Researchers have identified a gene in mosquitoes that helps the insects to fight off infection by the Plasmodium parasite, which causes malaria in humans. Anopheles mosquitoes transmit the malaria parasite to nearly 550 million people worldwide each year with these cases resulting in more than 2 million deaths annually. The protective gene was identified in a study conducted by a team of investigators from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Malaria Research Institute, the Im
Folk and herbal remedies are often used in the hope that they will prevent the common cold or reduce the severity and duration of symptoms. Yet, few of these compounds are evaluated scientifically.
In this study Predy and colleagues randomized 323 study subjects to receive a proprietary ginseng ( Panax quinquefolius ) preparation or a placebo and followed them for 4 months during the winter (September to April). Using predetermined criteria to determine if subject-reported symp
Clinically annotated results are publicly available online
The International Genomics Consortium’s (IGC) Expression Project for Oncology (expO) today announced that it has collected its 1,000th frozen cancer specimen, which exceeds original expectations for the project while marking a milestone that is recognized by researchers, industry and academia. Gene expression analysis with clinical information on hundreds of these specimens is now publicly available online.
Many baffled parents have wondered whether their teenagers would ever stop growing. The answer is obvious, but researchers have never really quite understood just how an organism determines when it has reached its optimal size and growth should cease.
Now University of Washington biologists studying the physiology of Drosophila melanogaster, the common fruit fly, have discovered an organ that assesses the size of the juvenile and signals when it has reached a critical weight t
Sildenafil citrate (Viagra), a drug used to treat erectile dysfunction (ED) in millions of men, reduces the stimulatory effects of hormonal stress on the heart by half, according to results of a new study by researchers at Johns Hopkins.
While sildenafil is more widely known for helping genital blood vessels expand to maintain an erection and, more recently, as a treatment for pulmonary hypertension, it has been thought to have little direct effect on the human heart.
In
Across the animal kingdom, individuals face choices between patience and impulsivity. A classic case, confronted by all animals–humans included–is that between a small, immediate food reward and a delayed, but larger, reward. In such cases, impulsivity typically trumps patience as individuals fail to delay gratification. But what factors influence these decisions? Researchers have gained new insight into this question by showing that the particular ways in which animals exhibit patience and im
Electronic medical records are touted as a great way to prevent medical errors, but researchers are reporting that this new technology may also be just what the doctor ordered for clinical trial recruitment.
A new study led by Peter Embi, MD, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Cincinnati (UC) and researcher at UC’s Institute for the Study of Health, shows that by using the tools of an electronic medical record system in a new way, it’s possible to increa
An EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne) team led by professor Melody Swartz has demonstrated for the first time that the presence of very slow biological flows affects the extracellular environment in ways that are critical for tissue formation and cell migration. Their results will appear online the week of October 24 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
A major challenge for tissue engineering is to identify the essential environmental ingredients that
Over the past ten years, separate outbreaks of the deadly Zaire strain of Ebola virus (ZEBOV) have killed hundreds of humans and tens of thousands of great apes in Gabon and the Republic of Congo–which harbor roughly 80% of the last remaining wild gorilla and chimpanzee populations. In a new study, Peter Walsh, Roman Biek, and Leslie Real combined genetic data with information on the timing and location of past ZEBOV outbreaks to support the hypothesis that a “consistently moving wave of ZEBOV inf
A Mayo Clinic allergist and colleagues representing the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology and the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology announce they are revising the old classification of asthma patients by disease severity to determine treatment and moving to a new expectation for all asthma patients: excellent symptom control. Complete or total control is also a realistic goal for a subset of patients, according to new guidelines for treating asthma published in t
About one out of 30 chemotherapy orders at three ambulatory infusion clinics had errors, and one in 50 orders had a serious error, according to a study appearing in the December 1, 2005 issue of CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society. The study, performed at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, found most but not all errors were detected before they reached the patient. None was life-threatening or caused patient harm. Still, an accompanying editorial says the study undersco
There is another use for botulinum toxin which has brought relief to some who suffer from migraines and eye spasms. Botulinum toxin can also successfully treat intense facial pain called trigeminal neuralgia, according to a study published in the October 25, 2005, issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
Trigeminal neuralgia is a disorder characterized by sudden, severe, stabbing, or shock-like pain usually felt on one side of the jaw or che
The world’s major rice-producing countries – including the two most populous nations, China and India – have emphasized the importance of continuing to develop new rice varieties to guarantee Asia’s food security and support the region’s economic development.
Rice helps feed almost half Earth’s population on a daily basis, and just as important provides vital employment and income for billions of poor people, most of them in Asia. But, at a recent meeting in Indonesia of the regio
A study in youth who are missing part of a chromosome is further implicating a suspect gene in schizophrenia. Youth with this genetic chromosomal deletion syndrome already had a nearly 30-fold higher-than-normal risk of schizophrenia, but those who also had one of two common versions of the suspect gene had worse symptoms. They were more prone to cognitive decline, psychosis and frontal lobe tissue loss by late adolescence, when schizophrenia symptoms begin to emerge, found the study, which was
The parts of the genetic make-up that are thought to determine an individual’s maximum possible longevity, so-called telomeres, are inherited from the father but not the mother. This is shown by a research team at Umeå University in the coming issue of the U.S. scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Telomeres are genetic material with repetitive content at the ends of DNA, and their main function is believed to be to protect the rest of the genetic
The expression of two specific genes is almost completely downregulated in ovarian cancer tumours. An extensive analysis of gene expression in ovarian cancer tumour cells has revealed this important finding, which should be an aid to early diagnosis. The insights gained by the research at the Medical University of Vienna with the support of the Austrian Science Fund FWF are also central to a recently launched EU project aimed at optimising ovarian cancer diagnosis.
Some 63,000
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