Rats with severe strokes recovered function following intravenous injections of stem-like cells obtained from circulating human blood — a finding that points to another potential cell therapy for stroke.
The study, by researchers at the University of South Florida Center for Aging and Brain Repair, appears in today’s issue of the journal Cell Transplantation.
The human blood donors were injected with granulocyte stimulating factor (G-CSF) to stimulate the release of stem-like c
Scientists used a stimulation technique to improve the sensitivity of people’s fingertips, and then gave them drugs that either doubled or deleted this effect. Similar skin stimulation/drug treatment combinations may eventually help the elderly or stroke victims button shirts and aid professional pianists according to the authors of a paper appearing in the 04 July issue of the journal Science, published by AAAS, the science society.
Finger stimulations and drugs can temporarily reorgan
A lot of people suffer from herpes for all their lives. The herpes simplex virus (Type 1) constantly inhabits the organism revealing its presence from time to time. Once highly active anti- herpes drugs were developed (acyclovir and phosofonoacetic acids), the virus responded with new forms resistant to theses drugs. The Belorus researchers from the State Scientific Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, Ministry of Health, Republic of Belorus, and the Institute of Photobiology, Nationa
An increasing number of doctors and other health experts have been encouraging older adults to rise from their recliners and go for a walk, a bike ride, a swim, or engage in just about any other form of physical activity as a defense against the potentially harmful health consequences of a sedentary lifestyle.
“Exercise is touted as a panacea for older adults,” said Jeffrey Woods, a kinesiology professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who noted that fitness programs are
A Los Alamos National Laboratory researcher and her colleagues have found that people with less common types of proteins on their white blood cells seem to mount a better immune response against the Human Immunodeficiency Virus – the virus that causes AIDS – and tend to fight progression of the disease better than people with common white blood cell proteins.
The research, presented in the July issue of Nature Medicine, eventually might help researchers better understand and exploit potenti
Discovery offers ‘new hope to patients by paving the way for future therapies that will change the course of hepatitis’
A protein molecule that contributes to the severity of chronic viral hepatitis in humans, and which may also be implicated in SARS, has been identified by a team of scientists from Toronto General and St. Michael’s Hospitals. This data is published in the July 1 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
The protein, called Fgl2/fibroleukin prothr
Scientists believe that they are an important step nearer to success in creating an artificial egg from the combination of the nucleus of a somatic cell and an oocyte which has had its DNA-carrying nucleus removed, a conference of international fertility experts heard today (Tuesday 1 July).
Dr Peter Nagy, from Reproductive Biology Associates, Atlanta, collaborating with the University of Connecticut, USA, told the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology annual conference that
As premature infants often have under-developed lungs, oxygen is administered following birth. One devastating side effect, however, is the development of retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), whereupon oxygen administration to the infant suppresses the expression of essential growth factors that promote the development of retinal blood vessels, resulting in blindness. In the July 1 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, a study by researchers at Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospit
Research News in the Journal of Pathology
Doctors working near to the first outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) Guangdong, China, have just published the first histopathological description of the effects of this viral infection in the Journal of Pathology.
Basing their findings on autopsies of three people who died of SARS, Dr Yanqing Ding and his colleagues showed the virus causes extensive disruption throughout the body.
The main pathological cha
A research study under way at Northwestern Memorial Hospital is trying to find out if the popular anti-inflammatory drug Celebrex might do more than ease arthritis pain. Researchers at Northwestern Memorial are enrolling patients with early stage head and neck cancers or non-small cell lung cancers in a research study to see if Celebrex reduces the return of old tumors or the chance of getting a new cancer when taken after surgery or radiation treatments.
The double-blind, randomized study
Injections of a stimulant agent into rat brains expanded blood vessels and improved blood flow, a finding that may lead to a new, non-invasive way to prevent stroke, researchers reported in today’s rapid access issue of Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.
Rats treated with the growth-promoting substance granulocyte macrophage-colony stimulating factor (GM-CSF) had almost twice as much arteriogenesis, the expansion of a brain artery, after one week compared to rats given s
A strain of E. coli that causes severe, sometimes deadly, intestinal problems relies on signals from beneficial human bacteria and a stress hormone to infect human cells, a researcher at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas has discovered.
The finding, which will appear online today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could lead to the development of beta blockers as a therapy to impede this cellular signaling system, causing the harmful bacteria to pass blindly through t
A novel method of preserving sperm through air drying is showing initial promise and has the potential to revolutionize sperm storage, allowing men awaiting in vitro fertilization (IVF) to take care of their sperm at home.
Dr Daniel Imoedemhe, a consultant in reproductive medicine and endocrinology, working in Saudi Arabia, told the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology, that for the first time studies on human embryos fertilized with air-dried sperm ha
The Royal Academy of Engineering sponsored a UK technology mission to Japan on behalf of the DTI’s International Technology Service, to investigate recent developments in tissue engineering and related advanced technologies. The Mission team, comprising a number of high-level experts visited Japan from 7 to 12 April. On 30 June, team leader Professor David Williams FREng, and the rest of the mission’s team, will outline the results of their visit at the Royal Academy of Engineering in London. Several
Pretreating transplanted livers with the immune molecule interleukin-6 (IL-6) dramatically increased survival of rats receiving organs with fatty degeneration–a common condition in humans that typically reduces transplant viability. The results suggest a means of making it possible to use a higher percentage of available donor livers for transplantation in humans. With over three times as many Americans needing transplants as there are available donor livers, an effective approach to increasing the
High-Tech Device Allows Quadriplegic Man to Take Medication Without a Nurse’s Help
Four Johns Hopkins undergraduates have a designed and constructed a computer-guided pill dispensing machine that will enable a quadriplegic man to lead a more independent life. Using a mouth stick, Robert Arthur Williams will be able to order one of up to 12 different medications stored inside the machine. Then, when Williams taps a “slam switch” (he has limited mobility in his right arm), the mac
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