OHSU scientists say low FOXP3 means fewer disease-fighting cells, but new drug may help

Oregon Health & Science University researchers have measured genetic changes reflecting a drop in the body’s ability to suppress inflammatory cells that attack nerve fibers and promote progression of multiple sclerosis.

In a study published in the July issue of the Journal of Neuroscience Research, OHSU scientists, in collaboration with The Immune Response Corp. of Carlsbad, Cal

According to research published today, investigators from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) have used new techniques in the laboratory that allowed them for the first time to derive unlimited numbers of purified mesenchymal precursor cells from human embryonic stem cells (HESCs). Mesenchymal precursor cells are capable of giving rise to fat, cartilage, bone, and skeletal muscle cells, and may potentially be used for regenerative stem cell therapy in bone, cartilage, or muscle replac

Mice given a relatively new cancer drug can survive an otherwise lethal dose of vaccinia virus, a relative of smallpox virus, report scientists supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health. The findings, say the investigators, suggest that Gleevec or similar drugs might be useful in preventing adverse side effects of smallpox vaccine. The classic smallpox vaccine is made from live, weakened vaccinia virus and is not recomme

Older people who took part in a structured programme of Tai Chi found that their balance and physical strength improved, reducing the risk of falls, according to a paper in the latest Journal of Advanced Nursing.

Researchers studied a group of fall-prone adults, with an average age of 78, living in residential care. 29 undertook a 12-week Tai Chi course three times a week and 30 formed the non-exercise control group.

They found that the physical fitness of the exercise gro

Cutting edge matrix assembly can be used to analyze large numbers of tumors

Scientists at Georgetown University’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center have devised a new low-cost technology that allows thousands of tumor slices to be screened side-by-side, an improvement over current and more expensive methods that can analyze only several hundred tumors at once. The researchers anticipate that this technology could someday lead to more reliable prediction of patient prognosi

Increasing stiffness of the aging eye may make older adults more susceptible to eye damage following trauma, according to research at Wake Forest-Virginia Tech School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences.

“The gradual change in lens stiffness during a person’s lifetime leads to a lens that is four times stiffer than at birth, and this has implications for the likelihood of eye injury,” said Joel D. Stitzel, Ph.D., of the Virginia Tech-Wake Forest Center for Injury Biomechani

Imagine not being able to hold a glass, tie your shoelaces or write a check. For people with the common movement disorder known as essential tremor, simple tasks requiring fine motor coordination become increasingly difficult, sometimes even impossible. Three times more prevalent than Parkinson’s disease, essential tremor involves uncontrollable shaking of the hands, arms, head or voice. The largely hereditary neurological condition can begin in early adulthood and worsen with age.

A harmonic scalpel that uses ultrasound to coagulate as it cuts can reduce blood loss and postoperative facial paralysis in patients who need a portion of their salivary gland removed, surgeons say.

Infection of the sponge-like parotid gland is uncomfortable but temporary, says Dr. Christine G. Gourin, otolaryngologist at the Medical College of Georgia.

But when the gland develops cancerous or benign tumors or stones that interfere with saliva flow, a rather tricky sur

Pilot solar power-plant delivers promising results

For the first time solar energy has been successfully used in a pilot-plant to create storable energy from a metal ore. In a project funded by the EU, the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ) together with other research institutes and industrial partners, have reached an important milestone.

A 300-kilowatt pilot installation to create zinc using solar temperatures o

Researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine have successfully isolated stem cells from human skin, expanded them in the laboratory and coaxed them into becoming fat, muscle and bone cells. The study, one of the first studies to show the ability of a single adult stem cell to become multiple tissue types, is reported today in Stem Cells and Development.

“These cells should provide a valuable resource for tissue repair and for organs as well,” said Anthony Atala, M.D.,

There’s more than meets the human ear when the black-capped chickadee lets its flock mates know a predator is lurking about by giving out its familiar “chick-a-dee-dee-dee” call.

The small songbirds, which are common throughout much of North America, use that signature call in a wide variety of social interactions including warning of predators. And it turns out that those alarms are far more subtle and information-packed than scientists previously imagined.

Writing in th

For the first time, scientists have discovered how C-reactive protein, or CRP, is able to access endothelial cells. The UC Davis researchers’ findings will be published in the July issue of Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology, one of the American Heart Association’s leading journals.

CRP is a known risk marker for heart disease and, in a study published earlier this year, UC Davis researchers Ishwarlal Jialal and Sridevi Devaraj found that endothelia

Can vision problems cause musculo-skeletal complaints and vice versa? This is a key question for anyone who works in front of a computer screen every day. Together with research colleagues at the Karolinska Institute, Uppsala University, and in the U.S., Associate Professor Hans O. Richter at Gävle University College has recently shown that when the tone is reduced in the focusing muscle of the eye, nerve impulses to the neck and shoulders are also affected. Now the team wants to go on to investigat

How can the U.S. health-care system and more specifically, primary care doctors – the physicians from whom older adults receive most of their care – prepare for the huge wave of dementia patients expected to engulf us in 2010, the year the baby boomers begin to reach 65?

Researchers from the Indiana University School of Medicine, the Regenstrief Institute, Inc. and the Indiana University Center for Aging Research begin to answer this difficult question in a study published in the

In patients with vaginal cancer, PET scans detected twice as many primary tumors and cancerous lymph nodes as did CT scans, according to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. At this time, however, Medicaid, Medicare and many private insurers specify CT (computed tomography) for diagnosing and monitoring this cancer.

The researchers hoping to encourage a change in that standard report their comparison of the two methods in the July 1 issue of the In

By comparing 140 sequenced bacterial genomes, researchers have uncovered a system for regulating genes essential to bacterial replication – and they did it solely by computer keystrokes and mouse clicks.

Mikhail Gelfand, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute international research scholar at the Institute for Information Transmission Problems (IITP) in Moscow, and his postdoctoral fellow, Dmitry Rodionov, used comparative genomics to identify a new transcription factor system in