejaculation problem all had a version of a gene that controls the release of serotonin. And, unfortunately for all of you game players out there, those affected seem to "have very quick reflexes. They may be excellent at playing tennis or computer games, for example."
Oct 8, 08: Cocaine addicts may have brain deficits that predispose them to drug abuse, and abusing drugs appears to make matters worse, U.S. researchers said.
Oct 8, 08: Scientists have mapped the genomes of the parasite that causes most cases of malaria outside Africa and a monkey parasite that is emerging as an important cause of malaria in people in Southeast Asia.
Oct 8, 08: A protein in the inner ear helps people differentiate between sounds and understand speech, French researchers reported, in a finding that could help treat the hard of hearing.
Oct 8, 08: Cells taken from men's testicles seem as versatile as the stem cells derived from embryos, researchers reported, in what may be yet another new approach in a burgeoning scientific field.
Oct 7, 08: A "deadly dozen" diseases ranging from avian flu to yellow fever are likely to spread more because of climate change, the Wildlife Conservation Society said. They urged better monitoring of wildlife health to help give an early warning of how pathogens might spread with global warming.
. . It listed the "deadly dozen" as avian flu, tick-borne babesia, cholera, ebola, parasites, plague, lyme disease, red tides of algal blooms, Rift Valley fever, sleeping sickness, tuberculosis and yellow fever. The report was not an exhaustive list.
. . "The term 'climate change' conjures images of melting ice caps and rising sea levels that threaten coastal cities and nations, but just as important is how increasing temperatures and fluctuating precipitation levels will change the distribution of dangerous pathogens."
Oct 7, 08: Scientists have discovered a gene mutation linked to the most common cause of blindness in the developed world, holding out the prospect of better treatments and perhaps eventually a cure. British scientists said they had found six variants within the gene called Serping1 that were associated with age-related macular degeneration (AMD).
. . Around 90 percent of patients diagnosed with AMD have the so-called dry version, for which no treatment is currently available. The rest have wet AMD, which occurs when tiny new blood vessels grow between the retina and the back of the eye. This form of the disease can be treated with modern drugs.
Oct 6, 08: Asthma patients who are black tend to have more severe disease than asthma patients who are white, leading to more asthma control problems, higher rates of emergency department visits, and overall worse quality of life. These findings point to genetic differences that lead to poor responses to drug therapy as the source of these racial disparities.
. . They undertook an in-depth analysis in an attempt to explain the differences between black and white adults with severe or difficult-to-treat asthma. The researchers found no differences in access to treatment between the two racial groups and no evidence of differences in asthma-related knowledge or behavior in the patients.
. . Socioeconomic status, adherence to drug therapy, treatment setting, the presence of other diseases and various allergy measures also did not explain the differences in asthma-related illness and severity between the two races. The researchers conclude that the TENOR study data support the idea of a genetic component that causes a poor response to asthma treatment in blacks.
Oct 6, 08: A study has concluded that one dose of chemotherapy is the best way to cure testicular cancer in many patients. Doctors already offer either carboplatin or radiotherapy, but scientists needed long-term trial results to see which was the best. The Medical Research Council project found that the drug offered a similar relapse rate --but far fewer side effects. A leading expert said it could one day reduce the need for testicle removal.
Oct 1, 08: Vitamin C supplements may undercut the effectiveness of cancer drugs including Novartis' Gleevec, a U.S. study showed.
Sept 30, 08: A gene related to a hormone secreted by the body's fat cells may lower the risk of colon cancer, a discovery that could reassure people with a family history of the disease, researchers said.
Sept 30, 08: Baby girls of larger than average length and weight at birth are at increased risk of breast cancer, analysis suggests.
Sept 30, 08: As we all know, arthritis, the leading cause of disability among people over 55, causes pain. But new research suggests that pain also causes arthritis.
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. . Pain should no longer be thought of just as a symptom of arthritis, according to the study. Pain signals originating in arthritic joints, and the biochemical processing of those signals as they reach the spinal cord, worsen and expand arthritis, the researchers say. In addition, the researchers found that nerve pathways carrying pain signals transfer inflammation from arthritic joints to the spine and back again, causing disease at both ends.
Sept 22, 08: Treatment with genetically modified stem cells helped rats with a paralyzing disease live significantly longer, U.S. researchers said. Rats with ALS that were treated with the gene-engineered stem cells lived 28 days longer than untreated mice. Rather than trying to replace the motor neurons, the researchers used stem cells as a way of delivering a growth factor to keep them alive.
Sept 22, 08: Gene therapy restores some sensitivity to light in patients with a rare form of genetic blindness. Scientists hope the approach will work on other forms of blindness.
Sept 22, 08: Advances in stem cell research offer a new way of studying human disease, allowing scientists to move beyond fruit flies and lab mice to see how human cells go awry and how drugs and other therapies might help, U. S. researchers said. "The problem at the end of the day is that humans are not just big mice."
. . They hope to use stem cells not only to create a new field of medicine called regenerative medicine --and grow tissues, organs and blood for transplant-- but also to study diseases as they specifically affect humans.
. . They said human embryonic stem cells and a newly invented type of cell called induced pluripotent stem cells or iPS cells --made without the use of human embryos-- are helping to transform how researchers develop and test therapies.
. . Goldstein's lab is studying diseases of the nervous system, such as Alzheimer's disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. For Alzheimer's, Goldstein said there are very few approved drugs and a few in the discovery pipeline. "The reason is we fundamentally do not understand what is wrong in the nerve cells in that disease", he said. His lab is gathering skin cells from people with a genetic form of Alzheimer's disease. "We've captured in these cells the quintessential aspects of the disease", Goldstein said. They want to use them to test new drugs.
Sept 22, 08: Scientists have uncovered a chain reaction which could link a type of bacterium living in our intestines to the development of colon cancer. Enterococcus faecalis is harmless in the vast majority of people, but US scientists have found that it can produce harmful chemicals. A study found these can damage DNA, and prompt gene activity linked to cancer.
. . In this "fermentation" state, it produces a kind of oxygen molecule called "superoxide", and it is this which can damage DNA in surrounding cells. "We found that superoxide led to strong signalling in immune cells called macrophages --it also altered the way some cells in the gut grew and divided and even increased the productivity of genes which are associated with cancer."
. . In total, the expression of 42 genes linked to vital processes in human cells was altered by the presence of E. faecalis in this state.
Sept 18, 08: According to the results of a new study, a virtual-reality 3D-graphic colonoscopy is about as good as the real thing for screening for colon cancer.
Sept 15, 08: People who carry a certain genetic variation are much more likely to develop the most dangerous form of skin cancer, Portuguese researchers said.
Sept 15, 08: Just three tumor proteins can indicate lung cancer as much as a year before symptoms emerge, U.S. researchers said in a finding that may lead to a blood test for lung cancer within five years.
. . They said an analysis of blood samples taken from smokers found three proteins or antigens were present in more than half of the people who later developed lung cancer.
. . Eventually, the team wants to have a lung cancer blood test approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. "That will take maybe five years if every step of the way we are successful."
Sept 15, 08: A treatment for varicose veins helped cut the appetites of healthy, growing pigs and might offer a less radical alternative to weight-loss surgery for obese people, U.S. researchers reported.
Sept 15, 08: A new vaccine has completely eliminated a type of breast cancer tumor in tests on mice, say researchers. The vaccine targets breast cancer caused by an excess of a protein called HER2 - and even destroyed tumors resistant to current drugs. The US team said it might also be used to prevent initial development of the tumors in cancer-free women. But UK experts warned the vaccine was at a very early stage, and it was not known if it would work in humans.
. . HER2-positive breast cells can contain many more receptors than is typical, promoting a particularly aggressive type of tumour that affects up to 30% of all breast cancer patients. There are drugs to treat this form of the disease, including Herceptin, but they do not work for a significant proportion of patients. The new vaccine contains genes that produce the HER2 receptor, and a compound which stimulates the immune system.
Sept 11, 08: A painful bladder condition known as interstitial cystitis is not at all what it seemed, scientists have discovered. The pain seems to originate not in the bladder but in the colon, and the body miscommunicates the source of the pain to the brain. The finding could open up new treatments to the roughly 1.3 million U.S. residents, mostly women, who suffer from the condition.
. . Among other causes, spicy food, citrus and caffeine are causes of interstitial cystitis. The pain can be debilitating. Patients typically also feel an urgent need to urinate up to 50 times a day.
. . Nerves in the pelvic region --the bladder, colon and prostate-- are bunched together like telephone wires and plug into the same region of the spinal cord near the tailbone. People with interstitial cystitis have bladder nerves that are constantly transmitting pain signals to the spinal cord: a steady beep, beep, beep. But when the colon is irritated by pepperoni pizza or another type of food, colon nerves also send a pain signal to the same area on the spinal chord. This new signal is the tipping point. It ratchets up the pain message.
