How Economic Changes Affect Disease

“Plop!” You drop one in the pot of boiling coconut milk. The delicate aroma of wings and fur rise into the air. While not everyone’s ideal food choice, the Chamorro people of Guam regard the flying fox – a type of bat that can grow up to a four foot wingspan – as a delicacy. Mostly consumed by men, the entire animal, including the fur and all the insides, are eaten during social gatherings and certain important events. Women sometimes eat the

An increase in the transmission rate of drug-resistant human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), now affecting as many as one in five newly infected persons, has been discovered by researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine.

In a five-year, multi-center study of more than 300 patients in 10 North American cities, the investigators found that the transmission rate of drug-resistant HIV had more than doubled, resulting in impaired patient-response once anti-retr

Dartmouth Medical School geneticists have found a molecular shortcut from light reception to gene activation in their work to understand biological clocks. Their research has revealed that the protein called White Collar-1 does double duty: it perceives light and then, in response to light, directly turns on a key gene called frequency, which is a central component of the clock.

Biological clocks are molecularly driven and are set, or synchronized, by the daily cycles of light and dark. Usin

Researchers at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health have found that aspirin use may decrease the incidence of pancreatic cancer, possibly through its anti-inflammatory effects. The study will be published in the Aug. 7 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

For seven years, lead author Kristin Anderson, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the School of Public Health, and her colleagues followed a group of postmenopausal women from Iowa who were part of the Iowa

Study suggests promising new insights for men with early-stage disease

A fat-laden diet and high calcium consumption are both well-known suspected risk factors for prostate cancer. However, new findings from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center suggest that fat and calcium themselves may not cause prostate cancer, as previously thought, but instead may fuel its progression from localized to advanced disease.

While high intake of dietary fat and calcium is associated wi

After two years of stubborn persistence, scientists at Johns Hopkins have determined the 3-D structure of part of a protein called HER3, which should speed efforts to interfere with abnormal growth and cancer.

“It took us more than two years to interpret the data and get HER3’s structure,” says Dan Leahy, Ph.D., a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and a professor of biophysics in Hopkins’ Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences. “Now that we have it, it might take only

A new study published in BMC Infectious Diseases reveals that people with latent toxoplasmosis (a harmless form of the disease) are more likely to be involved in a road traffic accident. These findings may well be due to the presence of cysts formed in nerves and muscle tissue, which may reduce the ability of infected individuals to concentrate.

Toxoplasmosis is a parasitic disease, which affects between 30-60% of people across the world. However, very few people have symptoms because our im

Research study shows promising results for non-surgical treatment of life threatening condition

Rodney White, MD, Chief of Vascular Surgery and Associate Chair, Department of Surgery at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and Principal Investigator at the Research & Education Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center (REI) is shedding new light on endovascular treatment of thoracic aortic aneurysms (TAAs). A life threatening condition caused by a weakening of the vascular wall of the aorta in th

Researchers at the University of Chicago have found a way to combine cancer chemotherapy with gene therapy designed to disrupt the growth of blood vessels to a tumor. The combination, tested in mice, is far more effective than standard chemotherapy and has no additional side effects. This innovative approach is described in the August issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

This new approach evolved out of a similar system, now entering phase-2 human trials, that combines gene ther

According to the World Health Organization, Tuberculosis ( Mycobacterium tuberculosis or TB) will kill two million people this year, with the projected number of new infections over the next twenty years reaching a billion. A rapidly moving, constantly mutating disease, TB’s effects are made worse by its ability to quickly react to new drug treatments, becoming resistant to antibiotics. Searching for a way to improve treatment, a group of researchers from the University of Tennessee developed

A physical map of the genetic makeup of a mouse – the mouse genome – is 98 percent complete and is being released online by the journal Nature. Researchers at the Genome Sequencing Center at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis played a major role in the international effort, as they did in the sequencing and mapping of the human genome.

“The mouse plays a vital role in research on human biology and disease,” says John D. McPherson, Ph.D., associate professor of genetics a

Virginia Tech student presents first findings at international geochemistry conference

Every living thing needs iron. The strategies some organisms use to accumulate iron can impact the quality of our environment and could be adapted for our use.

Imagine a falconer releasing his falcon to nab pigeons for his dinner. That is somewhat how the bacteria, Azotobacter vinelandii , acquire iron. They release siderophore molecules, called azotobactin, which nabs iron out of m

New polymer could prevent burns, food poisoning, traffic accidents

Imagine a fire door that changes color when hot, football jerseys that can tell when a player is overheating, road signs that change color indicating icy road conditions, and food packaging stamps that disappear when products have been kept at room temperature for too long. At the University of Rhode Island, chemists Brett Lucht and Bill Euler and chemical engineer Otto Gregory are working to make these products a real

For years, physicians have noticed surprising similarities in the factors that seem to trigger attacks in such episodic neurological disorders as migraine and dyskinesia. Common triggers include psychological stress, caffeine or alcohol ingestion, fatigue, hormonal fluctuations and exercise.

A new study shows that a mouse model can be used to investigate how these substances and environmental factors trigger symptomatic attacks. The researchers also identified two drugs that can prevent at

A new and somewhat controversial study published in the August issue of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine suggests that 18F-FDG PET results obtained after the first cycle of treatment can better predict progression-free survival in patients with aggressive non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL) or Hodgkin’s disease (HD) than PET scans conducted at the end of treatment.

Physicians at the Weill Medical College of Cornell and the New York Presbyterian Hospital in New York reported on 23 patients

First amphetamine-based long-acting stimulant offers all-day symptom control in children
A research team led by a Massachusetts General Hospital investigator has found that a long-acting form of the stimulant medication Adderall is effective in controlling symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children when taken in a single morning dose. The standard form of Adderall, which is made up of several amphetamine-based drugs, is only effective for four hours. This new f