The General Accounting Office estimates that there are some 1500 manufacturing and repacking facilities for dietary supplements in the US. These facilities produce approximately 29,000 unique formulations that are packed into more than 75,000 distinctly labeled products and made readily available to the public through supermarkets, retail outlets, the Internet and television infomercials.

Protecting the health of those that consume dietary supplements is of great importance to p

Findings have implications for treatment

A team of researchers, led by a Cardiff University professor, has discovered how the body regulates the amount of oxygen in the bloodstream. The findings, by Professor Paul Kemp of the Cardiff School of Biosciences, and colleagues at both Cardiff and Leeds Universities, will be published in the journal Science later this month. “The discovery could have important implications for understanding how the body adjusts to major changes in ox

Did your grandmother always tell you to “eat up your greens”? It appears that she may have known something scientists are only now discovering. When the substances produced in cruciferous vegetables such as cabbage, broccoli, sprouts or cauliflower are eaten, they could help in the fight against cancer.

A research team headed by Professor Alison Fiander, Head of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, at the Wales College Of Medicine, Cardiff University in the UKare asking wo

The ophthalmologist who pioneered customized LASIK surgery – supervision – now aims to further improve patients’ eyesight and minimize the risk of side effects. Patients should benefit from several recent discoveries, Scott MacRae, M.D., told an audience of eye doctors in a keynote address at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology last month.

The techniques appear crucial for minimizing unwanted side effects and allowing patients, most of whom now have visio

Defeating high blood pressure may be a matter of a little molecular manipulation.

Some drugs for hypertension, such as so-called ACE inhibitors, block specific receptor proteins on the cell. But researchers at Jefferson Medical College instead have looked to a certain molecular pathway called the Gq signaling pathway, showing that it plays an important role in developing various models of hypertension. The work might lead to new insights into the roots of hypertension, and eventu

A research team based at the University of Chicago may have found a way to manipulate cell suicide, also known as programmed cell death, a normal process that regulates cell number but that goes awry in chronic inflammatory disorders, cancer and other diseases.

In the 12 Nov. 2004 issue of the journal Cell, the scientists show that a key step in the process of preventing cell suicide is the induction of ferritin heavy chain (FHC), a protein that collects and hoards iron. By seque

Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas have discovered a protein that controls an early and significant step in the exquisitely timed process of bone formation.

Dr. Eric Olson, chairman of molecular biology, and colleagues have shown the protein HDAC4 to be essential for proper bone development, or osteogenesis. Their findings, reported in the November issue of the journal Cell and available online, may have widespread implications for understanding and preven

’Cytological profiling’ could streamline early phases of drug discovery

Bringing an unprecedented level of automation to microscopy, scientists at Harvard University have developed a powerful new method of visualizing drugs’ multifaceted impact on cells. The technique, which could eventually become a standard tool for drug discovery, is described this week in the journal Science.

Steven J. Altschuler and Lani F. Wu, mathematicians skilled in developing models to find me

A Japanese brewery, an Okinawan sea sponge and some clever detective work have enabled an international research team based at the University of Chicago to solve a biological mystery, and the solution suggests a novel way to boost the body’s defenses against cancer.

In Science Express, the online early-publication version of the journal Science, the researchers provide evidence that a sugary lipid known as iGb3 plays a key role in regulating the response of natural killer T

Discovery may one day lead to new ways to treat degenerative diseases

Scientists at Stanford University and Joslin Diabetes Center are providing new insights into how muscle cells regenerate — leading to powerful tools to help scientists better understand diseases such as muscular dystrophy. Skeletal muscle contains a complex array of cell types. Among its principal components are multi-nucleated muscle fibers and muscle satellite cells — cells located in close association with

Recent experimental results threatened to overturn 100 years of scientific research into the mysterious nature of liquid water, but new experimental results say … not so fast! A team of scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley, has shown that the energy required to “measurably distort” the molecular structure of liquid water is the same as the energy required to melt ice. This could explain why a study la

The measurement of pH is one of the most common analytical measurements used the world over in applications from process control in the food industry, to research in the pharmaceutical industry, through to effluent monitoring in the environmental sector. In 2002, the total pH measurement instrumentation market, including replacement sensors revenue, was estimated to be on the order of $500m.

The technology currently used for measuring pH is more than seven decades old and suffers from

Research provides information on brain changes that affect breeding in birds

A bird’s song is music to our ears — and to the ears of his potential mates — and a warning to other males to stay out of his territory. To Ignacio Moore, assistant professor of biology at Virginia Tech, bird songs were a curiosity that made him want to find out why birds sang at some times and not at others, at some places and not elsewhere.

Moore and University of Washington, Seattl

Levels of hepatitis C among young injecting drug users across London are reaching epidemic levels report researchers from Imperial College London, the Health Protection Agency and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

According to research published today in the British Medical Journal, four in ten new young injectors now has hepatitis C, while three per cent are now infected with HIV.

Hepatitis C, which can cause serious and sometimes fatal liver damage,

Infarct size reduced 60%+ by three different measures

Long an under-studied yet widely-used over-the-counter medication, acetaminophen over the last few years is becoming recognized for a range of potential therapeutic uses beyond headache and pain.

One promising area is cardiology, where researchers decided to test the “common wisdom” that acetaminophen had no potential in treating heart disease. This position has been popular in the medical community despite that fact

A vaccine that could reduce cervical cancer rates by 75 percent is safe and 95 percent effective, according to a study of 1,113 women in North America and Brazil.

The vaccine against the most common cancer-causing strains of human papillomavirus was 100 percent effective at preventing the persistent infections that cause cervical cancer, researchers report in the Nov. 13 issue of the British journal, The Lancet.

“This study provides objective evidence that this vaccine