Sept 12, 08: An enzyme that helps the body break down alcohol also works to limit damage during a heart attack, and an experimental drug can crank up this protective role, scientists said.
Sept 10, 08: A sticky glue secreted by drug-resistant bacteria could help scientists develop an effective vaccine against "superbugs", U.S. researchers told a conference.
. . The sticky substance is a complex sugar called PNAG which the researchers said was a promising vaccine target because animal studies have shown it produces a protective immune response when manipulated chemically. The bacteria produces the substance when growing a biofilm that protects them from antibiotics.
. . Because the chemically altered forms of the sugar have produced the right kind of immune response in animals, the researchers hope tests in humans will show which of the different variants is most effective.
Sept 10, 08: Scientists pinpoint three genes considered key to the development of a form of childhood brain cancer.
Sept 9, 08: An experimental drug is proving effective for treating cystic fibrosis, one of the most common life-shortening genetic diseases.
Sept 4, 08: Scientists who tried to replicate a study that once tied a measles vaccine with autism said they could not find any link and hope their study will encourage parents to vaccinate their children.
Sept 1, 08: Scientists say they have taken a big step towards blocking a chemical vital to the growth of many cancers. They have unpicked the structure of telomerase, an enzyme which, when active, helps keep cells in an "immortal" state.
. . The chemical is at work in more than nine out of ten types of tumor. Researchers from Philadelphia's Wistar Institute say their efforts could lead to drugs which switch it off.
. . All cells in the body have a natural clock --the telomeres-- which shorten every time the cell divides. After a fixed number of divisions in most cells, the telomeres are reduced to a certain length, and the cell cannot continue dividing. This change is responsible for changes within the ageing body, as cell division slows down. Some cells, such as stem cells within the embryo, use the chemical telomerase to maintain telomere length.
. . Many tumors have hijacked the telomerase system to fuel their uninhibited growth.
. . The Wistar team has found a new way to map the structure of the most active part of the chemical. Dr Emmanuel Skordalakes said that this detailed picture would help provide molecular targets for drugs. "Telomerase is an ideal target for chemotherapy because it is active in almost all human tumours, but inactive in most normal cells. That means that a drug that deactivates telomerase would likely work against all cancers, with few side effects."
. . Professor Rob Newbold, from Brunel U in Uxbridge, said it was a "very important" achievement. "Telomerase controls the evolution of cancers --and is a key characteristic of human cancer cells. The idea is that you could convert immortal cancer cells back into mortal ones by blocking telomerase in this way. Having discovered the structure now, it will certainly help the development of drugs."
Aug 31, 08: While very effective against rapidly growing cancer cells, chemotherapy can also affect healthy cells that divide quickly, and that damage can cause side effects. Besides hair loss and nausea, common side effects include fatigue, vomiting, decreased blood cell counts, mouth sores and pain.
Aug 28, 08: Scientists claim gene therapy has the potential to restore hearing in mice, offering hope for humans as well.
Aug 27, 08: Scientists have transformed one type of cell into another in living mice, a big step toward the goal of growing replacement tissues to treat a variety of diseases. The cell identity switch turned ordinary pancreas cells into the rarer type that churns out insulin, essential for preventing diabetes. But its implications go beyond diabetes to a host of possibilities, scientists said.
. . The feat was performed in living mice rather than a lab dish, the process was efficient and it was achieved directly without going through a middleman like embryonic stem cells. It might lead to treatments like growing new heart cells after a heart attack or nerve cells to treat disorders like ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease.
Aug 27, 08: Researchers have transformed ordinary cells into insulin-producing cells in a living mouse, improving symptoms of diabetes in a major step towards regenerative medicine.
Aug 26, 08: A breakfast fry-up every day raises the risk of bowel cancer by 63%, researchers have calculated.
Aug 26, 08: Undiagnosed infections may be causing a significant number of premature births, researchers reported after finding bacteria or fungi in 15% of the amniotic fluid samples taken from women in pre-term labor. The heavier the infection, the more likely the women were to deliver younger, sicker infants.
. . More and more children are being born prematurely in the US, with 12% of births coming before the 37th week of gestation. Premature babies are vulnerable to breathing problems, underdeveloped organs, infections and cerebral palsy. They also found at least one unknown organism that could be a new species.
. . All 25 of the women with infected amniotic fluid went on to deliver their babies pre-term, while 53 of the women with no infections were able to stop their labor.
Aug 21, 08: Japanese scientists say they have created human stem cells from tissue taken from discarded wisdom teeth.
Aug 21, 08: A common form of skin cancer could be diagnosed by the distinctive chemical "scent" it gives off, say US experts. Philadelphia's Monell Center sampled the air directly above basal cell carcinomas and found it was different to similar samples from healthy skin. They told a conference it offered the chance of cheap and painless testing. Other scientists are trying to spot the "smell" of cancer, with a UK team using dogs to sniff out bladder tumors from urine samples.
. . A total of 22 patients, 11 with and 11 without basal cell carcinomas, were tested. All the air samples contained the same ingredients, but the equipment revealed that the patients with cancer had markedly different concentrations of certain chemicals.
. . Earlier this year, one group of researchers suggested that another natural cycle, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, was likely to hold temperatures steady for about the next decade, before reversing direction and allowing a renewed warming.
Aug 21, 08: Parents refusing to have their children vaccinated against measles have helped drive cases of the illness to their worst levels in a dozen years in the US, health officials reported.
Aug 20, 08: Women under extreme stress in pregnancy are more likely to bear children who develop schizophrenia.
Aug 20, 08: Fruit juices may not be as healthy as thought --they could reduce the effectiveness of some medicines, it is claimed.
Aug 19, 08: Bacterial pneumonia may have killed most people during the 1918 flu pandemic, and antibiotics may be as crucial as flu drugs to fight any new pandemic, U.S. researchers reported.
Aug 19, 08: For the first time, embryonic stem cells can be used to grow vats of red blood cells, which could lead to the creation of "farms" that could provide limitless and safe sources of blood, U.S. researchers reported.
Aug 14, 08: A single injection of modified cells could halt the advance of rheumatoid arthritis, say UK scientists. The Newcastle U team is about to start small-scale safety trials of the jab, which will hopefully stop the immune system attacking the joints. It could be fully tested and available within five years.
. . The technique would be labor-intensive, requiring specialist laboratory facilities, perhaps costing many thousands of pounds per injection, but this would still cost the NHS less than decades of prescription medicines to control the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis. He also suggested that the same process might be applied to other auto-immune diseases such as type I diabetes, or even MS.
Aug 14, 08: British scientists plan to start tests on a novel vaccine against rheumatoid arthritis, which could suppress the effects of the joint condition using patients' own blood cells.
Aug 13, 08: Precisely targeted radiation therapy can eradicate tumors that have spread to other parts of the body, offering more months or years of life to patients who have no other options, U.S. researchers reported. They said new radiation techniques can attack metastases --tumors that have spread-- one by one.
. . Experiments in 29 patients showed the radiation stopped all the tumors in six, or 21%, of the patients, for anywhere between 10 months and more than two years. "This was proof of principle in patients who had failed the standard therapies and had few, if any, remaining options", said Dr. Ralph Weichselbaum of the U of Chicago Medical Center, who led the study.
. . But the results were inconsistent --in another six patients, only the treated tumors grew, while in yet another six, untreated tumors remained and grew, the team at the U of Chicago Medical Center reported in the journal Clinical Cancer Research. In eight of the patients, new tumors appeared but the treated tumors were stopped.
. . Higher doses of radiation have been shown to be safe for many places on the body and might work better, Weichselbaum said. He said more patients with a variety of cancers, including lung, head and neck, breast, colon and ovarian, are being treated now with higher doses and are surviving longer.
. . All have stage IV cancer, meaning it has spread to more than one place throughout the body. Almost all patients with stage IV cancer die, even with chemotherapy, except for patients with testicular cancer and some blood cancers. "These patients had been through experimental treatments, so it is not like we got anybody who had standard of care left, Weichselbaum said.
. . Each volunteer got three doses of precisely targeted radiation to their tumors. New guided radiation techniques can limit the amount of damage to healthy tissue and new imaging techniques, such as CT and PET scans, can help doctors find tumors they previously might have missed. All the patients had some fatigue but few had serious side effects. One developed severe vomiting and another had internal bleeding that required a blood transfusion.
. . "Although our radiation wasn't able to control the disease in everybody, if we had treated where they had recurred with further radiation, surgery or other types of ablation, they could have been rendered disease-free", Dr. Joseph Salama, who worked on the study, said. "Not all metastatic cancer is the same. In some people, more aggressive therapy can potentially be beneficial."
. . Ten patients out of the original 29 remain alive, Salama said, and nine lived more than 20 months. They are treating more patients with higher doses of radiation now and of 51 patients treated so far, 15 are alive. The researchers hope to find a genetic signature or some other way of identifying the patients who may hope to benefit from this radiation.
