A student organisation that successfully recruits thousands of bone marrow donors from UK universities is exporting its pioneering model abroad to tackle a global shortage of donors.

The organisation, Marrow, was set up nine years by The Anthony Nolan Trust in collaboration with British medical schools to recruit, test and counsel potential bone marrow donors at clinics on college campuses. (A clinic will be held on Newcastle University campus from 14.00 – 17.00 today, Thursday M

The link between the caffeine intake of expectant mothers and low birth-weight babies is being explored in a groundbreaking study which will, for the first time, link caffeine intake with individual variations in metabolism – or breakdown – of caffeine.

Research has suggested too much caffeine during pregnancy – over five cups of ordinary strength coffee a day – could increase the risk of having a low birth-weight baby. These babies are at greater risk from a range of problems

Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Trust (GOSH) has recently secured long term funding for its life saving tracheal service, which treats children suffering from extremely narrow windpipes. (Long Segment Tracheal Stenosis)

Children born with very narrow windpipes suffer breathing difficulties and often die. The surgery to correct this has historically been very difficult and where surgeons have little experience in this rare condition, results are not always good. A new

Scientists at the University of Manchester’s North West Lung Centre have found that codeine – a standard ingredient in cough remedies – could be no more effective than an inactive placebo compound at treating cough.

Researchers at the Centre, which is based at Wythenshawe Hospital, studied a sample of patients with chronic lung disease. After coughing was induced with citric acid they were given either codeine or a placebo, and sent home wearing a lapel microphone to record their

Manchester is hosting an international conference on genetic counselling, with 75 delegates from professional organizations, universities and clinics all over the world, including countries such as France, Italy, India, Japan, Australia, South Africa, Canada, Cuba and the US.

The International Genetic Counselling Education conference, from 15-17 May 2006, comes as the debate around medical genetics takes another turn with the UK fertility watchdog backing wider screening. The Hum

Scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have demonstrated that normal development of the eye requires the right amount of a neural stem cell gene be expressed at the right time and place.

Neural stem cells are cells that can differentiate into different cell types in the nervous system. In the developing eye, retinal neural stem cells differentiate to form the neurons of the adult eye and form the optic nerve.

Led by Dr. Larysa H. Pevny, an ass

Cell biology studies may lay groundwork for a novel HIV treatment

New research on signaling pathways in immune cells bolsters evidence of connections between the central nervous system and the immune system. The findings may also advance the scientific foundation for a potential HIV treatment that may block the virus that causes AIDS.

The cell culture study by a research team from The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania appears in th

Researchers simulating conditions of reduced cabin pressure and reduced oxygen levels, such as may be encountered during an 8-hour aeroplane flight, found no increase in the activation of the blood clotting system among healthy individuals, according to a study in the May 17 issue of JAMA. (Journal of the American Association).

Venous thromboembolism, a term used to describe deep vein thrombosis (DVT; blood clots forming in the veins) and pulmonary embolism (clots passing to the lun

Scientists studying malaria-carrying mosquitoes and the effects of the disease on people are about to undertake a unique experiment in West Africa.

The researchers plan to examine the factors in climate variation that can affect disease epidemics. They have built an indoor experimental lab in the guise of a specially constructed traditional African thatched hut, to replicate conditions that many people live in. Located in the Sahel region of Niger, the hut is equipped with inst

There are significant differences between European Union countries and non-EU countries when it comes to reporting about Cardiac Rhythm Management (CRM) device technology, performance and adverse events and these differences can cause problems for the general public if steps are not taken to minimize them, according to the results of a policy conference held by the ESC’s European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA).

Because of variations in regulatory requirements and approval processes, a new

The world is filled with cues that could influence the daily feeding patterns of an organism. Many plants, for example, respond to foraging damage by releasing specialized chemical signals—volatile organic compounds that evaporate in the air—that attract the forager’s natural enemies. This strategy is obviously no use against a cow, but proves effective when the offender is a caterpillar and the summoned predator is a wasp. Just how much control such biotic factors exert over a forager’s daily

Development of a new technique for detecting brain damage caused by stroke has been boosted up by a £1m grant to scientists at The University of Manchester. Professor Gareth Morris of the School of Chemistry and Professor Risto Kauppinen of the University of Birmingham are to lead the development of a new non-invasive technique which measures acidity (pH) in the brain.

A stroke is caused when part of the blood supply to the brain is cut off. This causes acidity in the brain to build up, l

We may look different on the outside, but inside we are all the same – so much has been scientifically proven. Research at the University of Bergen has shown that the pathways that lead to cancer are similar, no matter where you come from.

At any rate, there are remarkable genetic similarities among cancer tumours from Norway, Sudan, Sri Lanka, India, the UK and Sweden.

“We had actually expected to find a greater range of variation,” says post-doctoral fellow Salah Osm

Like coal-mine canaries, fish DNA can serve as a measure of the biological impact of water and sediment pollution–or pollution clean-up. That’s one of the conclusions of a new study* by researchers from the Pacific Northwest Research Institute (PNRI), Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the University of Maryland and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

Research over the past several years has demonstrated the adverse effects of industrial pollutants in water

A deceptively simple approach to bonding thermoplastic microchannel plates together with solvent could be used for low-cost, high-volume production of disposable “lab-on-a-chip” devices, according to researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and George Mason University (GMU).

Microfluidics is considered a highly promising technology for performing rapid and inexpensive chemical and biochemical analyses. The defining feature of microfluidics is the u

Dr. Shirley Tilghman and colleagues (Princeton University) lend new insight into the mechanism of genomic imprinting, demonstrating a necessary role for a non-coding RNA transcript in the silencing of an imprinted gene cluster in mice.

Imprinting, or the differential expression of a gene based upon which parent it has been inherited from, is integral to normal growth and development. Two human disorders, Prader-Willi and Angelman syndromes, result from the deletion of the iden