Scientists have discovered a protein that controls the amount of fat stored in the body, offering new clues for obesity treatments.
The research, published in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows how the protein regulates the activity of a key gene responsible for maintaining the body’s temperature, called uncoupling protein 1 (UCP1).
The new protein, called RIP140, blocks the expression of UCP1, and causes the body to use up more energy and sto
Perfusion CT useful for strokes, clogged carotid arteries, some brain tumors
It’s a no-brainer that the brain needs a constant supply of blood to keep it going. But some medical conditions can block or reduce that life-giving flow. Whether it’s a stroke, a clogged artery or a brain tumor, any situation where blood can’t get to the whole brain can lead to death or permanent disability. And it’s often hard for doctors to tell just where blood is — or isn’t — g
Depression and post-traumatic stress disorder “remain a significant public health concern” three years after the 1999 NATO campaign in Serbia, according to an article published this week in BMC Medicine. Refugees and people living in remote areas are particularly vulnerable to suffering from mental health problems. Almost half the people questioned had symptoms of depression and more than one in eight had symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). American researchers teamed
It is more convenient to glue parts together than to suture them. Even surgeons agree to that. They only need a good adhesive. Siberian researchers have created the third generation bio-adhesive and successfully tested it on animals.
Surgery is steadily improving methods for joining of slit parts. To solve the problem, biological adhesives were recently used. More often physicians use chemical compounds based on alpha cyanoacrylates, which do not provoke allergy or stimulate tumorogenesis. T
Two years after transforming human fat cells into what appeared to be nerve cells, a group led by Duke University Medical Center researchers has gone one step further by demonstrating that these new cells also appear to act like nerve cells.
The team said that the results of its latest experiments provide the most compelling scientific evidence to date that researchers will in the future be able to take cells from a practically limitless source — fat — and retrain them to differentiate al
USC researchers provide unique view of inherited disorders, cancer with discussion of new field of epigenetics in journal Nature
Researchers from the USC/Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center are heralding an entirely new approach to the treatment of aging, inherited diseases and cancer in a review paper published in today’s issue of the journal Nature. Dispelling the belief that the only way to treat such conditions is by fixing or replacing damaged genes, they are instead focusing
EUREKA project E! 2427 PERMON is developing a radiological imaging system that will give medics a clearer view inside the human body by accurately monitoring organ blood flow during operations. This essential information will lead to an increase in techniques such as laser surgery over more invasive methods. Operations will be less costly and less traumatic to the patient, involving smaller incisions, less pain, and shorter hospital stays.
The project brought together a range of Polish and A
Researchers have combined novel molecular targeting technologies to deliver gene-silencing therapy specifically to tumor cells shielded by a normally impermeable obstacle, the blood brain barrier.
In the June 1 issue of the journal Clinical Cancer Research, William Pardridge, M.D., UCLA, reported that a delivery packet equipped with two specific antibodies first recognizes the transferrin receptor, a key protein portal in the blood brain barrier, and then gains entry into brain cancer cells
Alzheimer’s disease could be caused by the deactivation of what are known as “presenilin genes”. Using mice as a model for the study of Alzheimer’s in humans, a scientific team headed by the researcher Carlos Saura, from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, has discovered that when these genes mutate and stop working they cause neuro-degeneration and memory loss, giving rise to what in humans would be Alzheimer’s. The discovery, published in Neuron, is totally unexpected, since up till now it was
Researchers from Newcastle University in the UK have ended a 15-year search for the gene that causes the rare Cornelia de Lange Syndrome. (CdLS).
CdLS affects just one in 40,000 live births but can be devastating, with affected youngsters having growth problems, missing or deformed limbs, gastro-intestinal disorders, seizures, cardiac problems, neurological, learning and behavioural difficulties and oro-dental issues.
Doctors in the USA and Europe knew that there was likely to be a rogue
Investigators from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, have conducted studies in mice to gain a new picture of how the immune system’s “killer” T cells are prompted to destroy infected cells. Their insights provide a blueprint for rational design of vaccines that induce desired T-cell responses.
The findings are published in this week’s Science. “If we are correct, what we’ve found will put rational vac
Scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center say they have evidence that abnormally short telomeres – the end-caps on chromosomes that normally preserve genetic integrity -appear to play a role in the early development of many types of cancer.
“Cancer researchers have debated whether shortened telomeres were a cause or effect of tumors,” says Alan K. Meeker, Ph.D., lead author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow in urology and pathology at Hopkins. “What our study suggests is tha
Computer model shows why some get sick after TB infection, while others don’t
University of Michigan microbiologists have created a virtual model of the human immune system that runs “in silico” to study what happens inside the lungs after people inhale Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium that causes TB.
The computer model is helping scientists learn more about this ancient pathogen, and why some people are able to fight off the infection, while others get sick. U
A vaccine against allergies. This may be the eventual result of research at Uppsala university in Sweden. New findings are presented by Anna Ledin in her doctoral dissertation. She vaccinated dogs and rats against their own IgE antibodies, and shows that their allergic symptoms diminished.
The type of antibody called IgE is part of the body’s defense against parasites, but today it is best known for its key role in allergic reactions. IgE is what brings about an allergic reaction. Normally i
Periconceptional use of folic acid supplements is effective for the primary prevention of neural-tube defects and is recommended by reproductive health researchers
Recent research in this area, however, centres on two main debated questions. The first one is whether the use of folic acid alone or folic acid-containing multivitamins is better. The second one is whether high dose of folic acid (e.g. 5 mg) might be better than a daily multivitamin with low dose 0.4 – 0.8 mg of folic acid
The fact that a newborn baby can experience pain has previously been taken as evidence that pain reflexes are inborn, not learned. This is because the baby in the womb has been protected from everything that could cause pain and should therefore not have been able to learn what pain is. But according to a team of scientists at Lund University, Sweden, headed by Professor Jens Schouenborg, the tactile feeling of fetal movements in the womb is sufficient to initiate a process of learning in the undevel
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