UK research in this week’s issue of THE LANCET suggests that single-dose laser therapy could dramatically reduce inflammatory facial acne for up to 3 months.
Effective new treatments are required for people with acne; this common skin disease can be associated with social isolation, employment difficulties, and occasionally suicide. At present mild to moderate acne is treated with combinations of topical creams and oral antibiotics-treatment that is often unpopular because they need to be t
Immune system provides new clue to most life-threatening bacterium
The microbe that causes tuberculosis operates the way a human terrorist would. With minimal resources, the TB bacterium skillfully blends in and gains strength before lashing out unexpectedly. This microbe, which claims more human lives each year than any other bacterial pathogen, even uses its host’s defenses, hiding out in an immune cell called a macrophage.
Now, Rockefeller scientist John MacMicking, Ph.D., has discov
Patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) who are taking levodopa therapy – the most widely-used agent to treat the illness – may experience the effects of their medication “wearing off” sooner than their health care providers realize. New data presented Oct. 19 at the Parkinson’s Study Group meeting in San Francisco concluded that a specifically-designed patient questionnaire identified symptoms related to “wearing off” more frequently than a clinical assessment by a movement disorder specialist.
For the first time, scientists have demonstrated that an experimental vaccine to hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS), a highly lethal disease, elicits a strong neutralizing antibody response in laboratory animals – a response that is key to preventing the virus from causing infection.
In addition, the antibodies, produced in nonhuman primates that received the vaccine, protected hamsters from disease even when administered 5 days after exposure.
These findings provide proof
The signal, called Hedgehog, tells cells when and where to grow during embryonic development and is turned on in primitive cells,
Scientists at Case Western Reserve University have identified an agent that could lead to the early detection of many cancers.
The Case research team discovered that the human body increases production of the protein clusterin as a signal of cell distress and provides a reliable gauge of the general health of a cell. The findings were reported in a recent issue of the scientific journal Cancer Biology and Therapy.
“Understanding the processes that create this protein after
’Transcriptional Mutagenesis’ may contribute to neurodegenerative diseases, cancer, and aging
Two types of DNA damage that frequently befall most cells on an everyday basis can lead to the creation of damaged proteins that may contribute to neurodegeneration, aging and cancer, according to research by scientists at Emory University School of Medicine, published in the October 23 issue of the journal Molecular Cell.
The investigators used e. coli cells as a model sy
Molecular partners jagged and notch are key; a new role for the osteoblast
Just as oak barrels don’t simply hold fine wine but also play a vital role in its aging and development, scientists have discovered that bones nurture and control blood development in the bone marrow within to a profound extent.
In some sense the finding by scientists at the University of Rochester Medical Center, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital may not seem startling –
Poor bone quality in rats suggests new therapies to improve human treatment
In limited attempts with individual patients, varying surgeons have found mixed success in a method of growing new human jawbones after radiation therapy to treat head and neck cancer. While some patients have seemed to respond well to the technique, called distraction osteogenesis, others have not.
Researchers at the University of Michigan Health System are looking at how and why distraction osteoge
A homeopathic remedy made from arsenic oxide could ease the suffering of the hundreds of millions of people at risk from arsenic poisoning worldwide. Research, published this week in BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine, suggests that Arsenicum Album reduces the liver damage caused by arsenic poisoning. Arsenic contamination of groundwater is a major health problem for people from India, Bangladesh and at least fifteen other countries. Drinking arsenic contaminated well water has cause
Food is a major and underused anticancer weapon, according to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Cancer. In collaboration with the Institute of Food Research, the Group is calling for diet to be better deployed in reducing cancer risk in the UK.
“With dietary interventions, we have the potential to prevent around a third of all cancers”, according to Dr Ian Gibson MP, Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Cancer. “In the long term, we could also save some of the £2.4-3.5 billion a
By applying a new technique that combines independent lines of genomic evidence, Duke University Medical Center researchers and colleagues have identified a single gene that influences the age at which individuals first show symptoms of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.
Such genes that can impact patients’ age at onset for the two very prevalent neurological disorders are of particular interest as alternative targets for treatment, said Margaret Pericak-Vance, Ph.D., dire
Therapies for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and type II diabetes should be directed toward a new molecular culprit — the precursor to the clumps of abnormal proteins that have garnered attention for the last century.
Israeli scientists say they have solid evidence that the precursor molecules — called protofibrils — are the problem molecules in type II diabetes, and their results support a similar mechanism for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Further, they say that the current f
Shrinks tumors in some patients and reduces symptoms in others
A new anti-cancer agent designed to block the signals responsible for telling cancer cells to grow has shown promising results for patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer. The results of a double blind, randomized trial of the compound, gefinitib (Iressa), led by Dr. Mark Kris, chief of thoracic oncology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, are published in the October 22 Journal of the American Medical Ass
Results further implicate iron deposits in brain in MS impairments
The mental impairment and problems with walking experienced by patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) are linked to damage in the brain’s gray matter, with MRI findings suggesting the damage is due to toxic deposits of iron, researchers from the University at Buffalo have shown for the first time.
Previous breakthrough work by the team had linked deep gray matter iron deposits to the disease course of MS, brai
Researchers at Duke University Medical Center and elsewhere have completed the first large-scale study demonstrating sustained efficacy of a medication to treat insomnia for a period of six months.
Eszopiclone (trade name Estorra), was administered nightly to patients with chronic insomnia and led to significant improvement in patients’ ability to fall asleep and stay asleep and in the quality of their sleep without any evidence of a loss of effect over time, the researchers said. Prio
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