Nuclear transfer yields immune-matched human embryonic stem cell lines from patients with spinal cord injury, juvenile diabetes and immune deficiency

Research from the Republic of Korea’s Seoul National University published in this week’s edition of Science represents a major advance in the science of using stem cells to repair damage caused by human disease and injury, according to Gerald Schatten, Ph.D., professor and vice chair of research development in the department of

Researchers at The Jackson Laboratory have discovered a genetic link to porencephaly, a rare but devastating neurological condition.

Their research, published in the May 19 issue of the journal Science, may have significant implications for preventing the disease in humans.

Usually exhibited in infants shortly after birth, symptoms of porencephaly include mental retardation, cerebral palsy or epilepsy. The brains of porencephaly patients show degenerative cavities and lesio

Borrelia bacteria are capable of masking themselves in the human body and deceiving the immune defence system. In this way they can hide in the human organism even for periods of years. In their recent studies Professor Seppo Meri and his team have managed to trace the evasive movements of the Borrelia bacterium in the body. Their work is part of the Microbes and Man research programme, jointly funded by the Academy of Finland and the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research.

Migrating birds transmit different forms of the Borrelia bacterium or Borrelia spirochetes to every corner of the globe. Birds are especially prone to Borrelia infected ticks during their autumn and spring migrations. The bacteria may also persist for several months in the birds and it may then be reactivated in response to migration. Borrelia spirochetes and the role of birds as global transmitters of the bacteria have been investigated by a Swedish research group led by Professor Sven Bergst

A glance at the frog’s skin can say what kind of blood the amphibia has, the blood composition accounting for frog’s capability to get on alongside human beings. The research by the Ural ecologists has been supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research.

The crucial importance for the frog is in the light strip on the back along the spinal column. V.L. Vershinin, Doctor of Biology, specialist of the Institute of Plant and Animal Ecology, Ural Branch of Russian Academy of

Following 60 days of ’bedrest’ simulating the effects of weightlessness on the body, the first volunteers in the WISE (Women International Space Simulation for Exploration) study have been getting back on their feet.

They all speak of having had a wonderfully enriching experience both in scientific and human terms. A press conference attended by those in charge of the study and volunteers is to be held on 2 June.

The volunteers in question are twelve women, dr

Updated Guidelines represent significant developments in terms of content, format and presentation of the latest advances in Chronic Heart Failure

Sophia Antipolis, France, 19 May 2005: Today the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) releases its new Guidelines on Chronic Heart Failure1, published in the latest edition of the European Heart Journal, official journal of the ESC and Europe’s leading cardiology journal.

The Guidelines offer up to date practical recommenda

Elderly persons with active root caries, a type of tooth decay, have an increased risk of having irregular heart beats. This study is published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

A total of 125 generally healthy individuals over the age of 80, living in urban, community-based populations were examined. Researchers discovered that persons with three or more active root caries had more than twice the odds of cardiac arrhythmias of those without. Researchers indicat

A computer-aided detection (CAD) system is helping radiologists to more quickly and accurately determine the sizes and locations of cancers found on breast MRI—information that could change patients’ treatment, a new study shows.

The study, undertaken at Clinica Girona in Girona, Spain, compared the CAD system to breast imaging software that comes standard with MRI machines, said Joan C. Vilanova, MD, director of the department of magnetic resonance and lead author of the study. T

Patients with suspected meniscal tears or other injuries to their knees may be able to avoid arthroscopic surgery by having a 3-Tesla MRI examination instead, two studies together indicate.

Researchers compared 3-Tesla MRI (a newer version of standard MRI) to arthroscopy and found that 3-Tesla MRI had an accuracy rate of 96% in detecting meniscal tears. The MRI examinations were able to identify 108 of the 112 meniscal tears that were found when arthroscopic surgery was perform

A drug that is currently used to treat an enlarged prostate may improve the accuracy of prostate biopsies, a pilot study shows.

The drug, dutasteride, suppresses blood flow in benign tissue of the prostate, allowing radiologists to better target cancer tissue using Doppler ultrasound, said Elizabeth Ives, MD, a research fellow at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia and lead author of the study. The study included 11 patients who took dutasteride before their Do

When radiologists are looking at contrast-enhanced chest CT examinations, they should take a look at the patient&srquo;s heart to rule out heart attack, regardless of why the chest CT examination is being performed, a new study shows.

The study included 59 patients who had undergone chest CT examinations; none of the examinations were ordered specifically to look at the heart, said Linda Haramati, MD, professor of clinical radiology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and one of the au

Researchers have located a gene dubbed dead end that when mutated or lost, causes testicular tumors in mice. They say their study, published in the online journal Nature, on May 18, 2005 will likely offer future insights into the genetic causes of the disease in humans because the cancer originates from the same cell type, the primordial germ cell, in both mice and men.

If that notion is validated through further research, the finding could lead to a way to either screen for the

In this week’s journal Nature, researchers report finding the first gene responsible for inherited susceptibility of testicular cancer in mice. The Ter mutation occurs in a gene called dead end, which is involved in normal testicular development and which may play a role in inherited forms of a testicular cancer occurring in infants.

The mutation causes a huge increase in testicular cancer incidence, from 5 percent to 94 percent. Although this dramatic rise was described i

New findings in research led by Purdue University biologists provide further evidence that the protein envelope protecting DNA in viruses evolved billions of years ago from a common ancestor and uses the same basic protein “fold” to construct the critical outer shell.

The most recent findings, which appear in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, show that the T4 virus has a similar protein fold in its outer shell, or capsid, as another viru

A team of scientists at The Scripps Research Institute and the University of Wisconsin have demonstrated a new way of fighting antibiotic resistance: by stopping evolution.

In the June issue of the open-access journal PloS Biology, the team describes how a protein called LexA in the bacterium Escherichia coli promotes mutations and helps the pathogen evolve resistance to antibiotics. The scientists also show that E. coli evolution could be halted in its tracks by subjecting the