Pergolide, a drug commonly used to treat Parkinson’s disease symptoms, has recently been shown to be effective in treating restless legs syndrome. Researchers from seven countries collaborated on the study, published in the April 27 issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

Restless legs syndrome (RLS), characterized by sensory and motor abnormalities of the limbs associated with an urge to move, affects five to 10 percent of the population. RLS can lea

Treatment guidelines for epilepsy evaluate antiepileptic drugs

The number of drugs available to treat epilepsy have more than doubled in the last decade. The American Academy of Neurology and the American Epilepsy Society have assembled the top experts in the field to evaluate the available data of more than 1,400 research articles in order to create a guideline for the treatment of epilepsy with these new antiepileptic drugs (AEDs).

“These guidelines are designed to provide

Issues from fertility to contraception can be challenging

Anti-epileptic drugs (AEDs) are powerful medications that help women with epilepsy control their seizures; however, when these same women have to deal with reproductive issues and their epilepsy drugs, a myriad of problems can crop up, according to Mark Yerby, M.D., MPH, a leading expert in women’s issues and epilepsy. About 1 million of the estimated 2.5 million Americans with epilepsy are women.

Dr. Yerby is as

Misconceptions hinder treatment

For nearly three thousand years, people believed that epilepsy had a supernatural cause. But the most dangerous misconception about epilepsy is a modern one, according to epilepsy expert Jerome Engel, Jr., M.D., Ph.D.–many people, including physicians, still believe that epilepsy can’t be treated.

“Epilepsy and epileptic seizures are far more common than people realize,” said Dr. Engel, Jonathan Sinay Professor of Neurology and Neurobiol

Lennart Mucke discusses findings at American Academy of Neurology 56th Annual Meeting

Promising research into the causes of Alzheimer’s disease, with an emphasis on the roles of such proteins as amyloid-beta and apolipoprotein E, will be the subject of a plenary session presentation on April 29 at the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) 56th Annual Meeting in San Francisco.

Lennart Mucke, MD, director of the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease and Joseph B. Mart

Heart disease researchers at Rockefeller University have discovered the function of a gene associated with high cholesterol levels in humans.

Using mice as test subjects, the Rockefeller scientists determined that the gene, called Pcsk9, can decrease the number of receptors on liver cells that remove the “bad” LDL cholesterol from the blood.

“It’s very exciting to think that Pcsk9 might play a large role in the pathway to regulate the uptake of bad cholesterol from blood,” sai

Cholesterol levels vary with the seasons, reaching their highest levels in the winter months, according to an article in the April 26 issue of The Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

According to the article, a variety of studies have suggested that cholesterol levels are higher in the fall and winter than they are in the spring and summer. Although the mechanism for this phenomenon is not clear, such variation could result in larger numbers of people being dia

ESA today announced the launch of its ‘Space Solutions’ initiative, a business-to-business provider of know-how and technologies to industries in the wellness market. The launch was announced at an event featuring an address by ESA astronaut André Kuipers, live from the International Space Station.

Over the years, ESA has developed dozens of innovative technologies and methods to deal with the adverse effects of weightlessness and has applied the findings of space experiments to medicine, p

Computer scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have teamed up with a group of medical professionals to advance the use of telemedicine.

NIST and the American Telemedicine Association developed technical standards related to the diagnosis and treatment of diabetic retinopathy, which is a complication of diabetes and a leading cause of blindness.

Telemedicine helps patients to have access to health care professionals electronically, whatever their l

In this issue of Science, researchers at Yale University and the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto report that curcumin, a compound in the spice turmeric, corrects the defect of cystic fibrosis in mice.

Cystic Fibrosis (CF) is a debilitating and ultimately fatal genetic disorder, caused by the failure of a chloride channel, the Cystic Fibrosis Transmembrane conductance Regulator (CFTR), to reach its proper place on the cell surface, where it transports chloride ions and water into and o

Although cyclosporine is widely used to prevent rejection in organ transplant recipients over the long term, two problems remain for heart transplant patients: acute rejection, which occurs within the first three months after transplantation, and cardiac allograft vasculopathy, a thickening of the heart wall that can restrict blood flow.

Findings from the second year of a multi-center study of the new anti-rejection drug everolimus were presented Thursday (April 22, 2004) at the Internation

Certain cells from a mother persist in their children’s bodies and can provoke an immune response in which the child’s body attacks itself, according to Mayo Clinic research published in the current issue of the Journal of Immunology (http://www.jimmunol.org). The findings are important not only in seeking the cause and treatments of this disease, but also in understanding an entire class of autoimmune disorders.

Juvenile dermatomyositis (der-mat-o-my-o-SITE-us), or JDM, is a rare muscle-da

Process shows how mounds of data can be effectively managed

Johns Hopkins scientists have successfully used new techniques to search the yeast genome for genes that help keep copied chromosomes together, protecting the integrity of the organism’s genetic material during cell division.

By combining two genome-wide screens, the researchers were able to narrow down the dozens of genes identified by the first screen to just 17 that made both cut-offs — a number small enough

Two Johns Hopkins scientists have figured out a simple way to make millions upon millions of drug-like peptides quickly and efficiently, overcoming a major hurdle to creating and screening huge “libraries” of these super-short proteins for use in drug development.

“Our work dramatically increases the complexity of peptide libraries that can be created and the speed with which they can be made and processed,” says Chuck Merryman, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow who developed the new technique. “

Scientists glean new insight from prematurely old mice

The relationship between genome integrity and aging is the subject of a new report in the upcoming issue of Genes & Development. Drs Lin-Quan Sun and Robert Arceci at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have developed a novel mouse model to study premature aging, and the genetic events that contribute to normal development and longevity.

“The inability of an organism to maintain the integrity of its genome has bee

Using magnets and video microscopy to measure the length of individual DNA molecules under experimental conditions, researchers have demonstrated that Condensin, a complex of proteins widely conserved in evolution, physically compacts DNA in a manner dependent on energy from ATP. The finding is significant because the Condensin complex, which is essential for life, has been known to play a key role in the dramatic condensation of genomic DNA that precedes mitosis and cell division. The new work puts