A manmade protein with a tail of amino acids delivered to target cells can dramatically reduce blood vessel growth that obstructs vision or feeds a tumor, researchers have found.
This new approach to inhibiting blood vessel growth, or angiogenesis, delivers “intraceptors” that sequester VEGF, a “linchpin” protein needed to make blood vessels, says Dr. Balamurali K. Ambati, corneal specialist at the Medical College of Georgia and corresponding author on the study.
In a t
Just six minutes of intense exercise a week could be as effective as an hour of daily moderate activity suggests new findings from researchers at McMaster University.
“Short bouts of very intense exercise improved muscle health and performance comparable to several weeks of traditional endurance training,” says Martin Gibala, an associate professor in the department of kinesiology of McMaster.
The research, which is published in the June edition of the Journal of Applie
Calcitonin, a hormone that lowers calcium levels in the blood and prevents bone loss, has only been available in an injectable and nasally-administered format to date. New research by Conway investigator, Dr David Brayden promises to ultimately deliver an oral method of treating osteoporosis patients with this hormone, which would have many advantages over current treatment regimes.
All drugs taken orally face the same problem; they must get from the gut into the bloodstream and avoid b
Consumers of organic food should be more inquisitive about its quality, if they want to make sure they get the ‘real thing’, say European experts.
A team of researchers leading a pan-European organic food project also recommends that shoppers tell retailers if they are satisfied or not with the products and the information provided on their labels.
The advice is among a series of recommendations given in three new booklets aimed at informing consumers about organic food
Biomedical engineers at Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering have created a new three-dimensional ultrasound cardiac imaging probe. Inserted inside the esophagus, the probe creates a picture of the whole heart in the time it takes for current ultrasound technology to image a single heart cross section.
The new probe has considerable potential not only for evaluating the condition of the heart, but also for use in guiding therapeutic treatment devices, the researcher
Tufts researchers recently reported that while the leading source of calories in the average American diet used to be from white bread, that may have changed. Now, according to preliminary research conducted by scientists at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University, Americans are drinking these calories instead. The research was presented in abstract form at the Experimental Biology Conference in April of this year and a more comprehensive paper is being de
In a presentation today at the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO), researchers from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center’s Biophotonics Research and Technology Development Laboratory described recent progress on a device that stimulates, collects and measures light emissions from body tissues to diagnose critical atherosclerotic plaques (vulnerable plaques) and aggressive brain tumors.
In both disease processes, early detection and precision can impact patient outcomes. Ath
Scientists at The University of Manchester have today unveiled new research which claims that going out in the midday sun, without sunscreen, is good for you.
The research, led by ultra-violet radiation expert Ann Webb, supports claims that exposing unprotected skin to the sun for short periods helps the body to produce essential Vitamin D.
Dr Webb has produced new figures which not only predict when is the best time to expose unprotected skin to the sun in order to maxim
CE Marking of Pall Filter Heralds a New Era in Transfusion Safety
The risk of receiving blood contaminated with variant Cruetzfeldt-Jakob (vCJD) prions may no longer be a concern for the thousands of people who require a transfusion. Pall Corporation (NYSE: PLL) announced today the Council of Europe (CE) marking of its Leukotrap Affinity Prion Reduction Filter System. It is the first and only technology that removes infectious prions that may be the causative agent of vCJD from r
Owing to the system now being developed at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, and that was presented this week at an international conference on biobanks, the university’s biobank will now be based on informatics as well as tissue and blood samples. The system will enable researchers to seek biobank samples linked to the vast databases of phenotype and genotype information on the individual donors and to a variety of other data sources.
The existence of large national epidemiological d
Women with breast cancer who engaged in an amount of physical activity equivalent to walking 1 or more hours per week had better survival compared with those who exercised less than that or not at all, according to a study in the May 25 issue of JAMA.
There is reason to believe that physical activity might extend survival in women with breast cancer, according to background information in the article. Physical activity has been linked to lower levels of circulating ovarian ho
The idea that your bladder shrinks as you get older may be nothing more than an old wives’ tale according to a University of Pittsburgh study. The feeling may, however, signal a treatable underlying condition. Results are to be presented today at the annual meeting of the American Urological Association (AUA) in San Antonio, and will be published in abstract 1218 in the AUA proceedings.
“Many of us, after reaching a certain age, notice that we have to urinate more frequentl
Female lung transplant recipients are significantly more likely to suffer from a type of injury to the transplanted lung called primary graft dysfunction than male lung transplant patients, according to a study to be presented at the American Thoracic Society International Conference on May 24.
The study found that female lung transplant recipients who received a lung from either a male or female donor were almost 60% more likely to suffer from primary graft dysfunction, compa
More than half of people with asthma report that their symptoms are brought on by laughter, according to a study to be presented at the American Thoracic Society International Conference on May 24.
The study of 235 patients with asthma found that 56% had laughter-induced asthma (LIA). Asthma that is triggered by laughter doesn’t seem to cause more asthma flare-ups requiring emergency room visits or hospitalizations compared with other types of asthma, according to study
Fibrosis (scar tissue formation) is the determinant lesion in the subsequent evolution of the heart in a patient with high blood pressure. This item appeared in the latest edition of Nature Clinical Practice Cardiovascular Medicine, a journal that is part of the Nature group. The article published heart research recently carried out at the University of Navarra.
When arterial blood pressure rises, we have what is known as high blood pressure and the heart becomes overloaded,
College students who get drunk at least once a week are significantly more likely to be hurt or injured than other student drinkers, according to new research from Wake Forest University School of Medicine.
The research suggests that a simple screening question – “In a typical week, how many days do you get drunk?” – may help identify at-risk students.
“Each year approximately 1,700 college students die from alcohol-related injuries,” said Mary Claire O’Brien,
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