A study on mice suggests that a type of stem cells found in blood vessels may someday be able to regenerate wasting muscle in muscular dystrophy (MD) patients.
The authors caution that more research must be done before researchers consider applying these findings to humans. Nonetheless, their results provide a possible new direction for efforts that have met largely with frustration thus far. The study appears in the journal Science, published by AAAS, the science society.
For the first time, African Heads of State, the UN, the World Bank, DFID, The Global Fund, The Gates Foundation and other powerful actors are due to place HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis at the centre of their agenda in an open forum with the rest of the world.
In July 2003, the second annual Summit of the African Union will take place in Maputo to mark the changing of chairmanship from President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, to President Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique. This event
Doctors treating lung failure need to focus on the whole patient to improve the chance of patient survival. Research published on 9th July in Critical Care shows that the survival rate of patients admitted to hospital with lung failure alone is good, but diminishes if other vital organs fail.
Hans Flaatten and colleagues carried out the 30-month study on intensive care unit (ICU) patients at the Haukeland University Hospital, Norway. They followed 529 patients diagnosed with acute respirator
Difficulties that children with autism have in pointing and showing objects to other people may emerge from earlier problems with simple face-to-face interaction, according to new research sponsored by the ESRC.
Findings from a two-year study led by Dr Susan Leekam, of the Department of Psychology, University of Durham, could be important for understanding the early language and communication problems found in these children.
Dr Leekam said: “We have known for a long time that chil
Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, in collaboration with investigators at five other centers, have finished sequencing human chromosome 7. The findings are published in the July 10 issue of the journal Nature.
Chromosome 7 is the largest human chromosome to be sequenced so far. The analysis revealed that the chromosome has about 1,150 genes and 940 so-called pseudogenes, stretches of DNA that closely resemble genes but contain some genetic change that prev
Agenix Limited [ASX:AGX, NASDAQ: AGXLY] today announced it had made a significant breakthrough in the detection of blood clots at Royal Brisbane Hospital.
Agenix’s blood clot imaging agent ThromboView® successfully detected a Deep Vein Thrombosis (blood clot in the leg) of a patient as part of a Phase 1b clinical trial.
“This is a very pleasing result,” said Dr David Macfarlane, co-investigator of the ThromboView® trial. “The medical world has been eagerly seeking a better meth
Scientists investigating the rise in asthma among Britain’s children have turned to the tooth fairy to help them in their research.
Over the last six years staff at the Children of the 90s project based at the University of Bristol have collected almost 12 thousand milk teeth.
Instead of putting them under the pillow – the children were asked to donate the teeth to the study. Inside the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), real-life tooth fairy K
A non-invasive test which allows faster, cheaper, and less risky prenatal genetic screening was announced by Australian researchers at the International Genetics Congress in Melbourne today.
The new test can also be performed much earlier in pregnancy, say its developers Dr Ian Findlay and Mr Darryl Irwin of the Australian Genome Research Facility in Brisbane. It should open the opportunity of prenatal genetic testing to a wider group of women. “This test will focus conventional prenatal te
The problem is, pigs and other animals do fly
A consortium of scientists from the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society announced this week that one way to reduce the risks of future SARS-like diseases is to control wildlife markets. Specifically, markets selling wild animals for their meat not only threaten wildlife populations, but also present a grave threat to humans. A recent example of the problem is the suspected link between wildlife markets in China and the outbreak of
Researchers have developed a promising new approach for gene therapy of inherited blood disorders that may help overcome therapeutically limiting human stem cell gene transfer efficiency. This method would be applicable to patients with beta-thalassemia, a potentially life-threatening blood disease, as well as other genetic blood disorders, according to a study published in the July 15th issue of Blood. By transplanting beta-thalassemic mice with stem cells treated with MGMT (methylguanine methyltran
Researchers have new answers as to why some HIV-infected individuals don’t progress to full-blown AIDS as rapidly as other HIV-positive people.
Northwestern University scientist Steven M. Wolinsky, M.D., and colleagues found that individuals with certain rare variations, or alleles, of two immune system genes — human leukocyte antigens A and B (HLA-A and HLA-B) — are better equipped to stave off HIV than people with more common sets of HLA alleles.
This finding indic
HIV inactivates the body’s cellular smart bomb
HIV eludes one of the body’s key smart bomb defenses against infection, and this finding may lay the groundwork for new drugs to treat AIDS, according to a new Salk Institute study.
Nathaniel Landau, a Salk Institute associate professor, and his team have pinpointed how the body battles HIV, a tremendously complex and relentless virus. Their findings appear in the online issue of Cell and will be published in the July
First evidence of neurochemical basis for obstructive sleep apnea and REM behavior disorder found
The first tantalizing clues that chemical imbalances in the brain may be partly to blame for certain life-disrupting sleep disorders are being reported in two new studies by University of Michigan Health System researchers.
In two papers in the July 8 issue of the journal Neurology, the team reports apparent links between deficits in brain chemistry and obstructive sleep apnea (
A better life is in reach for children with a rare genetic disorder that puts their lives at risk when exposed to the Sun. But a new protection suit derived from ESA space technology promises to let them play safely in daylight.
About 300 people – mostly children – across Europe have been diagnosed with the genetic disorder xeroderma pigmentosum (XP), causing extreme sensitivity to the Sun’s ultraviolet (UV) rays. Patients cannot go outside in daylight, except with special protection – all U
An article in Journal of Physics B, published on 7 July 2003 by the Institute of Physics, reports on a new technique which could in future help scientists working in rational drug design (a way of tailoring a new drug to fit the structure of the protein it targets) to develop drugs more efficiently. The work, which was on a molecule called stella-2,6-dione, was a collaboration between colleagues at three Australian universities (Flinders, Swinburne and ANU), the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial
HRT could be used to protect younger postmenopausal women from heart disease. An article published in the journal Lipids in Health and Disease shows that estrogens commonly used in HRT reduce the build up of harmful oxidised lipoproteins, which can lead to heart disease, by acting as antioxidants.
It is well known that high-density lipoproteins (HDL) protect against heart disease while low-density lipoproteins (LDL) promote it. However, recent research has shown that the relationship is not
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