. . One key question is whether chemotherapy must first get rid of the tiny tumor seeds that spread and grow into metastases, Weichselbaum said. "Most likely this will be used with the targeted therapies", he said. New targeted drugs go straight for the mutation that causes the cancer, as opposed to traditional chemotherapy and radiation approaches that kill quick-growing cells, which include tumors but also healthy tissue.
Aug 13, 08: Scientists have reduced the drug-seeking behaviors of cocaine-addicted rats by disrupting the memories they associate with getting high.
Aug 11, 08: 1: Early hominids may have developed a sensitivity to UV rays for the good of the species. Based on a study using blood plasma, just an hour in direct sunlight could cause a 30 to 50% drop in folate levels —-and low folate is linked to both abnormal sperm and birth defects. Good news for nerds: It's survival of the palest!
. . 2: World War II sailors were early adopters of sunscreen. The zinc oxide they smeared on their noses served to reflect and scatter UV light. Today's lotions have added organic compounds that absorb UV energy and dissipate it as heat.
. . 3: The sun isn't all evil. It stimulates your skin to produce vitamin D, and one study suggests that 1,000 IUs of D per day reduces your risk of certain cancers by up to 50%. But that's not a free pass to bake: More than 15 minutes of exposure daily over 40% of your body might just be an invitation to skin cancer.
Aug 9, 08: At least 38 Warao Indians have died in remote villages in Venezuela, and medical experts suspect an outbreak of rabies spread by bites from vampire bats. "Vampire bats are very adaptable", Rupprecht said. And when their roosts are disrupted or their normal prey grow scarce, "Homo sapiens is a pretty easy meal."
Aug 8, 08: Scientists look at how is spread by studying the movements and biting habits of midges that transmit the virus.
Aug 8, 08: Harvard scientists say they have created stems cells for 10 genetic disorders, which will allow researchers to watch the diseases develop in a lab dish.
Aug 6, 08: Researchers have traced all of the proteins and enzymes used by the West Nile virus to infect cells, and found 305 genes that could serve as targets for treatments.
Aug 6, 08: Even viruses can go down with a viral infection, French scientists reported, in a discovery that may help explain how they swap genes and evolve so rapidly.
Aug 6, 08: For some people, one cigarette is all it takes to become hooked on nicotine, while others are repelled by it.
Aug 4, 08: British researchers have developed a new antibiotic using maggots which can be used to treat bugs including some strains of the drug-resistant bacteria MRSA.
July 30, 08: Ordinary skin cells taken from patients with a fatal and incurable nerve disease have been transformed into nerve cells in a first step toward treating them, U.S. researchers reported. They transformed the cells from two patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease, into motor neurons --the cells that waste away and die in ALS.
. . "Now we can make limitless supplies of the cells that die in this awful disease. This will allow us to study these neurons, and ALS, in a lab dish, and figure out what's happening in the disease process." About 120,000 new cases are diagnosed each year. The two patients have a mild form of ALS caused by a single genetic mutation, and all of the cells in their body carry that mutation.
. . Eggan and Henderson hope to grow and study these motor neurons and see if they can re-create the disease in a lab dish --and then try out various drugs to treat it. For one thing, they used viruses to carry in the four genes that transformed the skin cells. These viruses integrate into the cells, making them far too dangerous to use in people, Eggan said. For another, the genetic defect that causes ALS would have to be corrected before the cells could be used in any treatment, the researchers said.
. . Embryonic stem cell research is what allowed them to figure out how to do every step in their experiment, Eggan added. And if this one fails, the researchers will have to return to true embryonic stem cells.
July 30, 08: International researchers have identified three new DNA variations that increase the risk of schizophrenia and said they were some of the strongest genetic links yet found to the disease.
July 28, 08: For the first time, an experimental drug shows promise for halting the progression of Alzheimer's disease by taking a new approach: breaking up the protein tangles that clog victims' brains.
. . The encouraging results from the drug called Rember electrified a field battered by recent setbacks. Even if bigger, more rigorous studies show it works, Rember is still several years away from being available, and experts warned against overexuberance. But they were excited.
July 28, 08: People in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease who are more physically fit had less shrinkage in areas of the brain that are important for memory, researchers said. Fitness and exercise have been shown to slow age-related changes in the brain in healthy people. The latest finding suggests people with early Alzheimer's disease may still benefit.
. . Meditation may slow the worsening of AIDS in just a few weeks, perhaps by affecting the immune system, U.S. researchers reported.
July 28, 08: Impotence drugs may help carry cancer-fighting drugs through the brain to treat malignant tumors, U.S. researchers reported.
July 28, 08: Scientists in Japan have gained a better understanding how influenza viruses replicate, possibly opening the way for the development of drugs to hamper their reproduction.
July 25, 08: Researchers working on an artificial pancreas believe they are just a few years away from a nearly carefree way for people with diabetes to monitor blood and inject insulin as needed.
July 22, 08: Scientists are hailing a new drug to treat aggressive prostate cancer as potentially the most significant advance in the field for 70 years. Abiraterone could potentially treat up to 80% of patients with a deadly form of the disease resistant to currently available chemotherapy, they say. The drug works by blocking the hormones which fuel the cancer.
. . The Institute of Cancer Research hopes a simple pill form will be available in two to three years. An advanced clinical trial involving 1,200 patients around the world is currently under way, with more trials likely later this year.
. . Prostate cancer is the most common cancer among men. It is estimated that up to 10,000 men a year in the UK are diagnosed with the most aggressive --and almost always lethal-- form of prostate cancer. Typical life expectancy following chemotherapy is no more than 18 months.
. . It had been assumed that the cancer was driven by sex hormones such as testosterone produced in the testicles. Current treatments work by stopping the testicles from producing testosterone. However, experts have now discovered that the cancer can feed on sex hormones from all sources, including supplies of the hormone produced by the tumour itself. Abiraterone works by blocking production of the hormones throughout the body.
. . The latest study, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, is based on just 21 patients with advanced, aggressive prostate cancer treated with the drug - but data has been collected on a total of 250 worldwide. It found significant tumor shrinkage, and a drop in tell-tale levels of a key protein produced by the cancer called prostate specific antigen in the majority of patients.
. . Many of the patients have reported a significant improvement in the quality of their lives. Some were able to stop taking morphine for the relief of pain caused by the spread of the disease to their bones.
. . Lead researcher Dr Johann de Bono said the findings needed to be confirmed in larger trials. At this stage, no patient has taken the drug for longer than two-and-a-half years, and so it has not been possible to determine exactly what the effect of the drug on life expectancy will be. But he said: "We believe we have made a major step forward in the treatment of end-stage prostate cancer patients. These men have very aggressive prostate cancer which is exceptionally difficult to treat and almost always proves to be fatal. We hope that abiraterone will eventually offer them real hope of an effective way of managing their condition and prolonging their lives."
. . It is hoped the drug will also aid other cancer patients, including those with breast cancer. Professor David Webb, an expert in clinical pharmacology at the U of Edinburgh, said: "This agent clearly looks promising, but it is still at the early stages of clinical development. It will be crucial to look carefully at the balance between its benefits and harms, before drawing firm conclusions about the usefulness of this new drug. "Important side effects often only emerge with the larger clinical studies that now need to be done."
July 21, 08: Alzheimer's patients given a popular rheumatoid arthritis drug showed seemingly dramatic improvements in a small study, but some doctors worried that the early findings will raise premature hopes.
. . July 21, 08: A drug once used to treat hayfever "improves" symptoms in patients with Alzheimer's disease, research suggests.
July 18, 08: Scientists at Indian Institute of Technology and Tokai U have taken the natural features of a mosquito's mouth, and created a new type of needle that promises pain-free blood sample collection and injections. When mosquitoes bite you, it's not their mouth that hurts you: their ultra-fine proboscis dips beneath the skin, and then a muscle squeeze-relax motion draws blood out of it. The new needle, made of titanium alloys for strength, has a tiny microelectromechanical pump that mimics the mozzy, and can work to extract blood or pump in drugs. It's also just 60 microns across, versus 900 microns of a conventional syringe. The team hopes to commercialize the product, but they've got a few technical hurdles to overcome before we can all worry less about having an injection.
July 15, 08: Global warming will stoke the scourges of malaria, dengue fever, hantavirus and kidney stones. Kidney stones?
. . By 2050, say U of Texas urologists Tom Brikowski and Margaret Pearle, most Americans will live in areas considered high-risk zones for the painful deposits, caused when minerals crystallize into chunks too large leave the bladder. The findings point not only to higher frequencies of an an ordeal that some compare to giving birth, but to the complexity of climate change and health.
. . About 12% of men and 7% of women in the US experience kidney stones during their lifetimes. Rates are highest in the Southern states, particularly the Southeast, where heat and humidity lead to dehydration that accelerates stone formation. Urologists refer to those states as the "kidney-stone belt." The belt will expand north and up the coasts, enveloping 56% of the population by 2050. Climate change will have produced around 2 million extra kidney stones, with an annual price tag of $1 billion.
