Around half a million people a year in sub-Saharan Africa are affected by sleeping sickness (human African trypanosomiasis). The disease is fatal in humans if not treated with chemotherapy; however, adverse effects of drug treatment and an increase in drug resistance underline the importance of establishing an accurate diagnostic test for the disease.

In this week’s issue of THE LANCET, Sanjeev Krishna from St George’s Hospital Medical School, London, UK, and colleagues assessed whether mass

Scientists at The Hospital for Sick Children (Sick Kids) and Yale University School of Medicine have found that a compound in the spice turmeric corrects the cystic fibrosis defect in mice. This research is reported in the April 23, 2004 issue of the journal Science.

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is fatal genetic disease in which thick mucous clogs the lungs and the pancreas due to problems with the secretion of ions and fluid by cells of the airways and gastrointestinal tract. Normal secretion dep

An international team of researchers has discovered that respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), a common cold virus causing bronchiolitis in children, can act as a ‘hit and hide’ virus. It was thought that the virus could only survive in the body for a few days, but these new results show that the virus can survive for many months or years, perhaps causing long-term effects on health, such as damage to the lungs.

The research, published in this month’s American Journal of Respiratory and Critica

The Gipuzkoa Cancer Institute and the Donostia-San Sebastian General Hospital have taken the first step to substitute traditional chemotherapy for breast cancer cases with a novel treatment. This new treatment is less aggressive and, thus, does not produce alopecia. From May, the two centres will test the efficacy of the new oral medicine, capecitabine.

The project involves women who have had breast cancer operations and who have been diagnosed with ganglions in the axilas. These women foll

Grasses typify the Great Plains, so it’s not surprising that more than 108 species of grasshoppers are at home on the range in the central United States.

However, a grasshopper that doesn’t love grass lives in Kansas too, a recent discovery at Kansas State University’s Konza Prairie Biological Station shows. This newfound hopper prefers trees.

The first specimen was actually collected in September 2001 by a student from Fort Riley Middle School, according to Valerie

HIV-AIDS did not come from oral polio vaccine contaminated with chimpanzee virus, reports a research team led by a University of Arizona evolutionary biologist.

Belief that polio vaccine can spread AIDS has hampered the World Health Organization’s efforts to stamp out polio. In Nigeria, several states recently banned use of the vaccine. Nigeria now has the highest number of polio cases in the world.

Although scientists agree that HIV comes from a chimpanzee simian immunodeficie

Saddle-shaped structure provides the spring to generate powerful punch

Forget boxers Oscar de la Hoya and Shane Mosley. The fastest punches are delivered by a lowly crustacean – the stomatopod, or mantis shrimp.

With the help of a BBC camera crew and the loan of a high-speed video camera, University of California, Berkeley, scientists have recorded the swiftest kick, and perhaps most brutal attack, of any predator. The shrimp flail their club-shaped front leg at peak speeds

In energy consuming biological reactions the level of ATP is the essential indicator for enzyme activity or cell viability. The Biaffin ATP Determination Kits offer convenient bioluminescense assays for quantitative determination of small amounts of pre-existing ATP or ATP formed in enzymatic reactions. Catalysed by firefly luciferase the substrate D-luciferin is oxidized in an ATP-dependent process generating chemiluminescence at 560 nm (pH 7.8):

UCL scientists have made the first ever recordings of the brain’s smallest cells at work sensing the outside world. Their findings could help unlock the secrets of the cerebellum, a key motor control centre in the brain which, when damaged, can lead to movement disorders such as ataxia and loss of balance.

Paul Chadderton and colleagues at UCL’s Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research used a method called patch-clamping to measure the activity of a single granule cell in an intact brain.

In a major study conducted at 20 centers in the United States and Europe, a bioartificial liver developed by researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center reduced mortality significantly among patients suffering from acute liver failure, the dramatic loss of liver function that can cause death in days or even hours. Study results are published in the May issue of Annals of Surgery.

This is the first large-scale, prospective, randomized, multi-center trial examining the effectiveness of any art

A simple, inexpensive blood test performed at birth to screen for immune disorders could dramatically increase the chance of survival for babies born with such potentially fatal disorders as severe combined immunodeficiency disease (SCID).

Physicians at Duke University Medical Center have performed stem cell transplants in 136 infants with SCID in the past 22 years. The survival rate for 38 infants receiving transplants in the first 3.5 months of life is 97 percent, but the rate drops to 69

The food and drink we consume have to pass strict quality control tests. Nevertheless, these precautions are not always sufficient, given that some foodstuffs still give rise to illness. In most cases, food poisoning is caused by micro-organisms. The salmonella bacteria is, without doubt, one of the better known ones. The University of the Basque Country (EHU) is developing a new system to detect salmonella with greater rapidity – within 24 hours.

Salmonella is quite a ubiquitous bacteria, f

Scientists identify two major risk factors for community-acquired skin infections caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in a report published in the May 1 issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases: previous antibiotic use and a genetic predisposition.

S. aureus is a common bacterium found on human nasal mucous membranes and skin, and strains that are resistant to methicillin can cause disease. Until recently drug-resistant strains were considered to be acquired almo

Genetically modified mosquitoes that cannot transmit malaria are one hope for battling the disease that still kills over one million people a year. But that plan faces some serious snags, according to UC Davis researchers who are suggesting an alternative strategy.

Other scientists have proposed controlling malaria by releasing into the wild mosquitoes genetically engineered to resist malaria. If the resistant mosquitoes breed and spread their genes through the population, malaria transmiss

New research findings about T-cell transport shed light on how the normal immune system functions and could have implications in fighting autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, say researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.

Two molecules on the surfaces of T-cells – a type of immune cell – must work in tandem to help the T-cells cross from the bloodstream into infected tissues, where the T-cells initiate an immune or inflammatory response, researchers at UT Southwestern have di

Two largest organ transplant societies join forces to tackle problem of traditional and exotic infections in thoracic transplantation

Complications from infectious diseases, such as HIV and West Nile virus in heart and lung transplant patients, is the focus of a joint symposium at the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation (ISHLT) 24th Annual Meeting held in San Francisco.

When demand for organs continually outstrips supply, offering transplants to patient