Mount Sinai School of Medicine researchers discovered Alzheimer’s patients with lifetime history of depression have more rapid cognitive decline

A lifetime history of depression is associated with increased plaques and tangles in the brains of those with Alzheimer’s disease and more rapid cognitive decline, according to a study by researchers at the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. The study is published in the February issue o

Johns Hopkins scientists say an infected person’s HIV subtype is a better predictor than viral load for determining rapid death from AIDS. Traditional testing standards help monitor the progression of an HIV infection to AIDS by keeping track of viral load, using a scale in which less than 50 viral particles per cubic milliliter of blood is considered suppressed disease and a viral load of more than 75,000 particles per cubic milliliter of blood means that the disease will progress more rapi

As our environments change over time with technology, pediatric emergency specialists are continuously challenged to observe possible trends and prevent more injuries by educating the public. In a new case report published in the February issue of the journal Pediatrics, researchers at New York University School of Medicine discuss the serious injury risks posed by paper shredders, which have become increasingly common household items.

“It’s a dangerous piece of machinery and leavin

Women’s Health Initiative study of nearly 50,000 postmenopausal women across the United States provides first solid data on health effects of a low-fat diet

Adopting a low-fat diet in later life and following such a regimen for nearly a decade does not appear to have a significant impact on reducing the overall risk of breast cancer, colorectal cancer or heart disease, according to a Women’s Health Initiative study that involved nearly 50,000 postmenopausal women across

The technology used in the world’s first cervical cancer vaccine will be tweaked to fight the most common sexually transmitted disease, genital warts.

Australian of the Year and University of Queensland (UQ) cervical cancer vaccine creator Professor Ian Frazer launched a therapeutic vaccine trial for genital warts today (Tuesday, February 7).

Patients from Brisbane and China will take part in the joint project for UQ’s cancer research centre, the Centre f

A unique low cost disposable solid-state catheter that can measure swallowing pressure has been developed by a University of South Australia research team using intelligent manufacturing processes that eliminate the infection risks posed by existing catheters.

Believed to be the first of its kind in the world, the catheter is one of the new products being developed in the emerging field of bio micro-electro-mechanical systems, or BioMEMS, which have applications in the biomedical fiel

Researchers at Yale School of Medicine have found that analyzing proteins in urine is a simple and objective method to diagnose and classify preeclampsia (PE), a complication of pregnancy causing high blood pressure after 20 weeks of gestation.

The work will be presented at the 26th Annual Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM) meeting on February 3 by Irina A. Buhimschi, M.D., assistant professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences.

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Scientists in India, led by a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) international research scholar, have identified five key genes that enable Mycobacterium tuberculosis to acquire the iron it needs to sustain growth and promote infection.

“Targeting genes within this cluster represents a good strategy for preventing tuberculosis and other mycobacterial infections,” said Rajesh S. Gokhale, an HHMI international research scholar at the National Institute of Immunology in New D

A team of scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has developed a method that could speed up the process of identifying novel protein molecules for medical or biological research hundreds of times over.

In today’s high-throughput searches for specific genes, proteins or protein interactions, plates containing rows of tiny wells have replaced old-fashioned test tubes. However, trawling for a gene or protein with just the right qu

In their quest to find and exploit vulnerabilities in the natural armor that protects malignant brain tumors from destruction, researchers have found a way to decrease the cells¡¦ resistance to therapies that are designed to trigger cell death. The findings resulted from laboratory experiments conducted at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center’s Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute and are based on the manipulation of a series of intricate biochemical events taking place within brain tumor cells.

New polymer use may yield cheaper way to separate hydrogen from impurities

Whether it’s used in chemical laboratories or the fuel tanks of advanced automobiles, hydrogen is mostly produced from natural gas and other fossil fuels. However, to isolate the tiny hydrogen molecules, engineers must first remove impurities, and the currently available methods can require substantial equipment or toxic chemicals.

Now, in the Feb. 3 issue of the journal Science, engineers have

Making vaccines against bird ‘flu is difficult and many problems need to be overcome before production begins of a vaccine for the disease, according to an article in the February 2006 issue of Microbiology Today, the quarterly magazine of the Society for General Microbiology.

There are worldwide anxieties about the spread of influenza and mutation of the H5N1 virus to acquire the ability to transmit easily from person to person. “Since many experts believe we are on the verge o

At the Institut Curie, CNRS and Inserm researchers have shown that Huntington’s disease may be treated using the drug FK506, which is also used clinically to prevent graft rejection. Like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, Huntington’s disease is characterized by the abnormal death of neurons.

The Institut Curie researchers have discovered that FK506 blocks the toxicity of the protein huntingtin, which causes the death of certain neurons leading to disease onset. FK506 is already used i

Cancer researchers at the University of Helsinki, Finland, in trying to find a novel tumor suppressor gene, instead found an important evolutionary change that occurred in a key developmental signalling pathway. The finding suggests a potential mechanism for evolution of complex intercellular signalling pathways. The results are published in today’s issue of the journal Developmental Cell.

A relatively small number of evolutionary conserved genes are responsible for controlling the devel

Women who feel that they become more forgetful as menopause approaches shouldn’t just “fuhgetabout it”: There may be something to their own widespread reports that they’re more likely to forget things as menopause approaches, say scientists who reported results from a small study today at the annual meeting of the International Neuropsychological Society in Boston.

The team from the University of Rochester Medical Center found that the issue is not really impaired memory. Instead, the

In the largest published study of its kind, with 1,100 patient cases reviewed, a minimally invasive surgical procedure for lung cancer has been shown to be as effective as open surgery with a low risk of complications and high survival rates when performed by experienced thoracic surgeons.

But even though the benefits of the technique have been documented over the past decade – shorter recovery times and hospitalizations, reduced pain, and improved quality of life, for exam