The bacterium, Helicobacter pylori, which infects the stomach, causes duodenal ulcer disease and is thought to cause stomach cancer. The question of why the bacteria are only found in the stomach has puzzled scientists for many years. Researchers at the Conway Institute and the Children’s Research Centre at Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children, Dublin in collaboration with workers at The National Centre for Sensor Research, Dublin City University and The University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK have di
Moscow researchers have solved the most challenging problem: they made E. coli synthesize one of the most toxic elements of cobra’s poison. It was no simpler a task than keeping a terrarium. The scientists’ efforts were supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research and INTAS.
Natural poisons have always been an attraction for researchers, but it is very hard to study them as poisons are multi-componential and each of them affects cells in its own specific way. Such are alpha-neuroto
Findings presented at the annual meeting of the American Urological Association (AUA) indicate that prostate cancer could be detected as many as five years earlier than it is currently being diagnosed by testing for a protein in tissue that indicates the presence of early disease. The University of Pittsburgh researchers suggest that testing for the protein, called early prostate cancer antigen (EPCA), could serve as an adjunct to the current diagnostic approach to patients with elevated levels of pr
Fox Chase Cancer Center researchers have demonstrated the ability to identify kidney cancer, including localized (stage I) cancer, in the urine of affected patients. What’s more, urine tests were repeated following the removal of the cancerous kidney and none of the tests showed DNA evidence of disease. These research findings were presented at the American Urological Association Annual Meeting May 8-13, 2004 in San Francisco.
As with other cancers, an early diagnosis of kidney cancer
The body’s own defences could be programmed to attack disease to order if two University of Leeds’ scientists succeed in proving their innovative theory.
Dr Graham Cook and Dr Erica de Wynter from the Molecular Medicine Unit have secured £125,000 to investigate the unique way antibody genes are assembled and how they can be harnessed to fight disease.
Scientists don’t often get funding for research where there is no preliminary data or background information but the pair have been f
New research in two papers published this week in The Journal of Pathology gives greater insight into why the virus is so deadly, and shows that it could transfer from person to person via breath, urine, faeces and even sweat.
Searching for SARS
Scientists in China used markers that only bind to SARS-CoV to analyse tissues from four people who had died of the infection. They found the virus in the lungs, trachea/bronchus, stomach, small intestine, distal convoluted renal tubu
A review article in this week’s issue of THE LANCET discusses how autoantibody detection in the blood of healthy individuals could have potential as a marker for future autoimmune diseases such as Rheumatoid arthritis and Lupus syndrome.
Hal Scofield from the Oklahoma Research Foundation, USA, discusses recent evidence suggesting that autoantibodies (antibodies that attack the body’s own tissue) are often apparent several years before an illness becomes manifest. He cites recent research am
Further research will explore extent of genes’ role in sudden cardiac death
Imagine walking down the street, collapsing without warning and dying within minutes. According to the American Heart Association, about 250,000 Americans suffer sudden cardiac death each year, and half of them may have no prior warning. And, in 5 to 10 percent of all cases, these sudden cardiac deaths remain unexplained since the heart may have no visible abnormality.
In an effort to explore if
MRI can effectively detect cancers missed by mammography and physical examination, but cancers can have some surprising characteristics on the MR image, a new study shows.
The study included 59 women with 65 cancers that were not detected by physical examination or on a mammogram, said Lia Bartella, MD, assistant professor of radiology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. The classic criteria for cancer on an MR image is a mass that looks bright after contrast media is inje
Researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center are describing an entirely new way by which cells can become cancerous. And they say their finding provides an answer to a mystery in lung and other cancers: why a potent tumor suppressor gene called FUS1 functions as it should, yet none of the protein it produces can be found anywhere in a cancer cell.
In the May issue of Cancer Research, Advances in Brief, the investigators report that protective proteins made by FUS1 are
One of the unfortunate side effects of bone marrow and stem cell transplantation is that the newly implanted cells often stage an internal attack against the patient they’re intended to help. Stanford University School of Medicine researchers now have a better grasp of this phenomenon, known as graft-versus-host disease, or GVHD, and have proposed a possible method of prevention: simple ultraviolet light.
In a new animal study, researchers identified the principal culprit in GVHD: an i
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) currently afflicts approximately 4.5 million Americans. One of the most feared diseases of old age, AD robs its victims of their memories and personalities long before it takes their lives. Curing or slowing the progress of AD has been a high priority in the scientific community, but an early and accurate diagnosis is equally important given that several other forms of dementia display the same symptoms as AD, especially in the early stages.
A promising breakth
Parkinson’s disease was first described in 1817 by the London physician James Parkinson. A great amount of research has been carried out since that time but the fundamental causes of the disease remain unresolved. Some time ago now researchers found that a neurotransmitter, dopamine, played a key role in this illness. This is why the majority of treatments used today to counter Parkinson’s increase the level of dopamine in the brain exciting the receptors of this neurotransmitter.
Animal
There is little, if any, evidence that adult stem cells can build other cells in an adult organism than those formed in the organs they themselves come from. At any rate, blood stem cells do not convert to heart muscle cells in a damaged heart, which was previously hoped. This has been shown by a research team from the Stem Cell Center at Lund University in Sweden in an article in Nature Medicine.
During the end of the 1990s and early 2000s scientists nourished great hopes that adult stem ce
The overproduction, or ‘overexpression’, of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) is one of the most common aberrations in cancer, and subsequently agents that inhibit EGFR are among the most hotly-pursued potential products in the pharmaceutical industry. Now, just weeks after one of the first anti-EGFR antibodies, ImClone’s Erbitux (Cetuximab), was approved for use in Europe and the USA, a ‘second generation’ anti-EGFR antibody is set to enter early-phase clinical trials in Australia. In two
A drug that suppresses the immune system delays the onset of AIDS in patients with HIV, according to a study published this week in BMC Medicine. Prednisolone, taken without any antiviral therapy, postponed the loss of T-cells that leads to AIDS in 50% of HIV sufferers by between 2 and 10 years.
HIV leads to a complex disorder that combines an initial chronic activation of the immune system with a progressive decrease in the number of CD4+ T cells, which are involved in the immune response.
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