Markers could help track response to new therapies, protective strategies

A survey of the genome of patients with Huntington’s Disease (HD) has identified potential markers of the progression of this devastating neurological disorder. Researchers from the MassGeneral Institute for Neurodegenerative Disorders (MIND) found a set of genes that are expressed at higher levels in blood samples from people with HD than in samples from controls. The expression of these genes also ro

Scientists at the MUHC have discovered a gene that controls the speed at which patients develop tuberculosis–the first time such a gene has been discovered for this disease. The new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) this week provides a new view of the mechanisms underlying the development of tuberculosis and may contribute to public health efforts aimed at containing the disease.

“About one-third of the world’s population is infect

Oral medications may control symptoms of Type II diabetes in children just as well as insulin injections, a new study reports.

According to the medical records of 26 children diagnosed with the disease, oral medications reduced levels of a compound in the blood called hemoglobin A1C by an average of 2 percentage points.

A 2-percentage-point reduction is enough to decrease serious health risks and symptoms associated with Type II diabetes, said Milap Nahata, the study&#14

Women whose breast cancer was detected by screening mammography had a significantly better prognosis than those whose cancer was found another way – even if the cancer had already spread to their lymph nodes, say researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center who looked at outcomes from randomized screening studies of more than 150,000 women.

A likely reason for that finding is that mammography can detect tumors that are both slower growing and less biological

Heart attack patients treated with primary percutaneous intervention (PCI) at hospitals after hours and on weekends wait longer to receive clot busters and other treatments and have a higher risk of death than those treated during regular hospital hours, researchers at Yale School of Medicine report in the August 17 issue of Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

The researchers found that while 67.9 percent of heart attack patients were treated during off-hours

Metastasis is the primary cause of deaths in cancers. Published in the September 1 issue of G&D, Dr. Tak Mak and colleagues have successfully generated a strain of RhoC-deficient mice, providing long-awaited in vivo confirmation of RhoC’s critical role in tumor metastasis.

They found that RhoC, a Ras-related GTPase, is dispensable for embryonic development and tumor initiation, but is essential for metastasis. RhoC-deficient mice do not display gross phenotypical abnormalit

American College of Cardiology / American Heart Association guidelines

Early diagnosis and new treatments can help battle heart failure — a growing national problem that causes 1 million hospital admissions each year, according to new guidelines released today by the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the American Heart Association (AHA).

The document is available today on the Web sites of the ACC and the AHA and will be published in the Sept. 20, 2005, issues

SLU physician touts benefits of painless endoscopy, image-guided surgery

Coughing, headaches, fatigue, post-nasal drip and intense pressure throughout the face. For millions of Americans, these aren’t just the side effects of a short bout with the flu, but what they experience every day living with sinusitis.

“Sinusitis is the most commonly reported chronic disease in the United States, and it can be very debilitating,” says Raj Sindwani, M.D., a SLUCare otolaryng

Ames Laboratory research also allows nanoscale crystal growth

Scientists have long used ultra-fine glass tubes known as capillaries to analyze the chemical makeup of substances. Called capillary electrophoresis, or CE, the method applies high voltage to the capillaries, and by measuring the rate that the various materials move through the capillaries, researchers are able to identify individual compounds.

A group of researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames

Large-scale computer simulations have pinpointed a tiny change in molecular structure that could account for drug resistance in Streptomices pneumoniae, the organism that causes childhood pneumonia and claims 3.5 million lives a year, mainly in developing countries. Such knowledge could be invaluable in designing new drugs that are effective against the drug resistant strain.

Experiments to find out how changes at the molecular level are causing this resistance are difficult and, so far,

Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have determined that stem cells in a certain region of the brain may be the source of a particular type of incurable brain tumor and may be implicated in other types of brain cancers as well.

The research, conducted in mice, appears in the August issue of the journal Cancer Cell. The findings support growing evidence that adult stem cells may play a role in the development of some forms of cancer, said Dr. Luis Parada, senior author o

Using mini gene and new systemic approach treated animals were significantly improved, lived longer

Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh report the first study to achieve success with gene therapy for the treatment of congenital muscular dystrophy (CMD) in mice, demonstrating that the formidable scientific challenges that have cast doubt on gene therapy ever being feasible for children with muscular dystrophy can be overcome. Moreover, their results, published in this we

Croton plant compound combats a second cancer: pancreatic

Rutgers researchers halted prostate cancer in laboratory animals using a compound derived from a Southeast Asian shrub whose leaves produce a poison ivy-like skin rash (ur.rutgers.edu/medrel/viewArticle.html?ArticleID=3837). Now they have achieved the same kind of success with pancreatic cancer.

The cancer-fighting compound, 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate and generally known as TPA, is found in an oil drawn f

It took almost 10 years for Elaine Fuchs, Ph.D., a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Rockefeller University, to find a postdoctoral fellow who shared her curiosity for the direction of cell divisions in the skin. Then Terry Lechler, Ph.D., came along and the result is a new paper published online last week in Nature detailing how asymmetric cell divisions are essential for skin development. Their findings challenge long standing ideas of how skin forms and functions and is one of

Meat and bone meal (MBM) contains mineral elements essential for all organisms, typically 6-8% Nitrogen (N) and 5-6% Phosphorus (P). Phosphorus is essentially short lived and non renewable. It is estimated that currently the world’s naturally occurring stocks of P will only last for 50-150 years. The amount of P in MBM corresponds to less than 10% of the P-requirement of the entire needs of German agriculture, or approximately a third of the requirement of mineral P-fertilisers.

Last

Researchers at Yale School of Medicine and seven other national institutions are recruiting patients to participate in the Kronos Early Estrogen Prevention Study (KEEPS) to look at the effects of estrogen on heart disease prevention.

The study will explore whether beginning hormone therapy in women during the menopausal transition (ages 42 to 58) protects against atherosclerosis, the major cause of heart attacks. Results from a prior study of older women called the Women’s He