July 15, 08: A bacteria only recently revealed as a major cause of ulcers and stomach cancer may help protect children from developing asthma, U.S. researchers reported. Children infected with the bacteria, called Helicobacter pylori, were much less likely to have asthma than uninfected children.
. . "Our findings suggest that absence of H. pylori may be one explanation for the increased risk of childhood asthma", said Yu Chen. "Among teens and children ages 3 to 19 years, carriers of H. pylori were 25% less likely to have asthma." Children aged 3 to 13 were 59% less likely to have asthma if they also had H. pylori. "Maybe the same antibiotics that made H. pylori go away make something else go away." Or perhaps the bacteria somehow protects against asthma directly, perhaps by changing the body's immune response.
. . "One explanation for this phenomenon has been termed the 'hygiene hypothesis', which considers that humans are more prone to allergic disorders because of a lifestyle that may be too 'clean'", Blaser's team wrote. The idea is the immune system doesn't have enough work to do early in life, so it becomes hyper-responsive to inappropriate triggers, such as dust, instead.
July 15, 08: Pregnant women who eat nuts or nut products like peanut butter daily raise the risk their children will develop asthma by 50%, Dutch researchers said.
. . The study also showed that moderate amounts did not seem to have an effect, meaning it is too soon to say whether pregnant women should give up nuts because they contain many important nutrients and healthy fats a developing fetus needs, they said. In some countries, as many as 30% of children develop the condition. Children whose mothers ate as little as one peanut butter sandwich a day had a far higher risk of asthma.
July 15, 08: Amgen Inc today said that a trial of its experimental drug denosumab showed that it can prevent osteoporosis in men being treated with prostate cancer drugs that can cause bone loss.
July 14, 08: Amgen Inc said that a trial of its experimental drug denosumab showed that it can prevent osteoporosis in men being treated with prostate cancer drugs that can cause bone loss.
July 12, 08: Scientists have used a common cold virus to "light up" prostate cancer tumors in different parts of the body. It could make it easier for doctors to track the spread of the disease, and check the effectiveness of treatment. A U of California at Los Angeles team found the virus "infected" prostate cancer cells in mice, then made them visible to scanners. UK experts welcomed the Nature Medicine study, and said a more sensitive scan would be "very valuable".
. . If a cancer has spread beyond the original site, it usually means that treatment has to be far more aggressive, and reduces the chance of a cure. However, in some cancers, including prostate, the most common cancer in men, it can be hard to detect these new tumors using conventional scanning. This can mean that some patients do not get aggressive treatments quickly enough, or that other are given powerful treatment they do not actually need.
. . One of the first signs of metatasis in prostate cancer is tumours in the tiny lymph nodes in the pelvis. Lymph nodes are part of the immune system, filled with cells which trap invading bacteria and viruses. Common cold viruses, or adenoviruses, circulating the in body, tend to end up at these nodes.
. . The UCLA team used a virus modified to go to work only when inside a prostate cancer cell. Once inside, they expressed a protein which could be show up on a PET scan, which meant that even relatively small prostate cancer tumors within a node would be more easy to identify.
. . Dr Wu said: "We now know we can reach these prostate cancer metastases at an earlier stage than before, and we know we can deliver genes to those cancer cells that produce proteins that can be imaged."
. . The technique could help doctors plan treatments, she said, and see quickly if they were effective at killing cancer cells. However, her eventual aim is to add an extra payload to the cold virus --which would aim to target prostate cancer cells and help destroy them.
. . Dr Chris Parker, a prostate cancer researcher, said: "A more sensitive method for detecting prostate cancer spread would be very valuable, as the current methods for detecting smaller prostate cancer deposits in the lymph nodes are limited. "The initial findings of this study in mice suggest this approach might detect very early signs of cancer spread, before it is apparent on conventional scans.
. . "This new method --using a virus that is transported to prostate cancer in the lymph nodes, and which carries a marker gene that can be detected on imaging-- is very interesting, but further development work is needed before the technique will be ready for testing in humans."
July 8, 08: Pressured by desperate parents, government researchers are pushing to test an unproven treatment on autistic children, a move some scientists see as an unethical experiment in voodoo medicine.
. . The treatment removes heavy metals from the body and is based on the fringe theory that mercury in vaccines triggers autism — a theory never proved and rejected by mainstream science. Mercury hasn't been in childhood vaccines since 2001, except for certain flu shots.
. . The process, called chelation, is used to treat lead poisoning. Studies of adults have shown it to be ineffective unless there are high levels of metals in the blood. Any study in children would have to exclude those with high levels of lead or mercury, which would require treatment and preclude using a placebo.
July 8, 08: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Invitrogen Corp's genetic test for determining whether patients with breast cancer are good candidates for treatment with the drug Herceptin.
July 8, 08: There is no evidence acupuncture improves the success of IVF treatment, scientists say.
July 6, 08: A new type of vaccine that sneaks into the body and then self-destructs --all without needles-- may offer a new way to protect against a range of diseases, U.S. researchers reported.
. . The researchers genetically engineered a type of Salmonella bacteria to carry a little piece of Streptococcus and dripped it into the mouths of mice. They said the vaccine protected the mice, and the Salmonella carrier blew itself up.
. . Curtiss and colleagues used an antigen found in Streptococcus pneumonia, which causes bacterial pneumonia. They put it into Salmonella, a bacteria that invades cells and then reproduces out of control until it bursts the cell. The vaccine protected mice from infection, carrying the strep antigen into cells. Then, before the Salmonella could do any damage, it burst open.
. . Curtiss believes the approach could be used against not only bacteria, but viruses, fungal infections and parasites. "We used a gene that is regulated by the presence of the sugar arabinose," he said. This can be supplied in growth media used in lab dishes but is not found in the bodies of animals, including humans. The bacteria can be grown in a way that prevents them from making a cell wall --so they cannot survive and replicate.
July 6, 08: Scientists have been able to stop cancers in mice from spreading, using nanoparticles infused with cancer-fighting drugs. The technique allows for much smaller doses of the drug, which carries heavy side effects.
Brain-noise levels go down with diseases such as Alzheimer's and go up with disorders such as schizophrenia.
July 3, 08: U.S. researchers reported they may have found a way to flush out herpes viruses from hiding --offering a potential way to cure pesky and painful conditions from cold sores to shingles. They discovered that a mysterious gene carried by the herpes simplex-1 virus --the one that causes cold sores-- allows the virus to lay low in the nerves it infects.
. . It may be possible to "wake up" the virus and then kill it with standard antiviral drugs such as acyclovir. "Inactive virus is completely untouchable by any treatment we have. Unless you activate the virus, you can't kill it."
. . Umbach said that for still unknown reasons, viruses infecting different neurons in the same body activate at different times, making it impossible to eradicate an infection. A drug that would turn off the microRNAs could drive the virus out of hiding and allow all copies of the virus to be killed with acyclovir.
. . An estimated one in five Americans have genital herpes, while 100 million have the HSV-1 virus that causes cold sores.
July 1, 08: A prominent genetics research facility, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, recently sequenced its trillionth base pair of DNA, illustrating the exponential increases in speed that new DNA sequencers have made possible.
Jun 30, 08: Chewing tobacco and snuff are less dangerous than cigarettes but the smokeless products still raise the risk of oral cancer by 80%, the World Health Organization's cancer agency said.
Jun 30, 08: A new experimental technique strips a key gene out of T-cells in mice, blocking their ability to produce a protein that HIV uses to enter and take over the T-cells. The result: cells that are nearly impenetrable to the virus.
Jun 29, 08: A drug developed using nanotechnology and a fungus that contaminated a lab experiment may be broadly effective against a range of cancers, U.S. researchers reported. The drug was known experimentally as TNP-470, and was originally isolated from a fungus called Aspergillus fumigatus fresenius.
. . The drug, called lodamin, was improved in one of the last experiments overseen by Dr. Judah Folkman, a cancer researcher who died in January. Folkman pioneered the idea of angiogenesis therapy --starving tumors by preventing them from growing blood supplies.
. . Lodamin is an angiogenesis inhibitor that Folkman's team has been working to perfect for 20 years. They developed a formulation that works as a pill, without side-effects. Tests in mice showed it worked against a range of tumors, including breast cancer, neuroblastoma, ovarian cancer, prostate cancer, brain tumors known as glioblastomas and uterine tumors. It helped stop so-called primary tumors and also prevented their spread.
. . "When I looked at the livers of the mice, the treated group was almost clean", Benny said in a statement. "In the control group you couldn't recognize the livers --they were a mass of tumors."
. . Harvard's Donald Ingber discovered the fungus by accident while trying to grow endothelial cells --the cells that line blood vessels. The mold affected the cells in a way known to prevent the growth of tiny blood vessels known as capillaries.
