Leisurely walking for distance combined with low-impact cardiovascular activity appears to be the best formula for obese people seeking to get into shape and stay healthy, according to a University of Colorado at Boulder study.

Ray Browning, a doctoral student in CU-Boulder’s integrative physiology department and lead author on the new study, said the results show that people who walk a mile at a leisurely pace burn more calories than if they walk a mile at their normal pace.

Diabetes patients may benefit most from minor surgery plus antibiotics

A small sore on a toe may not seem like a major medical threat. But for the millions of people who have diabetes and other conditions, it can be the first step on a road that leads to the amputation of a foot — or even a leg. Now, a new study from the University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center may help more people save their limbs. Published in the June issue of the Annals of Surgery, it’s the first-e

The gene that regulates the body’s main biological clocks also may play a pivotal role in drug addiction, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found.

The Clock gene not only controls the body’s circadian rhythms, including sleep and wakefulness, body temperature, hormone levels, blood pressure and heart activity, it may also be a key regulator of the brain’s reward system.

UT Southwestern researchers showed that, in mice, the Clock gene regulat

Previous human and animal studies have shown that chronic alcohol consumption can produce deficits in learning and memory. A new rodent study is the first to show that continuous drinking for as little as eight weeks can produce deficits in learning and memory that last up to 12 weeks after drinking stopped. Both human and animal studies have shown that chronic alcohol consumption can produce deficits in learning and memory. Rodent studies, for example, have shown that

Kansas State University and the Kansas Wheat Commission are spearheading the effort to create the Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium, an international program focused on building the foundation for advancing agricultural research for wheat production.

The principal goal of the consortium is to obtain a publicly available, complete sequence of common (hexaploid) wheat since it is grown on more than 95 percent of the wheat-growing-area worldwide.

Bikram Gill, university d

A promising new drug candidate that may be effective against both actively dividing and slow-growing Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tb) has begun testing in humans, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, announced today. The novel antibiotic, PA-824, may shorten the time needed to treat tuberculosis (TB), a contagious disease that claims approximately two million lives worldwide each year. In partnership with the non-profit N

Two common gene variations are associated with the risk for developing chronic kidney disease, according to a study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and other institutions. One variant increases risk and the other decreases risk with a similar effect in whites, African-Americans, diabetic and non-diabetic individuals. The study, published in the June 15 edition of JAMA, is the first large-scale investigation of the role Apolipoprotein E (APOE) alleles play in

“Positron Emission Topography with choline demonstrates greater efficiency in the early diagnosis of relapsed prostate cancer with respect to other imaging techniques”, stated Dr. Macarena Rodríguez, of the Nuclear Medicine Service at the University Hospital of the University of Navarra. She was speaking on receiving the award for the best scientific work at the XXVI National Congress of the Spanish Society for Nuclear Medicine (SEMN), held recently in Maspalomas (the Canary Islands).

The st

Expert from The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia comments on blood test for malignant hyperthermia

A rare but potentially life-threatening inherited condition called malignant hyperthermia (MH) may strike surgical patients who receive common drugs for general anesthesia. Usually there is no outward sign of a problem before the drugs are given, but the drugs may trigger abnormal metabolic responses, such as a rapid rise in body temperature, muscle rigidity and other complic

University of Manchester researchers announced today that they have reached a key milestone in their study of the antifungal treatment of asthma.

It is hoped that the study, by clinical researchers based at Manchester’s Wythenshawe Hospital, will reduce steroid use and serious attacks requiring hospital intervention for asthma sufferers. It could also help those with cystic fibrosis and chronic sinusitis.

Severe asthma in adults affects 10 – 20% of the UK’s 5m a

Research carried out with the participation of the University of Navarra has shown how a determinate molecule helps an important pathogen, Brucella abortus, escape destruction within the cells charged with eliminating infectious agents (macrophages). This research has been published in Nature Immunology scientific magazine.

Brucella is a model of an intracellular parasite, a category that includes other important bacteria, such as those of tuberculosis or legionelosis. Brucella penetrat

A team of researchers from the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the Institute of Neuroscience at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona has discovered that tetanus toxin, which causes tetanus, could be extremely useful as a therapy against psychological disorders such as depression, anxiety and anorexia, and to slow the progress of neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s disease.

Tetanus toxin is a neurotoxin belonging to the same family as botulinum neuro

By devising a novel way to package the genome of a common human tumor virus — the virus that causes common warts, genital warts and that is implicated in prevalent cancers — scientists have paved the way for making the pathogen far more accessible to biomedical science.

The work, reported today (June 13) in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), promises to accelerate the search for an effective cancer vaccine and treatments for cervic

Discovery pinpoints the true ’stem cell’

Regenerative medicine scientists at the University of Florida’s McKnight Brain Institute have created a system in rodent models that for the first time duplicates neurogenesis — the process of generating new brain cells — in a dish.

Writing in today’s (June 13) Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers describe a cell culture method that holds the promise of producing a limitless supply o

A team of researchers from Mexico and the United States has identified a new family of catfish in the state of Chiapas, Mexico. The paper detailing the discovery has been published in Zootaxa, an online scientific journal.

They’ve named the new family Lacantuniidae and named the species Lacantunia enigmatica. It becomes the 37th family of catfishes, a diverse group of fish found around the world.

Discovery of new families of living vertebrates is rare; in ichthyolog

The gene that regulates the body’s main biological clocks also may play a pivotal role in drug addiction, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found.

The Clock gene not only controls the body’s circadian rhythms, including sleep and wakefulness, body temperature, hormone levels, blood pressure and heart activity, it may also be a key regulator of the brain’s reward system.

UT Southwestern researchers showed that, in mice, the Clock gene regul