Antibiotics can save lives. But the increasing occurrence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria presents a number of challenges for researchers in medicine.

Veterinary medicine is no exception and Dr. Elizabeth Davis, assistant professor of equine internal medicine at Kansas State University, is working to help improve alternative methods for combating infectious diseases in horses. “In veterinary medicine and medicine in general, we’re running out of antibiotics, so we have to be

The drug cetuximab, a promising new targeted therapy better known as Erbitux, offers another option for patients who have colorectal cancer that resists standard chemotherapy treatment, according to an editorial written by two Mayo Clinic cancer researchers that will be published in the July 22 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).

The editorial is co-authored by Mayo Clinic’s Charles Erlichman, M.D., chair of the Department of Oncology and a specialist in the research and t

Women are at least twice as likely as men to develop some musculoskeletal disorders of the upper body. That’s the finding of scientists at Ohio State University who re-analyzed data from 56 previous studies on the subject.

This new work, though it did not yield specific incidence rates for different disorders, gives researchers a critical baseline for comparing gender differences in the prevalence of disorders of the neck, shoulders, arms, and hands.

Until now, some researchers su

A multi-center study led by Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center cardiologist David M. Herrington, M.D., M.H.S., suggests that measuring the stiffness of arteries to screen for early atherosclerosis may be another way to identify people at risk for heart disease or stroke.

Herrington’s study was published in on-line this week in Circulation, a medical journal of the American Heart Association. “The study suggests another way to identify people who are at risk for coronary heart dise

Since West Nile virus is expected to be prominent again this summer – especially on the West Coast – University of Toronto researchers are urging physicians to be on the lookout for its most common manifestations.

A U of T study, published in the May issue of the quarterly Canadian Journal of Neuroscience, found that among hospitalized patients in Toronto with West Nile virus (WNV), encephalitis was the most common neurological manifestation. More surprisingly, encephalitis was an apparent

Thirty-one-year-old Karen Romero, blinded by a malignant brain tumor, had endured two years of chemotherapy before her cancer was finally eradicated at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas with a new means of delivering radiation therapy.

She believes – as do her doctors – that the treatment she received, which pinpoints high-beam radiation therapy on cancer cells with unprecedented accuracy, saved her life. After only two treatments, her ocular germinoma tumor appears to be gone.

The thought of having any chemotherapy treatment must be hard enough to bear, but researchers from the University of Surrey are carrying out clinical trials into ‘chemotherapy at home’. NHS cancer patients are currently asked to attend busy clinics in city hospitals but research by the Postgraduate Medical School together with the Royal Surrey County Hospital in Guildford may see a change to that for intensive treatments. Cancer patients taking part in the trials are responding well and are much ha

Autism suffers present a widespread range of antibodies against brain tissue and one protein in particular seems to be the major target of these antibodies claim a group of scientists in the July issue of the Journal of Neuroimmunology. The researchers also show that these antibodies are not genetically determined, as parents of affected individuals do not exhibit them, and so are probably not involved in disease appearance.

Immune abnormalities, including antibodies against the central ner

A team of European researchers plans to perfect techniques for producing antibodies and vaccines, obtained from plants, to prevent and treat major human diseases, such as AIDS, rabies and TB. The idea is to use genetically modified (GM) crops eventually to produce plant-based pharmaceuticals. Pharma-Planta is a consortium of eleven European countries and South Africa which, thanks to €12 million in EU funding, plans to produce vaccines and other treatments for major diseases, such as HIV/AIDS, rab

EMBO fellowships extend eligibility criteria to promote equal opportunities

The European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) today announced pioneering new eligibility criteria for its long-term and short-term fellowships. The new criteria cater for applicants with childcare commitments and scientists returning to work after a career break for childcare reasons. Further amendments aim to attract applicants from outside Europe and to encourage international mobility and collaborati

Researchers at the University of Dundee with colleagues at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine have discovered how the sand-fly spreads one of the world’s most serous tropical diseases – Leishmaniasis.

With reported British deaths due to the sand-fly bite, the researchers have worked out how the Leishmania parasite has manipulated the sand-fly as the perfect transmission system for itself.

This paper, to be published in Nature by Matt Rogers and Paul Bates from the Liverpool

New sources of computing power – derived from such novel areas as neuron-like cells and powerful chemical reactions – could form the heart of the next generation of computers. The University of the West of England and four research partners have just won £1.8 million in government funding to carry out research into computers that are inspired by nature. This means UWE is playing a key role in two out of only five nationally funded projects aimed at such exciting multidisciplinary research.

A biological process in plants, thought to be useless and even wasteful, has significant benefits and should not be engineered out — particularly in the face of looming climate change, says a team of UC Davis researchers.

The researchers have found that the process, photorespiration, is necessary for healthy plant growth and if impaired could inhibit plant growth, particularly as atmospheric carbon dioxide rises as it is globally. Their findings are published this week in the Proceedings

Two years of therapy with the cholesterol-lowering drug pravastatin induced significant regression of carotid artery wall thickness, and significantly reduced “bad” cholesterol among children with an inherited type of high cholesterol, with no apparent adverse effects on growth, sexual maturation, hormone levels, or liver and muscle tissue, according to a study in the July 21 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

According to background information in the article,

A study conducted by Mayo Clinic found that fears surrounding a connection between coronary artery bypass surgery (CABG) and dementia are unwarranted.

The link between CABG surgery and development of long-term cognitive decline has been controversial in medical literature.

“What we found is that in an observational study of residents of Rochester, Minn., CABG surgery was not a risk factor for dementia,” says David Knopman, M.D., Mayo Clinic neurologist and the study’s lead invest

More and more common antibiotics are losing their effectiveness because they are used too often, allowing bacteria to develop resistance to the drugs. A University of Rhode Island researcher has found a solution to this problem with a natural compound that boosts antibiotic strength from 100 to 1,000 times.

While conducting research on infection prevention, URI Microbiology Professor Paul Cohen stumbled upon a compound — lysophosphatidic acid — that is naturally produced in the human body