Health and Medicine

Scientists at UCL have developed a drug to treat a serious medical condition linked to Alzheimer`s disease and type 2 diabetes. The research, supported by the Medical Research Council (MRC) and reported in NATURE, is the culmination of 25 years of basic and clinical research and the UCL scientists hope that it may be the key to the treatment of other serious diseases.

Crucially, Professor Mark Pepys and his team have managed for the first time to remove from the human body a naturally occurr

A dose of heavy housework will meet new recommended targets for daily physical activity levels, but there is no evidence that it is good for health, finds research in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. Brisk walking is a much healthier option, shows the study.

Over the past 10 years, there has been shift in policy from recommending three bouts of vigorous exercise a week to more moderate activity that fits into a daily routine. This includes housework, gardening, and DIY, on t

New research published in BMC Molecular Biology explains how a new technique for introducing genes into mammalian cells using the virus responsible for warts could be a major step forward in developing gene therapy treatments for people with familial hypercholesterolemia (FH), a genetic disease that affects around 12 million people worldwide.

People with FH have a genetic defect that prevents their liver cells from absorbing chlolesterol in the form of low density lipoprotein (LDL). This lea

Researchers in the University of Warwick’s Molecular Medicine Research Centre have found the “Bin Laden” of cancer causing faulty proteins. They have undermined the old complex model of how many cancers start and identified a single protein known as c-Myc as a “mission-critical target for effective cancer therapies.”

Fighting cancer is similar to the war against terrorism. Current cancer models suggest that a network of several cell mutations is needed to begin a cancer. Both terrorism and c

Wound healing appears generally a banal event, but in a certain proportion of cases it evolves inappropriately in hypertrophic scars resulting in skin and organ deformations. This is due to an excess of wound contraction, a phenomenon that generally helps to close the wound. Hypertrophic scarring is observed frequently in burned patients.

For the past 30 years, Professor Giulio Gabbiani and his team are interested in the role of myofibroblasts in wound contraction. Myofibroblasts, specializ

A US study in this week’s issue of THE LANCET concludes that the antibiotic azithromycin is ineffective for treating bronchitis, even though it is often prescribed by physicians for this condition.

Azithromycin is an expensive, broad-spectrum antibiotic; there is limited evidence about its effectiveness in treating bronchitis. Arthur Evans and colleagues from Cook County Hospital, Chicago, USA, investigated whether people with bronchitis given azithromycin returned to work earlier, and had