Bisphosphonate drugs reduce the risk of bone complications when used in patients whose cancer has spread to the bone, according to a new study in the BMJ.

Researchers reviewed over 30 studies examining the effect of bisphosphonates – a group of drugs commonly used to treat osteoporosis – on complications of secondary bone cancer. Cancers that commonly spread to the bone include breast cancer, prostate cancer and multiple myeloma.

They found that patients given bisphosphonate drugs w

ESC Congress 2003

Sudden cardiac death from ventricular tachyarrhythmias is the leading cause of death in Europe and the US. It effects hundreds of thousands people each year. Many of them have known heart disease, mainly coronary artery disease. The implantable defibrillator (ICD) effectively treats such arrhythmias and prevents sudden cardiac death. Identification of patients at risk who may gain profit from prophylactic ICD implantation remains a difficult task for the cardiologist

Puberty blues: goby fish choose their sex to find a mate

Research on the Great Barrier Reef has revealed that some young reef fish can choose when they mature and which sex they want to be when they grow up.

Research conducted by JP Hobbs, an honours student at James Cook University, Townsville, focused on a colourful goby that lives in bushy corals. The research may win him a British Council sponsored study tour of the UK.

Announcing his research results at Fresh Sc

A Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory physicist, in collaboration with an international team of researchers, has developed an experimental method that allows scientists to investigate the behavior of proteins under non-equilibrium conditions one molecule at a time, to better understand a fundamental biological process of protein folding that is important for many diseases.

The work, presented in the Aug. 29 edition of Science, marks the first time protein-folding kinetics has been monitor

A PET (positron emission tomography) scanner sensitive enough to use on laboratory mice has been developed by biomedical engineers at UC Davis. The device is already being used for studies on prostate cancer.

“We think it’s the highest resolution scanner in existence. We can see things we couldn’t see before,” said Simon Cherry, professor of biomedical engineering at UC Davis, who leads the research group.

PET scanners have become widely used in medical imaging, alongside

Conservation International (CI) announced today the discovery of a tiny fish with a blood red tail in Venezuela’s Upper Caura River. Previously unknown to science, the bloodfin tetra (Aphyocharax yekwanae), is described in the March 2003 edition of the journal, “Ichthyological Exploration of Freshwaters.”

The two-inch-long (50.7-mm-long) tetra is only one of 10 new species of fish found during a single expedition by CI’s Aquatic Rapid Assessment Program (AquaRAP) to the Caura River Basin i

With the full sequence of the human genome now in hand, scientists are turning renewed attention to the molecular processes that regulate the genes encoded by DNA. Estimates are that only a tenth of all genes are expressed at any given time. What controls when and where genes are activated?

Increasingly, researchers believe that the mechanisms that govern gene activity themselves resemble a complicated non-DNA code – an intricate pattern of activity among the molecules that package and cont

Bioengineers at Dartmouth have genetically engineered yeast to produce humanized therapeutic proteins to address the manufacturing crunch currently confronting the biopharmaceutical industry. Reported in this week’s issue of Science, the researchers have re-engineered the yeast P. pastoris to secrete a complex human glycoprotein–a process offering significant advantages over current production methods using mammalian cell lines, according to the researchers.

The study, titled “Production

b>New research has proved that sage can improve memory, confirming centuries-old theories.

British scientists have carried out the first clinical trials with healthy, young adults and found that those who had taken sage oil capsules performed significantly better in a word recall test.

The team, from the Medicinal Plant Research Centre (MPRC) at the Universities of Newcastle and Northumbria, UK, have provided scientific evidence for claims dating back centuries.

They

An international study in this week’s issue of THE LANCET suggests that prognosis for patients with HIV/AIDS might be more reliably determined six months after initiation of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), rather than before the start of treatment.

HAART became widespread in more-developed countries from 1996 onwards, and has improved the prognosis of HIV-1 infection. However, not enough is known about how to predict the prognosis of people with HIV-1 infection starting HAART.

Researchers at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), have discovered how Streptococcus pyogenes (S. pyogenes), the bacterium responsible for “flesh-eating” infections, gains a foothold in the body by subverting a key immune system cell.

“The ability of this very common bug, which causes strep throat and other infections, to modulate the gene activity of an immune system cell is remarkable and has never before been

Effective and safe complementary nutrition therapy

The results of a new double-blind randomized placebo controlled human trial of people with type 2 diabetes revealed a potential mechanism that may explain the ability of chromium picolinate to improve insulin resistance in human skeletal muscle – the primary site for glucose metabolism. These data suggest that when chromium picolinate is added to the diet, insulin sensitivity improves for people with diabetes, a chronic disease that a

Get a whiff of this! A new research partnership at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is using beams of chilled neutrons to determine how aroma compounds are embedded into assortments of other chemicals that carry and release fragrances in perfumes, detergents and other scented products.

Securing the elusive structural details could lead to what might be termed an “odor of magnitude” improvement in models for predicting interactions between fragrances and their molecul

Findings could drive new tissue engineering applications, organ repair and high-strength materials

Tufts University bioengineers have discovered how spiders and silkworms are able to spin webs and cocoons made of incredibly strong fibers. The answer lies in how they control the silk protein solubility and structural organization in their glands.

“This finding could lead to the development of processing methods resulting in new high-strength and high-performance materials use

A gene present in nearly one in eight people is the most commonly inherited cancer susceptibility gene identified so far, increasing cancer risk in carriers by 26 percent, according to a study published by researchers at Chicago’s Northwestern Memorial Hospital in today’s Journal of Clinical Oncology. More common than the BRCA gene mutations, Transforming Growth Factor Beta Receptor 1*6A (TGFBR1*6A) may increase risk of breast cancer by 48 percent, ovarian cancer by 53 percent, and colon ca

Finding that an abnormally active Bcl10 gene drives B cells to become cancerous suggests blocking the gene would be an effective treatment for MALT lymphoma

A gene that is crucial to the development and function of an entire family of immune cells is also key to understanding why one member of that family can become cancerous. Investigators at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and the Blood Research Institute at the Blood Center of Southeastern Wisconsin, Milwaukee, reported