. . But the drug affected the brain, causing depression, dizziness and other side-effects. It also did not stay in the body long and required constant infusions. The lab dropped it. Efforts to improve it did not work well. Then Benny and colleagues tried nanotechnology, attaching two "pom-pom"-shaped polymers to TNP-470, protecting it from stomach acid. In mice, the altered drug, now named lodamin, went straight to tumor cells and helped suppress melanoma and lung cancer, with no apparent side effects.
. . "I had never expected such a strong effect on these aggressive tumor models", she said. The researchers believe lodamin may also be useful in other diseases marked by abnormal blood vessel growth, such as age-related macular degeneration.
Jun 29, 08: Scientists prove that beta-caryophyllene, a chemical found in marijuana, soothes the immune system, increases bone mass, and blocks pain signals --without causing euphoria or interfering with the central nervous system.
. . Jürg Gertsch, of ETH Zürich, and his collaborators learned that the natural molecule can activate a protein called cannabinoid receptor type 2. When that biological button is pushed, it soothes the immune system, increases bone mass, and blocks pain signals --without causing euphoria or interfering with the central nervous system. They focused on the anti-inflammatory properties of the impressive substance --testing it on immune cells called monocytes and also in mice.
. . Since beta-caryophyllene seems to be powerful, occurs naturally in many foods, and does not get people high, it could turn out to be a nearly ideal medication. The organic compound is also phenomenally cheap. Sigma Aldrich sells it, in kosher form, for forty-two dollars per kilogram.
. . Unfortunately, big pharmaceutical companies tend not to seek FDA approval for natural chemicals, and most doctors are reluctant to prescribe drugs that have not received a green light from the regulatory agency. Thus, it would require a heroic effort by academic researchers to prove that beta-caryophyllene is safe and effective in humans. Perhaps, before that happens, the natural substance will find its way into the herbal medicine aisle of health food stores.
Jun 29, 08: Scientists have linked 32 genetic variations to Crohn's disease, a bowel disorder, highlighting the complexity of many common diseases and the difficulties facing researchers seeking treatments.
Jun 26, 08: A "wimpy" artificial virus protected mice against polio, and the approach might be used to make a range of safer new vaccines against viruses, U.S. researchers reported.
Jun 26, 08: Scientists have shown previously that dogs seem able to sniff out cancer. A 2004 study found dogs could detect bladder cancer by sniffing human urine. And in a small study in 2006 reported in the journal Integrative Cancer Therapies, dogs were trained to identify lung or breast cancer.
. . In the new study, researchers trained dogs to distinguish different types and grades of ovarian cancer, including borderline tumors. Turns out the odor of ovarian cancer does seem to differ from those of other gynecological malignancies, such as cervical, or endometrial cancers.
. . Importantly, early-stage and low grade ovarian cancers emit the same scent as advanced tumors.
Jun 26, 08: Two imaging modalities used in combination --dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI) and diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI)-MRI-- can accurately spot residual or recurrent prostate cancer in patients treated with a fairly new treatment called high-intensity focused ultrasonic ablation, a new study shows.
. . High-intensity focused ultrasonic ablation is becoming more common as a prostate cancer treatment option, particularly in patients who can't or don't want to undergo a radical prostatectomy (removal of the prostate), they note.
Jun 26, 08: A novel experimental vaccine targeting key immune system cells prevents and reverses "new-onset" diabetes in a mouse model, researchers report.
Jun 25, 08: Scientists have identified a gene that may raise the risk of getting the most common kind of Alzheimer's disease by about 45% in people who inherit a certain form of it. That form of the gene appears to hamper a brain cell's ability to take in calcium, researchers said. If drugs can be found that reverse its effect, they may be useful in fighting Alzheimer's.
Jun 25, 08: A faulty gene closely associated with breast cancer is also responsible for a particularly dangerous form of prostate cancer, research has confirmed. A U of Toronto team found prostate cancer patients carrying the BRCA2 gene lived on average for four years after diagnosis. The average survival time for a man with prostate cancer is 12 years.
. . The latest study examined two closely related faulty genes, BRCA1 and BRCA2, both of which greatly increase a woman's risk of breast cancer, and are linked to ovarian cancer. Both genes cut average survival times in men with prostate cancer who carried them --for men carrying BRCA1 the average survival time was eight years after diagnosis. BRCA2 has already been linked to deadly prostate cancer, with an Icelandic study recording an average survival time among prostate cancer patients carrying the gene of just 2.1 years.
. . Around one in 500 men carry the defective BRCA2 gene. They can be five times more likely than men in the general population to develop prostate cancer.
. . http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7470738.stm
Jun 25, 08: Radio frequency identification chips (RFID) used to track and trace products could cause critical care medical devices such as pacemakers and ventilators to fail, Dutch researchers said.
Jun 25, 08: A protein found only in the intestines may help lead the way to a vaccine that can treat colon cancers and perhaps other tumors too, U.S. researchers reported.
Jun 25, 08: Diseases caused by worms and parasites are draining the health and energy of the poorest Americans, an expert said.
Jun 24, 08: People with a vitamin D deficiency are as much as twice as likely to die compared to people whose blood contains higher amounts of the so-called sunshine vitamin, Austrian researchers said.
. . Their study --the latest to suggest a health benefit from the vitamin-- showed death rates from any cause as well as from heart-related problems varied greatly depending on vitamin D. Vitamin D helps the body absorb calcium and is considered important for bone health. In adults, vitamin D deficiency can lead to osteoporosis, and it can lead to rickets in children.
. . A number of recent studies have also indicated vitamin D may offer a variety of other health benefits, including protecting against cancer, peripheral artery disease and tuberculosis. Last week, U.S. researchers said vitamin D may extend the lives of people with colon and rectal cancer.
Jun 24, 08: Researchers have uncovered a new clue to the cause of Alzheimer's disease. The brains of people with the memory-robbing form of dementia are cluttered with a plaque made up of beta-amyloid, a sticky protein. But there long has been a question whether this is a cause of the disease or a side effect. Also involved are tangles of a protein called tau; some scientists suspect this is the cause.
. . Now, researchers have caused Alzheimer's symptoms in rats by injecting them with one particular form of beta-amyloid. Forms of soluble beta-amyloid containing different numbers of molecules, as well as insoluble cores of the brain plaque, were injected into the brains of rats. There was no detectable effect from the insoluble plaque or the soluble one-molecule or three-molecule forms, the researchers found. But the two-molecule form of soluble beta-amyloid produced characteristics of Alzheimer's in the rats.
Jun 24, 08: A highly effective leukemia pill may reduce complications and boost the effectiveness of a treatment for the most common type of stroke, an international team of researchers said.
Jun 18, 08: U.S. scientists have developed a way to add color to medical scans known as MRIs, potentially enhancing the information and sensitivity the images provide.
Jun 17, 08: A radical new cancer treatment is about to emerge from a scientific breakthrough in the understanding of how tumors grow.
. . The theory is that a fraction of tumor cells, dubbed cancer stem cells, is responsible for the malignancy of tumors. While controversial, the theory is gaining adherents among once-skeptical oncologists and investors. It posits that a small fraction of cancerous cells are responsible for stimulating the growth of tumors. In the way other stem cells create organs, these cells create tumors.
. . In two signs of the theory's perceived potential, the Journal of Clinical Oncology published a special 18-article supplement last week on research in the field, just as the leading cancer stem cell treatment startup, Oncomed, finishes readying its first drug candidate for human trials.
. . Company officials said that it will file an investigational new drug application within two months, which should put the drug in human bodies for the first time by the end of the year. If Oncomed can bring this technique to the public, it would be a landmark advance in cancer treatment, and among the most promising of the more than 750 cancer therapies currently in development.
. . Cancer stem cell researchers say that's because the small percentage of tumor cells capable of driving tumor growth are resistant to chemotherapy. As a result, even if you kill most of the other tumor cells and some of the cancer stem cells, if a small number of stem cells survive they can cause new tumor growth.
. . If this theory is correct, and stem cells really are the engines of malignancy, then targeting and killing them could end cancer as we know it.
Jun 13, 08: Researchers may have found a way to predict whether severely brain-damaged patients will regain consciousness. A part of the brain which can stay active even in severely brain-damaged patients could offer a clue about the chances of recovery, they claim. Some believe the default network is associated with daydreaming. The default network in the brain's cortex appears to be more active when the brain is not actively working on a goal --hence the proposed link with daydreaming.
. . A number of techniques are used to assess the level of consciousness in people following head injury, and while some are diagnosed as "brain dead", with no sign of any activity in the brain, it can be difficult to make an exact diagnosis when the patient has a higher level of activity, but is still unconscious.
. . They found that minimally conscious patients had only a 10% fall in normal activity in this area, while in coma and PVS patients, it fell by approximately 35%. There was no activity at all in the brain-dead patients.
