Cytomegalovirus, hidden in most people, begins to give up secrets of its stealth
Princeton scientists have taken an important step toward understanding a virus that infects and lies dormant in most people, but emerges as a serious illness in transplant patients, some newborns and other people with weakened immune systems.
The virus, called human cytomegalovirus, enters the bone marrow and can hide there for a lifetime. Until now, however, scientists had not been able to stud
A revolutionary new test for identifying people infected with tuberculosis (TB), one of the leading causes of death worldwide, will shortly be launched by Oxford Immunotec Ltd, a new Oxford University spin-off company. The test radically improves the speed and accuracy with which the disease can be identified. It has been developed to replace the existing skin test for TB, which is given to 600,000 UK schoolchildren every year.
Oxford Immunotec’s test has come from discoveries made over
Falling asleep is usually thought of as something we can control ourselves as part of our behaviour patterns. In a new article in the December Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, Dr Bidi Evans argues that waking and sleeping is actually controlled by a physical mechanism that is ‘hard-wired’ into the brain. She suggests that evidence from people with brain damage shows that coma patients literally cannot wake up, because their waking mechanism is ‘broken’. Dr Evans recommends that sleep medicin
A researcher at Aston University in Birmingham has become the first in the UK to investigate a new type of vaccination delivery that could revolutionise how we are protected against diseases including flu, hepatitis and, most excitingly, cancer.
Dr Yvonne Perrie from the School of Life & Health Sciences has received a research grant from The Royal Society for a brand new project to investigate the potential of delivering DNA vaccines by mouth.
“The patient would be given a small solutio
The findings of this research published on 30th November 2002 in The Lancet suggest that targeting the underlying cause of asthma—rather than treating symptoms of the disorder—could be more effective in reducing severe asthma attacks.
Asthma affects 5.1 million people in the UK and leads to an estimated 1,500 deaths per year, however current treatment methods, based on an assessment of symptoms and a measurement of lung function may not be the most effective.
Asthma is known to be
Results of a study in this week’s issue of THE LANCET suggest that the antibiotic azithromycin could be an effective treatment option for children with cholera.
Cholera is a major public-health problem which is greatly under-reported; children are most affected by this bacterial disease which causes severe diarrhoea resulting in dehydration. Around 5000 deaths from cholera were reported to the WHO in 2000, probably a severe underestimate as Bangladesh—where over 200,000 people are infected with t
Authors of a UK study in this week’s issue of THE LANCET suggest that targeting the underlying cause of asthma—rather than treating symptoms of the disorder—could be more effective in reducing severe asthma attacks.
Conventional treatment for people with asthma relies on assessments of symptoms and simple measures of lung function. however, increased concentrations of microscopic cells called eosinophils cause the inflammation of airways in the lung that lead to asthma symptoms; eosinophils
Women with poorly controlled diabetes during early pregnancy run an increased risk of their baby being malformed, finds a study in this week’s BMJ.
Researchers in Norwich identified 158 first pregnancies in women with type 1 diabetes. They defined adverse pregnancy outcome as spontaneous abortion, major congenital malformation (potentially life threatening or associated with serious long term disability), stillbirth, or infant death.
The women were divided into two groups acc
A new study, just published in the journal Science, shows for the first time that some bacteria that cause diseases in humans use molecular hydrogen as an energy source. The research could point the way toward new treatment regimens for everything from ulcers and chronic gastritis to stomach cancer.
Microbiologists at the University of Georgia worked specifically in mice with the gastric bacterium Helicobacter pylori, a pathogen that colonizes the mucosal surfaces of the human stomach and g
Thanks to the cochlear implant deaf children under two years old can express and understand properly the language. Those are the results obtained by the University Clinic of the University of Navarre.
The University Clinic of Navarre is a pioneer in cochlear implant. This technique replaces the ear with a system that stimulates the hearing nerve electrically.
The programme of cochlear implant started in 1989 and one year later was done the first implant. This first implant was mad
A report of an individual infected with a second strain of HIV despite effective drug treatment following the first infection has researchers concerned.
“For the first time, we’ve shown it is possible for an individual to become infected with two closely related strains of HIV,” says Bruce D. Walker, M.D., a grantee of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and a researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
Published in this w
Rearrangements of the mixed lineage leukemia gene, MLL, are associated with aggressive leukemias in both children and adults. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have found that one portion of the MLL protein is an enzyme that “edits” the so-called histone code, a series of modifications to proteins associated with DNA that influence how and when certain genes are turned on and off. Their findings are presented in the November issue of Molecular Cell.
When functi
Whether pregnant women with conditions ranging from ulcers to AIDS should keep taking the same doses of medicine they took before pregnancy is a question Medical College of Georgia researchers want answered.
They are betting they’ll find that to maintain efficacy, pregnant women will need higher doses and that the placenta, a 2-pound temporary organ of pregnancy, is why.
“The idea that we are developing is that pregnant women are so different from non-pregnant women in ter
Avoiding stressful life events and learning effective coping skills may help avert flare-ups of multiple sclerosis (MS) in women with the disease, new findings suggest.
Researchers recruited 23 women with MS from the Multiple Sclerosis Clinic at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and followed them for a year. Each week, the women completed questionnaires asking about MS symptoms and life events, such as starting a new job, finding out that a child is doing poorly in school, having
Environmental enrichment that stimulates brain activity can reverse the long-term learning deficits caused by lead poisoning, according to a study conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. It has long been known that lead poisoning in children affects their cognitive and behavioral development. Despite significant efforts to reduce lead contamination in homes, childhood lead poisoning remains a major public health problem with an estimated 34 million housing uni
Researchers funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences have determined the structure of a protein with a surprising feature in it: a knot. This is the first time a knot has been found in a protein from the most ancient type of single-celled organism, an archaebacterium, and one of only a few times a knot has been seen in any protein structure.
This very unusual protein shape finding is a result from the NIGMS Protein Structure Initiative, a 10-year effort to determine 10,0
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