A booster dose of a substance already found in the body appears to be safe and non-toxic for the treatment of pancreatic cancer, and shows signs of arresting pancreatic cancer cell growth in patients, Penn State College of Medicine researchers report.

“Our previous laboratory and animal studies showed that opioid growth factor, called OGF, can markedly slow down the proliferation of pancreatic cancer cells,” said Ian S. Zagon, Ph.D., professor of neural and behavioral sciences, Penn State C

Coronary artery surgery performed “off-pump”, i.e., keeping the heart beating and not using the cardiopulmonary bypass machine, has similar outcomes after one year, and costs less, when compared to conventional coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) using cardiopulmonary bypass, according to a study in the April 21 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

To try to avoid some of the complications attributable to cardiopulmonary bypass, U.S. surgeons performed approxim

Health care professionals make contact with an average of 35 patients daily. If you calculate that the hand wash takes 2 minutes, including the time to find a basin, more than one hour of the work day is used for washing.

Hospital infections cost the world thousands of lives. An important cause is unclean hands. A new device will clean hands completely in a fraction of the time used for a typical hand washing.

The newly developed hand-wash device contains two main components: disinf

International consortium provides the first step towards a comprehensive functional link between the genome sequence scaffold and human diseases

The announcement of the human genome sequence three years ago was widely hailed as one of the great scientific achievements in modern history. But sequencing the genome is just a first step — the monumental task of ascribing biological meaning to those sequences has just begun. The H-Invitational international consortium, led by Takashi Gojo

Reducing Enzyme Involved in Recycling Vitamin C Increases a Plant’s Responsiveness to Drought Conditions

University of California, Riverside researchers reported the development of technology that increases crop drought tolerance by decreasing the amount of an enzyme that is responsible for recycling vitamin C.

Biochemist Daniel R. Gallie, a professor of biochemistry at the University of California, Riverside together with Zhong Chen of his research group reported their find

Kidney disease may affect as many as one in twelve people, and causes millions of deaths each year. Currently, the diagnosis of kidney function relies mainly on blood and urine tests, an indirect means of figuring out how well they’re working.

Standard MRI scanners, used to view many organs of the body, do not always show the whole picture for kidneys. This is because the MRI equipment found in hospitals and clinics works by imaging water molecules in the body. But in water-logged kidn

Team work is just as important in your brain as it is on the playing field: A new study published online on April 19 by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports that groups of brain cells can substantially improve their ability to discriminate between different orientations of simple visual patterns by synchronizing their electrical activity.

The paper, “Cooperative synchronized assemblies enhance orientation discrimination,” by Vanderbilt professor of biomedical engineeri

Close look at structure of transport proteins could aid search Red-blooded genealogists take note: The discovery in microbes of two oxygen-packing proteins, the earliest known ancestors to hemoglobin, brings scientists closer to identifying the earliest life forms to use oxygen. According to the project’s lead investigator, University of Hawaii microbiologist Maqsudul Alam, the research may also aid in the search for blood substitutes as new

Utilising the same principle that lets a TV camera transform external images into electric signals, IST project OPTIVIP has tested an implantable visual prosthesis to stimulate the optic nerve and allow limited sight for certain sufferers of blindness.

The method used by the four-year project is based on the stimulation of the optic nerve by a cuff electrode. The prosthesis is operational only if the optic nerve is still healthy in spite of the complete blindness. For this reason, OPTIVIP h

Alternative hormones, doses and delivery systems not explored in WHI may exhibit

Low-dose transdermal hormone therapy (HT) remains a viable short-term alternative for women to treat debilitating menopausal symptoms, offer lipid protection and preserve bone health, despite the negative news about oral HT effects from the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI), according to a recent review of peer-reviewed medical studies by Mary Jane Minkin, M.D., of Yale University School of Medicine, i

In one of the first national surveys of dental hygienists about their knowledge and screening practices for oral cancers, researchers at Case Western Reserve University’s School of Dental Medicine found indications that while dental hygienists view screening for oral cancer an important component of their practice and possess comparable oral cancer knowledge with the general dentist in the private practice, they often do not carry out oral cancer screenings.

Oral cancer impacts people.

A Mayo Clinic discovery about a protein known as Dynamin-2 has thrown conventional wisdom for a loop. Finding the protein on the centrosome, a minute structure near a cell’s nucleus, may lead to new strategies for stopping cancer growth.

The Mayo team, already known for discovering several families of dynamins, this time discovered them — not on a membrane, as expected — but on the unlikely centrosome which has no membrane. It was the last place they expected to find them, but the surpris

Mayo Clinic researchers have found a way to revive immunity in mice that have abnormal or deficient immune systems. The discovery may lead to a means of restoring immunity to individuals with immunodeficiency diseases such as AIDS and cancer. Also, because the research involves an existing therapy, application may be possible in the near future.

The research team, led by Mayo Clinic immunologists Marilia Cascalho, M.D., Ph.D., and Jeffrey Platt, M.D., report in this month’s Journal of I

Ever since the AIDS epidemic began more than two decades ago, scientists have been trying to understand why as many as one-quarter of those infected with HIV develop dementia.

Now, researchers at Jefferson Medical College may have an answer.

Investigators led by virologist Roger J. Pomerantz, M.D., director of the Division of Infectious Diseases and Environmental Medicine at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, have shown that the virus produces

Tissue damage due to Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is reduced and lifespan lengthened in mouse models of the disease when a naturally occurring fibrous protein called fibrin is depleted from the body, according to researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine.

The study, reported online the week of April 19, 2004 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, identifies fibrin as a potential target for therapeutic intervention in the disease, which affe

A new study demonstrates that a protein called periostin promotes deadly spreading and late stage progression of colon cancer. The research results demonstrate that periostin promotes metastatic growth of colon cancer by activating signaling molecules that encourage cell survival and identify the protein as a potential therapeutic target for the control of colon cancer.

Colorectal cancer commonly metastasizes to the liver and is the second leading cause of death from cancer in the United St