. . A new technology may lead to completely soundproof homes, cars, or any other space using a meta-material called sonic crystals. This "acoustic cloaking will deviate sound waves around the object that has to be cloaked."
Jun 11, 08: Pigs raised without antibiotics in an effort to placate consumer fears over those chemicals carry more bacteria and parasites. This is the conclusion of a study funded by the National Pork Board.
. . A comparison of pigs raised outdoors without antibiotics and swine reared in conventional pork production settings revealed that antibiotic-free creatures had higher rates of three food-borne pathogens compared with pigs on conventional farms, which remain indoors and receive preventive doses of antimicrobial drugs. The pigs could probably care less: The pathogens generally do not cause illness in the animals.
. . Salmonella was common in both groups: 39% of the conventional pigs were infected with it and 54% of the no-antibiotic swine had it. It seems this is a lose-lose situation. "The advantage of using antibiotics is to prevent these infections from occurring. The disadvantage is it appears to create a favorable environment for strains of the bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics."
. . As long as pork is cooked thoroughly according to federal guidelines, the presence of these infectious agents in food animals should pose no risk to human health, the university notes in a statement. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends that consumers cook fresh pork to an internal temperature of 160 degrees F.
Jun 10, 08: British scientists said they had identified subtle chemical changes that allow abnormal cells to multiply out of control, a finding that could help detect colon cancer earlier.
Jun 10, 08: Scientists claim to have found a new genetic basis for why some people develop an enlarged heart, a condition which can result in a cardiac arrest. Irregular heart growth can be brought on by strenuous exercise, high blood pressure and obesity, but the role played by genes is largely unknown. Now an international team say they have for the first time linked enlarged hearts with a gene, osteoglycin (Ogn).
. . Enlarged hearts are found often, but not exclusively, in those who are obese, have diabetes or high blood pressure. People with none of these underlying problems can be affected, as can elite athletes.
Jun 3, 08: Frequent use of alcohol-based hand sanitizers and a daily disinfectant wipe-down of classroom surfaces can help reduce school absences due to gastrointestinal illness, a new study demonstrates.
Jun 3, 08: Danish and U.S. researchers said they have found a way to way to attack malaria by knocking out a gene that helps malaria parasites reproduce inside mosquitoes.
Jun 2, 08: Long-term heavy use of marijuana may cause two important brain structures to shrink, Australian researchers said.
May 31, 08: A drug used to strengthen the bones of women with breast cancer helped cut the risk of the cancer returning by 36%, European researchers said.
May 28, 08: A new imaging technique that relies on naturally occurring baking soda in the body could help pinpoint cancer earlier and quickly gauge if drugs to kill tumors are working, British researchers said.
. . he non-invasive method uses magnetic resonance imaging to measure changes in pH --or acidity-- in tissue that is often the hallmark of cancer and other conditions such as heart disease and strokes, said Kevin Brindle of the U of Cambridge, who led the study.
. . Currently there are no safe ways to measure pH levels in humans, but doing so is important because tumors, for example, are far more acidic than surrounding tissue. "You are imaging not just tissue structure but tissue function", said Brindle. "We wanted to measure tissue pH, which is a surrogate for disease."
. . The researchers injected mice with a tagged form of bicarbonate --an alkali more commonly seen in baking soda-- that occurs naturally in the body and balances acidity, Brindle said. They used MRI to see how much of the tagged bicarbonate was converted into CO2 within the tumor. In more acidic tumors, more bicarbonate is converted into CO2.
. . The researchers measured pH levels using an emerging technique called dynamic nuclear polarization that boosts MRI sensitivity more than 10,000 times. "MRI can pick up on the abnormal pH levels found in cancer and it is possible that this could be used to pinpoint where the disease is present and when it is responding to treatment," Brindle said.
. . The next step is testing the technique in humans in early stage clinical trials expected to start in 2009. While this makes use in clinics years away, the technique could one day help quickly determine if cancer drugs are working, he said. Normally, it takes weeks or months to do this.
. . "If you could see a change in tissue function you could see if a drug is working earlier", Brindle said. "If not, you could try a different drug."
May 28, 08: Malaria parasites fine-tune the number of male and female offspring they produce to maximize the odds of infecting another host, a finding that could help fight the deadly disease, British researchers said.
May 26, 08: Contrary to earlier findings, there is no apparent link between migraine and left-handedness, German researchers have shown.
May 18, 08: Scientists have created monkeys genetically modified to have Huntington's disease in an effort to gain a deeper understanding of the fatal ailment and uncover clues to possible new treatments.
May 16, 08: Chemotherapy does not help people with asbestos-related cancer, according to UK researchers.
May 15, 08: U.S. health officials recommended that people 60 and older get Merck & Co Inc's vaccine Zostavax to protect against shingles, a viral infection that causes a painful, blistering rash.
. . The risk of getting shingles --caused by the same varicella-zoster virus responsible for the common childhood illness chicken pox-- rises with age starting at around age 50, and is highest among the elderly. The CDC said researchers have found the vaccine cuts the occurrence of shingles by about 50% in people age 60 and older. For people ages 60 to 69, it cuts the occurrence of the disease by 64%. About a third of all people in the US will get shingles, including half who reach age 85.
. . After a person has had chicken pox, the virus remains dormant in the body, and years later can reactivate as shingles.
May 12, 08: Addicted to junk food, Manuel Uribe eventually tipped the scales at 1,235 pounds back in Mexico, bingeing on greasy tacos. His bulk made him the world's heaviest man and won him a place in the 2008 edition of the Guinness World Records. He has lost 518 pounds since March 2006 on a diet of grapefruits, egg-white only omelets, fish, chicken, vegetables and peanuts. He said his goal is to weigh 285 pounds by 2010, meaning he would have lost 950 pounds.
. . He will still be in bed, hauled onto a tow truck for a trip to the mountainous countryside outside his home city of Monterrey in northern Mexico. It will be a rerun of a failed attempt in March that was thwarted when his bed hit an overpass!
. . Rosalie Bradford, an American woman who died in 2006, recorded the greatest weight loss for a female after she shed 907 pounds. The record for a man is held by Jon Brower Minnoch who lost 924 pounds, according to Guinness World Records.
May 14, 08: Breathing in air pollution from traffic fumes can raise the risk of potentially deadly blood clots, a US study says.
May 14, 08: The anti-impotence drug Viagra may potentially aid muscular dystrophy patients, research suggests.
May 14, 08: A study of 65,000 women shows that regular exercise during the teen years --starting as young as age 12-- reduces the chances of developing premenopausal breast cancer by 23%.
May 12, 08: Adult women who were breast-fed as infants may have a lower risk of developing breast cancer than those who were not breast-fed, unless they were first-born, study findings suggest.
May 12, 08: Scientists are on their way to developing an effective antidote for botulinum toxin --one of the world's most feared biological weapons. Defence experts say that just one gram of the poison can kill hundreds of thousands of people. Botulinum toxin has never been successfully used as a bioweapon.
. . Several people each year fall victim to "botulism" from food poisoning, but the toxin is also used as Botox --injected into brows to relax wrinkles.
. . Researchers have developed a protein that blocks the effects of the toxin by tricking it into not attacking cells in the body. The new protein behaves as a decoy to proteins in the nerve cells, which means that the toxin chooses not to attach itself to the nerve cells when it enters the body. This prevents paralysis.
May 8, 08: An international team of researchers said they have pinpointed three variants of the genetic code that appear to set the stage for aggressive neuroblastoma, the deadliest solid tumor in early childhood.
May 6, 08: Blocking a single brain enzyme helped short-circuit a key hunger signal in mice and made them eat less, lose weight and have better blood sugar control, U.S. researchers said. While much more research lies ahead, they said the finding may lead to new treatments for obesity and diabetes in humans.
May 6, 08: A type of fat that accumulates around the hips and bottom may actually offer some protection against diabetes, U.S. researchers said.
May 6, 08: An experiment that went wrong may provide a new way to treat multiple sclerosis, a Canadian researcher said. Patients who got bone marrow stem-cell transplants --similar to those given to leukemia patients-- have enjoyed a mysterious remission of their disease. And Dr. Mark Freedman of the U of Ottawa is not sure why. "Not a single patient, and it's almost seven years, has ever had a relapse."
. . He set up an experiment in which doctors destroyed the bone marrow and thus the immune systems of MS patients. Then stem cells known as hematopoeitic stem cells, blood-forming cells taken from the bone marrow, were transplanted back into the patients. After all, MS is believed to be an autoimmune disease, in which immune system cells mistakenly attack the fatty myelin sheath that protects nerve strands. Patients lose the ability to move as the thin strands that connect one nerve cell to another wither. Instead, improvements began two years after treatment.
. . The treatment itself is dangerous --one patient died when the chemicals used to destroy his bone marrow also badly damaged his liver.
May 6, 08: Scientists have pinpointed a reason why people with Indian ancestry may be more prone to weight problems. They have found this group is more likely to carry a gene sequence linked to an expanding waist line, weight gain and type 2 diabetes.
