Scientists at New York University School of Medicine viewing the actual journey of immune cells in the liver have found that these cells travel in the liver’s blood vessels with surprising speed and agility.

It is the first time that the movement of live immune cells called natural killer T (NKT) cells has been seen in the liver, according to a study published in the April 5, 2005, issue of the Public Library of Science, an open-access, online journal.

NKT cells ar

Harnessing the strength of a natural process that repairs damage to the human genome, a researcher from UT Southwestern Medical Center has helped establish a method of gene therapy that can accurately and permanently correct mutations in disease-causing genes. The findings are available online in Nature.

By artificially initiating a DNA repair process known as homologous recombination, Dr. Matthew Porteus of UT Southwestern, working with scientists from Richmond, Calif.-based

Besides adding flavor to food, onions also may be good for your bones. Researchers at the University of Bern in Switzerland have identified a compound in the popular vegetable that appears to decrease bone loss in laboratory studies using rat bone cells. Although further studies are needed, the current study suggests that eating onions might help prevent bone loss and osteoporosis, a disease which predominately affects older women. The disease results in an estimated $17 billion in medical costs

A specialist of the Vavilov Institute of Natural History and Engineering, Russian Academy of Sciences, A.G. Nazarov has considered Vernadsky’s famous concept on biosphere transmutation into noosphere (“sphere of human thought”) from the ecological point of view and has come to the conclusion that noospheric reconstruction of biosphere has no prospects and is unreal.

V.I.Vernadsky had no time to develop himself an integral doctrine about noosphere. In the 20s of the last century he

An international team of researchers, including scientists from the University of Dundee have announced that cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) found throughout the world may produce a toxin linked to certain types of neurological disease.

Researchers have previously proposed a link between beta-methyl-amino-alanine (BMAA), a neurotoxic amino acid found in cyanobacteria and an Alzheimer’s-like neurodegenerative disease suffered by the Chamorro people on Guam in the Pacific. The Cha

Surgical treatment of severe obesity provides long-term wait loss and better quality of life compared with conventional treatment in primary health care. This is shown in a ten-year follow-up of the psychosocial component of the Swedish Obese Subjects project, SOS, at the Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Gothenburg.

Thus far the follow-up comprises 1 276 subjects with severe obesity. Of these, 655 had been treated surgically and 621 had undergone treatment in primary care, fo

New study shows combination of radiotherapy and hormone therapy extends life expectancy.

Men with prostate cancer treated with the combined therapies had a significantly higher chance of living for more than 10 years than those on radiotherapy alone. This was one of the main results published today in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology and Physics (IJROBP) by the independent Radiation Oncology Group (RTOG).

Goserelin belongs to a class of drugs

New guidelines for management of obesity from the American College of Physicians recommend diet and exercise for everyone and drugs and surgery only for obese patients who are not able to achieve weight-loss goals with diet and exercise alone. The guidelines, “Pharmacologic and Surgical Management of Obesity in Primary Care: A Clinical Practice Guideline from the American College of Physicians,” were published in the April 5, 2005, issue of Annals of Internal Medicine.

People with

Information on the internet about the health risks associated with the consumption of smokeless tobacco usually overstates the risk. This is the conclusion of research published today in the Open Access journal BMC Public Health, entitled “You might as well smoke; the misleading and harmful public message about smokeless tobacco”. A study of 316 internet websites showed that most government, health advice, and advocacy websites suggested that smokeless tobacco use is as harmful as cigarette smok

A low-cost, hospital-based parent education program can reduce the incidence of abusive head injuries caused by shaken baby syndrome by nearly 50 percent, a Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center researcher reports.

“Abusive head injuries among infants are serious, with about one quarter of infants dying from their injuries and at least one half of the survivors suffering significant neurological impairments,” said Mark S. Dias, M.D., pediatric neurosurgeon and associate prof

Cognitive therapy to treat moderate to severe depression works just as well as antidepressants, according to an authoritative report appearing today in the Archives of General Psychiatry. The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Vanderbilt University, challenges the American Psychiatric Association’s guidelines that antidepressant medications are the only effective treatment for moderately to severely depressed patients.

Either form of treatme

Pediatricians must look beyond the walls of the examining room and into their own communities to understand and confront the socioeconomic and environmental threats to the health of children and adolescents, such as poor nutrition, exposure to violence, and substance abuse. That was the recommendation of a special supplement of the journal Pediatrics released today by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the nation’s largest professional organization of pediatricians.

The supp

Recognizing faces is effortless for most people, and it’s an ability that provides great evolutionary and social advantages. But this ability is impaired in people who have suffered brain damage or in those with a rare congenital condition, and research by Carnegie Mellon University psychologists reveals startling insights into how the brains of those individuals operate. Psychology Professor Marlene Behrmann and postdoctoral associate Galia Avidan have found that people with congenital pros

Today (April 4, 2005) at the 2005 Experimental Biology Conference, the Dairy Council of California sponsored a thought-provoking symposium titled “Individualized nutrition as a tool to prevent and treat chronic disease.” During the symposium attended by over 250 people, researchers, health professionals, nutritional scientists, and a panel of experts discussed how the progression from broad, population-based guidelines to more finely-tuned dietary recommendations and specific food choices will u

Doctor’s at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh are redefining early detection

Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh Cardiologist Bradley B. Keller, MD, and his research team are discovering details in the lab that explain how the heart is formed in the embryo. This knowledge improves the chances of doctors identifying fetuses who can benefit from intervention to treat congenital defects.

Doctor’s in the Heart Center at Children’s are redefining wh

The Moscow scientists have conducted clinical trials of a new method for treatment of deep burns of cornea. Their effort has been supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research.

Specialists of the Koltsov Institute of Developmental Biology, Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Gelmgolts Scientific Research Institute of Eye Diseases suggest that deep burns of cornea should be treated by transplanting artificial equivalent of stroma (the tissue directly underlying the cornea