About half of the 700,000 annual cases of suspected appendicitis in the United States lack the usual symptoms – pain in the lower right abdomen, fever and a rising white blood cell count – making the decision to operate somewhat problematic. Now, thanks to a new imaging agent based on technology developed by nuclear medicine researchers at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, doctors may finally have a way to rapidly and accurately detect those hard-to-diagnose cases.

The U.S. Food

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers have developed a new technique for rapidly identifying the functions of genes.

The “high throughput” technique can be used in both cell culture and in animal models to screen thousands of genes for a particular biological function. It provides a method for the rapid development of a cDNA library, which would contain protein-encoding sequences of DNA. Researchers then can use the library to analyze a specific gene function.

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine have determined that a particular type of cellular stress called osmotic stress is of critical importance to cell growth and the body’s immune response against infection. The findings may have implications for autoimmune disorders, transplant rejections, and potential cancer therapies.

Published in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) the week of July 5, 2004, the res

Mayo Clinic researchers have discovered a gene responsible for the onset of aging, including age-related disorders such as infertility, reproductive problems and cataracts. This research, conducted in genetically modified mice, is promising in helping physicians understand and treat the same disorders in humans. The findings appear in the July issue of the journal Nature Genetics. [Baker, D.J. et al. (2004). Nat. Genet. 36, 744-749.

The discoveries came as the result of general investigati

Taken to its ultimate outcome, the research that biology professor Dr. Steve Howard is working on could help disarm deadly retroviruses such as HIV or SARS.

Howard, associate professor of biology at Middle Tennessee State University, would be the first to advise against making that kind of quantum-leap claim. It’s much too early. But assuming that the research that led to the polio vaccine first crawled, then walked, then charted a new course for civilization itself, Howard’s disco

Studies of the geographic variation of colon and rectal (colorectal) cancer mortality rates in the U.S. have long indicated that they are primariliy linked to solar ultraviolet-B (UVB) radiation: the more UVB in summer, the lower the mortality rate.

The hypothesis to explain this result is that UVB radiation produces vitamin D in the skin, and vitamin D acts to reduce the risk of colorectal and over a dozen other types of cancer. One major study found that intake of 150 IU/day of vitamin D

Research in monkeys suggests that a diet high in the natural plant estrogens found in soy does not increase the risk of breast or uterine cancer in postmenopausal women.

“This is convincing evidence that at dietary levels, the estrogens found in soy do not stimulate cell growth and other markers for cancer risk,” said Charles E. Wood, D.V.M., lead researcher, from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. “The findings should be especially interesting to women at high risk for breast

More than 8,000 international scientists and clinicians will arrive in Montreal to share the latest advances in Immunology in the July heat. Researchers from 70 countries will arrive in the city on July 18 to attend the weeklong 12th International Congress of Immunology (ICI) and 4th Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies (FOCIS) Meeting.

“There will be over 5,000 presentations including diverse topics such as, asthma, stem cell and bone marrow transplantation, vaccines, art

Clinical trials awaited for procedure that is less invasive than laparoscopy

Surgeries performed with specialized medical devices requiring only small incisions, called laparoscopic surgery, have many advantages over traditional open surgery, including less pain, fewer complications and quicker recoveries. Now, scientists at Johns Hopkins have created a new surgical technique that in extensive animal studies is safe and may improve even further the benefit of minimally invasive surg

Scientists at Florida State University subjected walnuts, cashew nuts and almonds to radiation, roasting, pressure cooking, blanching, frying and microwave heating in an effort to make them safe for allergy sufferers.

In the end, the nutritious little nuggets refused to surrender their allergens, but the research yielded sensitive techniques that detect minute traces of the nuts — potentially fatal to allergic consumers — in seemingly nut-free processed foods.

The study, “Impac

Anal cancer is on the rise in both sexes, particularly among American men, and changing trends in sexual behavior – combined with current tobacco use and infection by a specific strain of the human papillomavirus – may help explain the increase. These findings, from two separate studies by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, will be reported in a pair of papers in the July 15 issue of Cancer. The first study, by lead author Lisa G. Johnson, Ph.D., a statistical-research associate

A blood test that measures food-specific allergy antibodies can be used to help pediatric allergists with the difficult decision of when to reintroduce a food that a child has been allergic to, say researchers at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center.

In their report, published in the July issue of The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, the researchers provide guidelines for using these antibody levels to determine which children should be offered an additional allergy test, known

Treatment with a new dual cell cycle and angiogenesis pathway inhibitor blocks VEGF-induced vascular permeability, inhibits tumour angiogenesis and induces apoptosis in human tumour models said Dr Gerhard Siemeister of Schering AG, Corporate Research, Berlin speaking at the 18th meeting of the European Association of Cancer Research today (Tuesday 6 July, 2004).

Loss of cell cycle control (runaway growth) and tumour-induced angiogenesis (development of new blood vessels to supply the growin

A successful, and novel, technique to kill metastatic breast cancer cells by circumventing their chemo- and radioresistant mechanisms was by presented by Dr John Giannios, Head of Radiotherapeutic Cancer Research at the IASO Hospital, Athens, Greece at the 18th Meeting of the European Association for Cancer Research today (Tuesday 6 July 2004).

Advanced breast cancer, with metastases to lung and bone, has a very poor prognosis and current treatment protocols for this stage of disease gener

Cancer incidence rates in the developed world are increasing each year and developing countries are also now showing an increased incidence of the disease. But how much were our ancestors affected by the disease? Dr Mario Slaus of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Zagreb presented archaeological findings at the 18th Meeting of the European Association of Cancer Research (EACR-18) in Innsbruck today (6 July 2004), suggesting that the disease was very uncommon even in our recent ancestors, r

Many long-established skin products, such as shampoos and soaps, contain harmful or ineffective ingredients because effective testing methods were unavailable when they were developed.

The first ever model of live skin with a full ecosystem of micro-organisms – created at the University of Leeds – has the potential to help develop dozens of new products and change the ingredients of many household names.

Skin Research Centre director Dr Richard Bojar said the new tests would unloc