. . The sequence is carried by 50% of the population --but is a third more common in Indian Asians. They make up 25% of the world's population, but who are expected to account for 40% of global cardiovascular disease by 2020.
May 5, 08: In another sign pointing to an inherited component to autism, a studyfound that having a schizophrenic parent or a mother with psychiatric problems roughly doubled a child's risk of being autistic.
. . "Our research shows that mothers and fathers diagnosed with schizophrenia were about twice as likely to have a child diagnosed with autism. We also saw higher rates of depression and personality disorders among mothers, but not fathers."
. . Autism, which is marked by impaired social interaction and communication, or a related disorder like Asperger's syndrome, affects an estimated one out of every 150 U.S. children. No one knows what causes autism, but researchers think it is likely that several genes and possibly environmental factors contribute. Which genes lie behind various mental illnesses are also poorly understood.
. . The association between a child's autism and mental illness in the parent was strongest with schizophrenia, and was less powerful when the mother suffered from depression or personality disorders. There was little association between autism and parental addiction to alcohol or drugs or some other types of mental illness.
May 3, 08: A form of immunotherapy that could get rid of a person's allergy to peanuts is likely within five years, even as the condition appears to grow more and more common, a U.S. expert said.
. . Many children grow out of other food allergies such as milk or eggs, but only about 20% lose their peanut allergy. He cited research showing the condition becoming more common --doubling among young children from 0.4% in 1997 to 0.8% in 2002 in one U.S. study.
. . It is unclear why it is becoming more common, he said. One theory he cited was the "hygiene hypothesis", which holds that too little exposure to infectious agents in early childhood can raise one's susceptibility to allergic reactions.
May 1, 08: An international research team has pinpointed a genetic mutation that can raise a healthy person's blood sugar to harmful levels, putting them at higher risk of serious problems like heart disease.
Apr 30, 08: A new process to extract and copy the essential elements of cells that make human antibodies has provided a shortcut to making targeted, infection-fighting proteins known as monoclonal antibodies, U.S. researchers said.
. . The process allowed them to make influenza-specific antibodies in as little as a month, and they said the discovery could lead new treatments for other infectious diseases such as hepatitis C, pneumococcal pneumonia or anthrax. It could even be used in an influenza pandemic to protect health workers until a vaccine could be made.
. . The method could be used to generate fully human monoclonal antibodies for cancer and immune disease treatments such as Genentech Inc's breast cancer drug Herceptin and Johnson & Johnson's Remicade for rheumatoid arthritis and other immune diseases.
Apr 30, 08: A new type of powerful stem cell made from ordinary skin cells has been coaxed into becoming three different types of heart and blood cells in mice, U.S. researchers reported.
Apr 29, 08: Scientists from around the world are joining forces to hunt for key genetic mutations involved in cancer.
Apr 29, 08: Researchers looking for genes that raise the risk of osteoporosis found seven different sequences associated with the bone-thinning disease, and one team found two that might predict the risk for 20% of people.
Apr 28, 08: Having a dog in the house reduces the risk that young children will develop allergies, German researchers said.
Apr 27, 08: Gene therapy for a rare type of inherited blindness has dramatically improved the vision of four patients who tried it, boosting hopes for the troubled field of gene repair technology, scientists said.
Apr 25, 08: U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon launched a new campaign on World Malaria Day, calling on the world to ensure that all of Africa has access to basic malaria control measures by the end of 2010.
Apr 25, 08: A new kind of drug designed to "hitch-hike" into cells reversed signs of Alzheimer's disease when injected into the brains of mice and may become a potent new treatment for humans, German scientists said.
Apr 24, 08: A virus closely related to smallpox disguises itself as a piece of a broken cell to trick its way into cells, Swiss researchers said, in a discovery that could lead to better drugs and vaccines. The vaccinia virus tricks scavenging immune system cells into devouring it, and can invade the body from there.
. . Viruses have devised many ways of entering cells, Helenius said. Most do so by binding to a cell and turning on a chemical signal that causes the cell to absorb the virus. Pox viruses, however, are 10 times the size of most other viruses and far more complex. This means they have to find another way in to healthy cells.
Apr 24, 08: Scientists say they have coaxed human embryonic stem cells into becoming three of the major cell types in the human heart, and they improved cardiac function when transplanted into mice.
Apr 21, 08: A 'bionic eye' may hold the key to returning sight to people left blind by a hereditary disease, experts believe. It is estimated between 20,000 to 25,000 are affected in the UK. A team at London's Moorfields Eye Hospital have carried out the treatment on the UK's first patients as part of a clinical study into the therapy. The artificial eye, connected to a camera on a pair of glasses, has been developed by US firm Second Sight. It said the technique may be able to restore a basic level of vision, but experts warned it was still early days.
. . The camera transmits a wireless signal to an ultra-thin electronic receiver and electrode panel that are implanted in the eye and attached to the retina. The electrodes stimulate the remaining retinal nerves allowing a signal to be passed along the optic nerve to the brain.
Apr 20, 08: Researchers creating a map of human metabolism around the world have found compounds in urine that point to some surprising differences affecting blood pressure, based not on genes but on what people eat and their gut bacteria. They hope their findings can help lead to the development of new drugs to fight high blood pressure or perhaps even non-drug therapy.
. . Many recent studies have suggested that humans and their gut bacteria have a truly symbiotic relationship. Some of the compounds they release have drug-like effects, Nichols said. He looked at these breakdown products, called metabolites, in human urine to see if he could find any links with heart disease.
. . Saying the study only scratches the surface, Nicholson said his team already identified four such compounds that can be linked with blood pressure differences. An estimated 1 billion people globally have high blood pressure, defined as a reading of 140/90 or higher. It is a major cause of stroke, heart disease and kidney failure.
Apr 18, 08: South American countries have been battling outbreaks of several viruses, including mosquito-borne dengue and yellow fevers. Dengue has killed at least 87 people in the region and sickened more than 93,000 this year, and at least 17 people have died of yellow fever in Brazil and Paraguay.
Apr 17, 08: A cholera outbreak in Kenya has killed 67 people so far this year, while a fungus has wiped out up to 20% of the country's annual rice production, United Nations agencies said.
Apr 16, 08: The use of antibiotics and other anti-microbial agents throughout the food chain contributes to the growth of resistant bacteria which can be passed on to humans through food, EU's food agency said. The resistance of bacteria has become a growing concern as anti-microbials become less effective in fighting infections, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) said.
. . The panel found bacteria could be passed directly to people from contaminated food of animal origin carrying resistant bacteria which could colonize or infect people after ingestion. Bacteria could also be passed to humans by the consumption of fresh produce from land irrigated with water contaminated by slurry or sewage. Food of animal and non-animal origin could also be contaminated during handling and preparation.
Apr 16, 08: Prozac, the popular antidepressant, might also be an effective treatment for adults with a "lazy eye", according to new research.
Apr 16, 08: Scientists in Australia have identified a gene that appears to be linked to blood vessel growth in tumors in mice and they hope the discovery can pave the way for improved treatment of cancer in people one day.
Apr 16, 08: Scientists in Australia have identified a gene that appears to be linked to blood vessel growth in tumors in mice and they hope the discovery can pave the way for improved treatment of cancer in people one day.
Apr 16, 08: Flu viruses evolve freshly somewhere in east or southeast Asia every year, spreading around the world over the next nine months before dying out, researchers reported.
Apr 15, 08: Extracts from a mushroom used for centuries in Eastern Asian medicine may stop breast cancer cells from growing and could become a new weapon in the fight against the killer disease, scientists said.
Apr 15, 08: Scientists may have learned why some people retain sharp minds and clear memories despite having the so-called brain plaques and tangles that are the hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease.
. . In comparing the brains of these people to others who had all the memory-robbing symptoms of Alzheimer's, the researchers said they found that those who avoided dementia consistently had a larger part of the brain called the hippocampus. It's a structure vital to memory formation located in the brain's temporal lobe. Everyone has two of them --one of the left side and one on the right side of the brain.
. . His team studied the brains of 12 people who had extensive plaques and tangles but retained a sharp mind and clear memory, comparing them to 24 others who had extensive plaques and tangles and also had the usual Alzheimer's symptoms. Based on brain scans taken while they were still alive, the researchers found that the hippocampus in the clear-minded people was about 10% larger than in the other people. Their overall brain volume also was about 5% greater. The researchers did not see any educational, socioeconomic or other differences and the results did not differ based on age or sex.
Apr 8, 08: People who have had depression may be more prone to Alzheimer's disease, two studies suggest. Dutch researchers found Alzheimer's was 2.5 times more likely in people with a history of depression. It found that people who showed signs of depression before the age of 60 were four times more likely to develop Alzheimer's.
Apr 8, 08: Skin cells re-programmed to act like embryonic stem cells eased symptoms of Parkinson's disease in rats, researchers reported on Monday in a first step toward tailored treatments for people.
