Mayo Clinic researchers have proven for the first time that cells produced by the bone marrow can form new heart-muscle cells in adults, providing an important boost to research that could enable the body to replace heart muscle damaged by heart attack. The findings are now available online and will be published tomorrow in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.
“Until recently, the heart has been seen as an organ that cannot be healed,” says Noel Caplice, M.D., the Mayo Cli
Study shows life-threatening reactions from accidental ingestion can be avoided
A new medication could help most people with peanut allergies avoid life-threatening allergic reactions, according to a report in the March 14 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. A research team led by Donald Leung, M.D., Ph.D. of National Jewish Medical and Research Center, and Hugh Sampson, M.D. of Mount Sinai School of Medicine, found that treatment with an anti-IgE antibody raised the average
Mayo Clinic has found that for patients with eye shingles, oral antiviral drugs are critical to prevent long-term consequences in the eye. Untreated, 10 percent of eye shingles patients experience a serious long-term outcome, such as severe visual loss, eyelid scarring or chronic in-turning of the eyelashes; if treated, two percent of patients experience these effects. The Mayo Clinic study refutes the findings of a previous British study of oral antivirals in patients with eye shingles.
“T
Viral enzyme ’clear cuts’ forest of protective molecules on lung cells in mice; blocking that enzyme reduces illness and incidence of death from subsequent infection by Streptococcus pneumoniae
Investigators at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital have shown in mice how the potentially deadly cooperation between influenza virus and bacterial pneumonia infections can be foiled, even if treatment is delayed and flu virus levels in the lung have peaked.
The St.
Authors of a research letter in this week’s issue of THE LANCET highlight how screening for Down’s syndrome based on maternal age and four markers in maternal blood should be used worldwide-the quadruple test is far more effective than screening based on maternal age alone.
Screening for Down’s syndrome is widely practised early in the second trimester of pregnancy (weeks 14 to 22). The quadruple test calculates the risk of a Down’s syndrome term pregnancy from maternal age and the concentr
A close relative of a common little-understood human virus that causes an estimated 23 million episodes of intestinal illness, 50,000 hospitalizations and 300 deaths each year has been discovered in mice. The finding by scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis is reported in the March 7 issue of the journal Science.
Discovery of the new virus, known as murine norovirus 1 (MNV-1), may lead to a better understanding of its disease-causing cousins known as No
While studying mice with a mutant gene whose counterpart causes inherited glaucoma in humans, researchers have discovered a second gene mutation that worsens the structural eye defect that causes this type of glaucoma.
The newly discovered gene mutation affects production of L-DOPA. The researchers suggest that it might be feasible to prevent glaucoma by administering L-DOPA, which is used in treating Parkinson’s disease.
The researchers, led by Howard Hughes Medical Institute
UK scientists have made a major scientific advance by establishing proof of principle that the development of prion disease can be prevented in mice using monoclonal antibodies (mAbs). The work lays the foundation for further research to explore the potential of mAbs to treat specific prion diseases such as CJD and vCJD. The work is published today (6 March 2003) in Nature.
Mice in the 17 month study treated with mAbs remain clinically healthy almost a year after the untreated mice succumbed
The JNK signaling pathway allows cells to respond to changes in their extracellular environment and in doing so, controls many aspects of cell function including cell proliferation, differentiation and death. Studies have also shown that this pathway plays a role in cancer, although it has been unclear whether active JNK signaling can accelerate or protect cells from becoming cancerous. Several studies using cultured cells have suggested that JNK signaling may be important for promoting tumor cell de
Patients who have had colorectal cancer may reduce their risk of suffering a recurrence by taking an aspirin daily, according to a new study conducted by a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill physician and colleagues around the United States.
The study showed that subjects who took 325 milligrams of aspirin each day had a 35 percent lower risk of developing polyps in their colons during the period examined than did patients who received an inactive placebo. Polyps are considered pre
New work by researchers in the Kimmel Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins may allow them to halt the smoking-induced cellular events that lead to 99 percent of all small cell lung cancers (SCLC). The research is reported in the March 5, 2003, issue of Nature.
The researchers found that a primitive cellular pathway, called Sonic Hedgehog (named for the cartoon character and spiky hairs it develops on fruit flies) stays turned on long after it should be turned off in some lung cancers.
“
Defects in a protein called alphaV beta3 ntegrin appear to contribute to the development of osteoporosis, and these effects can be reversed by enhancing a protein called macrophage-colony-stimulating factor (M-CSF), according to research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
The study appears in the first March issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation and is published online March 4.
“Because of our previous research with these proteins, new drugs already
Researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) have identified a protein that leads to the development of preeclampsia, a serious and potentially life-threatening complication of pregnancy.
These findings, which could help lead to the development of diagnostic tools and therapies for this baffling condition, appear in the March 2003 issue of The Journal of Clinical Investigation.
Also known as toxemia, preeclampsia occurs in an estimated 5 percent of all pregnancies, a
New research into the origin of kidney stone formation published in the March 1 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation may well change the direction of the most basic level of research in that area.
The study, conducted at Indiana University School of Medicine, Clarian Health Partners and the University of Chicago, will dispel the current beliefs of where stone formation begins, said Andrew P. Evan, Ph.D., the article’s lead author. Dr. Evan, who is a professor of anatomy and c
Using a simple intervention, clinicians and health scientists working in Haiti successfully cut the incidence of congenital syphilis in a rural region of that impoverished nation by 75 percent — meaning that far fewer babies will inherit the dangerous illness from infected mothers.
The scientists decentralized prenatal syphilis screening, shifting blood testing from a regional hospital out to 14 community dispensaries. Those dispensaries enjoy almost none of the amenities people in develo
Researchers at Cedars-Sinai’s Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute are working to develop a non-surgical approach to brain cancer that uses radiation and the injection of specially cultured bone marrow cells into the tumor. The combination sets in motion a local and systemic immune response to kill surviving tumor cells.
The novel approach has provided promising results in a study on rats, described in the March 3 issue of the Journal of Immunotherapy. Human trials are expected to beg
Feedback
