Routinely reformatting computed tomography (CT) scans to view organs from several different directions may help radiologists improve diagnosis, according to new research from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. The results are being presented this week at the American Roentgen Ray Society meeting in New Orleans, La.

“You can see things in one view that you might miss in another,” said Craig Barnes, M.D., section head of pediatric radiology at Wake Forest Baptist&#1

Those considered high-risk for melanoma – the most dangerous form of skin cancer – are no more likely to sunbathe protected than those who are unaware of their risk, according to a new study conducted by MUHC researchers. The study, published in the Journal of Cutaneous Medicine and Surgery, examined the behaviour of melanoma patients in order to assess the efficacy of sun-awareness and protection campaigns. “Patients with a personal or family history of melanoma, or that burn eas

Scientists in Dundee have embarked on a major research programme funded by the charity DebRA which it is hoped will ultimately lead to a successful treatment for a previously incurable genetic skin condition.

DebRA has awarded a grant of £1.6 million to Professor Irwin McLean and Professor Birgitte Lane for a five-year research project into the condition, Epidermolysis Bullosa.

Epidermolysis Bullosa (EB) is a rare genetic condition in which the skin and body linings blist

The lure of a seafood diet may explain why early humans came out of Africa, according to research by the universities of Leeds and Glasgow published in Science this week.

Early modern humans in East Africa survived on an inland diet based on big game but by 70,000 years ago their diet had changed to a coastal one consisting largely of shellfish. However, dramatic climate change seems likely to have reduced the Red Sea’s shellfish stocks. New DNA evidence suggests their taste

Turns out building cars and building life have a lot in common – it all comes down to quality control.

Scientists at Michigan State University have made a major discovery on the inner workings of genetic coding, mapping out mechanisms of one of life’s most elemental functions: RNA synthesis. Their work has crucial implications for how a normal cell forms a tumor and how a virus runs amok. The work is published in the May 13 edition of the scientific journal Molecular Cell.

Is there an evolutionary relationship to land-based lichens?

Researchers from China and the United States have found evidence of lichen-like symbiosis in 600-million-year-old fossils from South China. The previous earliest evidence of lichen was 400 million years old, discovered in Scotland. The discovery also adds to the scarce fossil record of fungi and raises new questions about lichen evolution.

Xunlai Yuan, a paleontologist with the Nanjing Institute of Geology and P

An international research team has identified a new group of enzymes that may help uncover how cells direct internal traffic. The discovery has future implications for conditions — such as polycystic kidney disease, male infertility, behavioral disorders and cancer — that involve defects in protein fibers called microtubules. The findings will be published in the online journal Science Express on May 12, 2005.

The team was co-led by Jacek Gaertig, associate professor of cellular

Young canaries can learn atypical songs but recast them into adult canary syntax as they mature

For some kinds of birds, learning to sing is as much a part of growing up as learning to talk is for human children. They listen to their parents and other adults, memorize, imitate, practice, and in time are able to chirp a tune characteristic of their species that will help attract a mate.

Now Rockefeller University scientists have found that young canaries can learn to a

Intricate details about a cellular protein, worked out by Vanderbilt University Medical Center scientists, may aid in the design of drugs that cells find ’irresistible.’

Resistance to antibiotics and chemotherapeutic agents is a growing medical concern. Multidrug resistance (MDR), in which cells are resistant to a number of unrelated drugs, is a particular problem in cancer chemotherapy. One mechanism that underlies MDR results from a normally beneficial cellular process.

The ability of an experimental drug known as GW5638 to change the shape of the estrogen receptor is helping researchers understand why drugs like tamoxifen and raloxifene behave the way they do, simulating the effects of estrogen in some tissues and blocking it in others. The finding indicates that this little-known drug may play an important role in preventing, as well as treating, breast cancer and suggests ways to design new drugs with even more specific effects.

In the May 1

NYU School of Medicine scientists have created the first active vaccine that can significantly delay and possibly prevent the onset of a brain disease in mice that is similar to mad cow disease. The new findings, published online this week in the journal Neuroscience, could provide a platform for the development of a vaccine to prevent a group of fatal brain diseases caused by unusual infectious particles called prions.

Although no cure for these diseases — which include scrapie, mad

The brains of one species of mouse actually shrink during the winter, causing the mice to have more difficulty with some types of learning, a new study found.

The results showed that, during the short days of winter, white-footed mice had impaired spatial memory – the mental map that helps them remember important places in their environment. This is one of the first studies to show seasonal changes in the structure and the functioning of brains of mammals, said Randy Nelson, co-

An article in The Journal of Physiology presents important research showing that events before birth can permanently change patterns of appetite and fat deposition in child and adult life.

A collaborative effort headed by Prof I. C. McMillen, of the Centre for the Early Origins of Adult Health at the University of Adelaide, Australia, and Dr C. L. Adam of The Energy Balance and Obesity Division of the Rowett Research Institute, Aberdeen, is shedding new light on potential cause

Cardiovascular risk factors appear to indicate deteriorating renal function in all adults. Researchers discovered various indicators of heart or vascular disease can signal that kidney function is on the decline in the general population, as just published in the May issue of Kidney International.

While generalized atherosclerosis (hardening of arteries and blood vessels) has been increasingly recognized as a cause of end-stage renal disease (ESRD), a recent study of over 8,50

An international team of researchers has identified a mechanism which increases lung inflammation, making Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder (COPD) more severe, and potentially points towards new treatments.

Reporting today in the New England Journal of Medicine, the team from Imperial College London, Royal Brompton Hospital and the University of British Columbia, Canada found a correlation between the increase in inflammation in the lungs and a loss of activity in an e

Discovery may pave way for immunotherapies

Using a common chemotherapy agent, researchers at UCLA’s Jonsson Cancer Center and the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine found a way to move an important biomarker expressed in prostate cancer, shaking it loose from one location in a cell – where it could not be accessed by blood – to another, easier to target area. The discovery, outlined in the cover article of May 11 edition of the peer-reviewed journal Molecular Can