Apr 8, 08: Dyslexia estimates range from 8% to 15% of students. It affects different parts of children’s brains depending on whether they are raised reading English or Chinese. That finding means that therapists may need to seek different methods of assisting dyslexic children from different cultures. Past studies have suggested that the brain may use different networks of neurons in different languages, but none has suggested a difference in the structural parts of the brain involved, Tan explained.
. . Reading an alphabetic language like English requires different skills than reading Chinese, which relies less on sound representation, instead using symbols to represent words.
Apr 7, 08: Scientists have taken skin cells from patients with eight different diseases and turned them into stem cells. The advance means scientists are moving closer to using stem cells from the patient themselves to treat disease.He said it could help scientists understand the earliest stages of human genetic disease.
. . The stem cells were created by taking biopsies from patients with diseases such as Huntington's and muscular dystrophy. However, scientists admit that many risks remain and therapies could still be well over a decade away.
Apr 7, 08: Gorillas in zoos around the nation, particularly males and those in their 20s and 30s, have been falling ill — and sometimes dying suddenly —-from progressive heart ailments ranging from aneurisms to valvular disease to cardiomyopathy.
. . Just two months before deaths at the National Zoo, the San Francisco Zoo had lost a lowland gorilla named Pogo to heart disease. A week before that, the Memphis Zoo lost one named Tumai the same way. And in previous years, there were others: Akbar at the Toledo Zoo in 2005, and in 2000 both Sam at the Knoxville Zoo and Michael at the Gorilla Foundation in California.
. . Now, zookeepers are scrambling to understand what factors may be causing the illnesses and what might be done to save the 368 lowland gorillas that currently reside in 52 zoos across North America.
. . 41% —-and 70% of males older than 30-— were from heart disease, mainly fibrosing cardiomyopathy.
. . Ellen Dierenfeld, a gorilla nutritionist at the St. Louis Zoo, says that a member of the ginger family, Aframomum melegueta, is a staple food of western lowland gorillas in their native environments. Some scientists say Aframomum is a powerful antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal and anti-inflammatory "natural drug", which may serve as a preventive medicine for the gorillas. But this and other native African plants are often not part of zoo gorillas' daily diets.
Apr 7, 08: Millions of people could face poverty, disease and hunger as a result of rising temperatures and changing rainfall expected to hit poor countries the hardest, the World Health Organization warned.
. . Malaria, diarrhea, malnutrition and floods cause an estimated 150,000 deaths annually, with Asia accounting for more than half. Malaria-carrying mosquitoes represent the clearest sign that global warming has begun to impact human health. Warmer weather means that mosquitoes' breeding cycles are shortening, allowing them to multiply at a much faster rate. The exceptionally high number cases in Asia of dengue fever, which is also spread by mosquitoes, could be due to rising temperatures and rainfall, but Omi said more study is needed.
. . In the Marshall Islands and South Pacific island nations, rising sea levels have already penetrated low-lying areas, submerging arable land and causing migrations to New Zealand or Australia, he said.
. . Omi said poorer countries with meager resources and weak health systems will be hit hardest because malnutrition is already widespread, with the young, women and the elderly at particular risk.
. . He said unusual, unexpected climate patterns —-too much rain or too little-— will have an impact on food production, especially irrigated crops such as rice, and can cause unemployment, economic upheavals and political unrest.
Apr 3, 08: Deal With Your Mild Autism. Einstein likely had it. Mozart, too. Even BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen. No wonder Asperger's —-a mild form of autism-— is known as the geek syndrome. If you feel awkward in social situations, have obsessive-compulsive tendencies, and are overly sensitive, you may have it as well. Although therapy is the best treatment, there are a few tricks for keeping your weirdness in check. More than 95% of Aspies are male.
. . People with Asperger's tend to look down when talking with others. Try to keep your head up and maintain eye contact. This will keep you and your conversation-partner more engaged with one another.
. . People with Asperger's tend to obsess, spending hours or days on a single project. Use a timer or some auditory signal to let you know when to move on.
Apr 3, 08: Several strains of bacteria in the soil can make a meal of the world's most potent antibiotics, researchers said, in a startling finding that illustrates the extent to which these germ-fighting drugs are losing the war against superbugs.
. . A study of soil microbes taken from 11 sites uncovered bacteria that could withstand antibiotics 50 times stronger than the standard for bacterial resistance. "It certainly was very surprising to us", said George Church, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School. "Many bacteria in many different soil isolates can not only tolerate antibiotics, they can actually live on them as their sole source of nutrition."
. . The bacteria were not known to attack humans, but some were close relatives, such as group of bacteria that infect people with cystic fibrosis, and Serratia marcescens, which can cause blood infections in people with compromised immune systems.
. . Church said the finding underscores the extent to which bacteria have developed resistance to antibiotics, a process that started almost as soon as penicillin was introduced in the 1940s. Overuse and misuse of antibiotics have since fueled the rise of drug-resistant superbugs.
Apr 11, 08: The only U.S. facility allowed to research the highly contagious foot-and-mouth disease experienced several accidents with the feared virus, the Bush administration acknowledged.
Apr 9, 08: Pfizer Inc and Nektar Therapeutics said clinical trials of the inhaled insulin Exubera found increased cases of lung cancer, leading Nektar to stop seeking a marketing partner for the troubled product and abandon it.
Apr 9, 08: Alex Koehne had a love for life, and always wanted to help people. So when his parents were told that their 15-year-old son was dying of bacterial meningitis, the couple didn't hesitate in donating his organs to desperately ill transplant recipients. "I immediately said, `Let's do it'", Jim Koehne recalled. "We both thought it was a great idea. This is who Alex was."
. . A year later, their dream that Alex's spirit might somehow live on has become a nightmare. It turned out that Alex did not die of bacterial meningitis, but rather a rare form of lymphoma that wasn't found until his autopsy, and apparently spread to the organ recipients. The Long Island couple was told that two of the recipients have died, and two others had the donor kidneys removed and are getting cancer treatment.
. . The revelation has led two hospitals to revise transplant procedures, although the state Health Department found that no one was to blame. Experts say the possibility of getting cancer from an organ donor is extremely rare: Only 64 cases have been identified in a national study of 230,000 cases.
Apr 2, 08: Premature babies may be more prone to developing autism than babies that grow to term before birth, according to a preliminary Boston study. About one-quarter of babies born very prematurely have signs of autism on an early screen.
Apr 2, 08: Scientists have found important genetic differences between people that may help explain why some smokers get lung cancer and others do not. Three teams from France, Iceland and the US said they had pinpointed a region of the genome containing genes that can put smokers at even greater risk of contracting the killer disease. In all three studies, nicotine appears a major culprit.
. . Smoking causes nine out of 10 cases of lung cancer. Yet only about 15% of smokers actually develop the condition.
Mar 31, 08: Three more genes that raise bowel cancer risk, including one affecting only some races, have been identified. "This is the first time that a race-specific effect has been found for a genetic marker." UK scientists found one of the genes increased risk in people of European descent, but not Japanese.
. . With four gene mutations already linked to the cancer, scientists hope to work on ways to predict people at high risk. They hope eventually to diagnose the disease earlier, or prevent it completely in some people.
Mar 30, 08: Scientists are scanning human DNA with a precision and scope once unthinkable and rapidly finding genes linked to cancer, arthritis, diabetes and other diseases.
. . It's a payoff from a landmark achievement completed five years ago —-the identification of all the building blocks in the human DNA. Follow-up research and leaps in DNA-scanning technology have opened the door to a flood of new reports about genetic links to disease. On a single day in February, for example, three separate research groups reported finding several genetic variants tied to the risk of getting prostate cancer. And over the past year or so, scientists have reported similar results for conditions ranging from heart attack to multiple sclerosis to gallstones. The list even includes restless legs syndrome.
. . Simply finding the genes that can raise the risk of an illness doesn't mean you can prevent the disease. And developing a treatment for it can take years. But there have been some payoffs already.
. . Most genetic variants found in the genome scans boost a person's risk by around 50%. If the disease risk is fairly low, that's "not something you'd lose much sleep over", Watson said. More useful, he said, is the notion of finding variants in maybe a half-dozen genes that affect the risk for a disease, then testing a person for all of them at once to come up with a more powerful indicator.
. . Earlier this year, for example, Swedish researchers reported preliminary evidence that men with four or five particular gene variants ran more than four times the risk of getting prostate cancer than men with none of them. When family history was factored in, such a combined test could identify men who ran a nine-fold higher risk.
Mar 30, 08: Scientists in Japan have designed artificial molecules that when used with rats successfully reversed liver cirrhosis, a serious chronic disease in humans that until now can only be cured by transplants.
U.S. and European scientists have found six more genes that make people more susceptible to developing type 2 diabetes, in a study they say may help prevent and treat the chronic condition.