The fact that infections among adults can increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes is now well established by several hundred scientific studies. Both heart attacks and strokes are expressions of arteriosclerosis (thickening of the arteries, previously termed hardening of the arteries). New research from the Section for Pediatric Cardiology in Lund indicates that infections can also contribute to the early development of arteriosclerosis even in childhood.

Doctor Petru Liuba shows in a

Researchers from Imperial College London, University of Oxford, Kagoshima University (Japan) and University of the Ryukyus (Japan) have discovered the mechanism by which human T-lymphotropic virus type 1 (HTLV-1), the virus which causes adult T-cell leukaemia, spreads through the body.

Previously it was not understood how HTLV-1 was able to spread between cells and pass between individuals, but according to research published today in Science, the virus spreads by subverting normal T-cell (a

Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers are beginning to unravel how a mysterious sixth sense guides animal attraction. The scientists have made the first-ever recordings of patterns of brain activity in a mouse as it explores the sex and identity of a newly encountered animal.

The research team, led by Lawrence C. Katz, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Duke University Medical Center, recorded the firing of neurons in the accessory olfactory bulb, part of a poorly under

When it comes to visual entertainment, three-dimensional viewing can be quite eye-opening. So, too, in science where a recent finding involving University of Iowa researchers used three-dimensional imaging to understand how a bacterial enzyme can take oxygen from air and use it to convert certain molecules into useful chemicals.

Specifically, the scientists saw that naphthalene dioxygenase, a bacterial enzyme, can bind oxygen (to iron) in a side-on fashion and add it on to naphthalene, a hy

If you sniff a rose this Valentine’s Day, your brain will recognize almost a hundred different molecules that collectively give the flower its heady scent-but how? Scientists are now discovering how the brain identifies odors and their mysterious counterparts, the pheromones. New research, to be presented today at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting and forthcoming in the journal, Science, explains how the mouse brain is exquisitely tuned to recognize an

Trees are better off if they produce large nuts. This is revealed in research by Patrick Jansen from Wageningen University. Scatterhoarding rodents appear to prefer burying larger nuts for later. The bigger the nut, the further it is buried from the tree and the more frequently it is forgotten.

Biologist Patrick Jansen investigated what happened to nuts as soon as they fell on the ground of the rainforest in French Guyana. He placed thousands of nuts on the ground in the forest. Each nut wa

A research letter in this week’s issue of THE LANCET suggests that the pain-killer ibuprofen could diminish the well-known beneficial effects of aspirin on preventing cardiovascular disease. Aspirin makes platelets (blood-clotting cells) less ’sticky’ which is associated with fewer thromboses (clots). Aspirin therefore reduces the chance of heart attacks caused by coronary thrombosis and stroke (cerebral thrombosis). Previous laboratory research has suggested that ibuprofen in

The results from a longitudinal study of the relative frequency of various types of HIV mutations associated with the use of antiretroviral therapy (ART) were presented today at a meeting of leading AIDS researchers. The study showed that the prevalence of most key mutations associated with antiretroviral resistance have changed significantly from 1999-2002.

Specifically, the results showed that the prevalence of thymidine analog mutations (TAMs) and other key mutations associated with HIV

In a demonstration of vaccine therapy’s potential for treating lung cancer, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute scientists and their associates report that a prototype vaccine boosted the natural immune response to tumors in a small group of patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Moreover, the vaccine was found to be non-toxic and well-tolerated.

Published in the Feb. 15 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology, findings from the Phase I clinical trial will provide an impetus

Ames Laboratory researcher’s microscale channels steer neurons to rewire damaged nerves

Using microscale channels cut in an ultrathin biodegradable polymer, a researcher at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory is working to regrow nerve cells. The technique, which may one day allow the paralyzed to walk and the blind to see, has been proven to work for peripheral nerve regeneration in laboratory rats.

Nerve cells are unlike most other biological tissue. When a

The number of circulating endothelial progenitor cells in an individual’s blood –– the precursor cells to those that line the insides of blood vessels –– may be an indicator of overall cardiovascular health, according to research by scientists at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) and Emory University School of Medicine. The research was published in the Feb. 13 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

The endothelial cells lining the blood vessels provide essen

Answer one of natural history’s most intractable questions

All of Madagascar’s living Carnivora (an order of mammals that includes dogs, cats, bears, hyenas and their relatives) descended from a single species that dispersed from Africa to Madagascar, apparently floating across the ocean barrier aboard wayward vegetation about 24 million to 18 million years ago. Previously, scientists believed that Madagascar’s seven living species of native Carnivora represented two to four

In a discovery with far-reaching potential for advances in infertility treatment, scientists at the University of Leeds have identified what makes sperm wriggle and swim. The answer lies in a protein called dynein. The scientists have taken the first photographs of individual molecules of dynein, also found in lungs, the nervous system and elsewhere in the human body. In an article in this week’s Nature, the researchers explain how the protein creates movement.

Project leader Dr Peter Knight

New findings may offer roadmap to predicting how the body will respond to a deadly habit

First- or second-hand exposure to cigarettes can lead to a variety of diseases, including tissue destruction found in pulmonary emphysema and osteoporosis. Also included among cigarette smoking-induced diseases are disorders in which an excessive deposition of fibrotic scar occurs, such as with atherosclerosis and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.

Collagen is the major protein of the white f

Differences in people seem to run in the blood, according to a recent study that examines which genes are active in blood cells. The work, published in this week’s online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that the levels of several genes used by blood cells vary from person to person.

“Nobody had taken this broad a look at genetic variation in the blood of healthy people,” said David Relman, MD, associate professor of medicine at Stanford and a co-autho

Green fluorescence allows isolating the beta cells for study of their behavior and number in the pancreas

Diabetes mellitus (DM) affects at least 16 million Americans, ranks seventh as a cause of death in the United States, and costs the national economy over $100 billion yearly. About 95 percent of persons with DM have type 2.

Type 2 DM is characterized by insulin resistance in peripheral tissues as well as a defect in insulin secretion by beta cells. Insulin regulates ca