Vienna, Austria: Women who have survived having leukaemia as children should receive fertility counselling because their reproductive life may be shortened even though they have an apparently normal menstrual cycle after treatment, according to Danish researchers.

Dr Elisabeth Larsen, a research assistant from the Fertility Clinic at Copenhagen University Hospital, Denmark, has studied 26 long-term survivors of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) and found that they tended to have smaller ov

In a new comparative study of insect repellents containing the chemical commonly known as DEET and plant-based repellents, products with DEET showed by far the greatest effectiveness in preventing mosquito bites, medical researchers say.

The study, appearing in the July 4 New England Journal of Medicine, found all products tested that did not contain DEET to be significantly less effective. Authors are Drs. Mark S. Fradin, a Chapel Hill, N.C., dermatologist and adjunct faculty member at the

A new vaccination strategy targeting telomerase, one of the enzymes responsible for making cancer cells immortal, has been developed at the Norwegian Radium Hospital. “The vaccine might offer a means of stabilising cancer”, states Professor Gustav Gaudernack at a press conference at the 18th UICC International Cancer Congress in Oslo this week.

A new vaccination strategy targeting telomerase, one of the enzymes responsible for making cancer cells immortal, has been tested by Professor Trond

A natural method of disarming some types of viruses may enable scientists to someday treat infections with HIV, the AIDS virus, according to a virologist at Jefferson Medical College.

Taking the lead from the common fruit fly, yeast and worms, scientists have recently shown that it may be possible to use small pieces of genetic material called short interfering RNAs (siRNAs) to inhibit HIV from making more copies of itself.

The process, called RNA interference (RNAi), was first di

A new high-resolution nuclear medicine imaging scanner specifically designed for breast exams has the potential to increase physicians’ ability to determine if a woman has breast cancer, and may be particularly useful for women with dense breasts. The results of this early study were reported in the July 2002 issue of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine, published by the Society of Nuclear Medicine.

When compared with scintimammographic images taken on a standard gamma camera, the new came

Fear of needles and the discomfort of daily injections could soon be a thing of the past for women undergoing IVF treatment thanks to a new device which can administer hormones without a needle injection.

Dr Stuart Lavery, a Subspeciality Fellow in Reproductive Medicine and Surgery at the Hammersmith Hospital in London, UK, told the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology conference in Vienna today (Wednesday 3 July) that a team at the hospital had achieved the first pregnanci

Every day accident and emergency units have to treat patients who have taken some sort of drug overdose. To give treatment doctors need to know what the patient has taken. The circumstances can make often this difficult to ascertain quickly.

Researchers are developing a new kind of biosensor, which can determine in minutes if a patient’s blood contains a particular compound, for example paracetamol. Currently this type of examination needs to be carried out in a laboratory, which is expens

The oral medications most widely used to lower blood-sugar levels in patients with type 2 diabetes are likely to increase the risk of spasm of the coronary arteries, reports a University of Chicago-based research team in the July 15 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation. Constricted arteries increase blood pressure and decrease blood flow to the heart, causing chest pain and even sudden death, shows the study, which focused on mice with a genetic defect that duplicates the actions of these

Women having their babies by caesarean section could find it harder to become pregnant later, a study has found. Researchers in Bristol have discovered that once women have had a caesarean and then try to get pregnant again, the risk of it taking more than a year to conceive another baby increases.

The seven thousand women were all part of the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), popularly known as Children of the 90s, which has monitored the health and development of ov

Bacteria that reproduce inside aphids have not changed their genetic make-up for the last 50-70 million years. This makes the genomes of these bacteria the most stable of all organisms yet studied. This finding is presented by a team of scientists at Uppsala University, Sweden, in the latest issue of the scientific journal Science.

Under the leadership of Professor Siv Andersson, researchers Ivica Tama, Lisa Klasson, Björn Canbäck, Kristina Näslund, Ann-Sofie Eriksson, and Johan Sandström at

Scientists discover Spot 42 function in the galactose operon

Although the E. coli galactose operon is a staple of most biology textbooks, a new report in the July 1 issue of Genes & Development shows that our understanding of this common example of bacterial gene regulation is still evolving.
Dr. Poul Valentin-Hansen and colleagues at the University of Southern Denmark report that a small RNA, called Spot 42, functions by an antisense mechanism to differentially regulate gene exp

Researchers at MIT and Rice University have discovered that microRNAs, an emerging class of non-protein gene regulators thus far only identified in animals, also exist in plants. By extending the known phylogenetic range of miRNAs to plants, this work points to an ancient evolutionary origin for microRNAs. The report is published in the July 1 issue of the scientific journal Genes & Development.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) compose a class of short, noncoding RNAs, 20-24-nucleotides in length, that h

Artificial “Sugazyme” catalyzes synthesis of novel proteins with special features

University at Buffalo chemists have developed a remarkably simple and effective biotechnological method for synthesis of novel proteins using amino acids that do not occur in nature by using unique, programmable ribozymes (enzymes made of RNA, or ribonucleic acid) that they evolved in the lab.

The technology, described in the July issue of Nature Biotechnology, provides a potentially important

Scientists from Imperial College London have suggested why the human genome may possess far fewer genes than previously estimated before the human genome project was begun.

Research published in the July issue of Trends in Immunology, shows how a more advanced immune system in humans could explain why the human genome may have only a slightly greater number of genes than the plant Arabidopsis thaliana , and probably less than rice, Oryza sativa .

Dr Andrew George, from I

Fears about the impact of surrogacy on the well-being of children and families appear to be unfounded, according to findings from the world’s first controlled, systematic investigation of surrogate families, the annual conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology heard on Monday 1 July.

In fact, the mothers of children born via a surrogacy arrangement show more warmth towards their babies and are more emotionally involved than is the case in families where the chil

Research from Duke University Medical Center suggests there might be a link between at least one drug used to treat schizophrenia and the onset of diabetes, a disease widely recognized as one of the leading causes of death and disability in the U.S.
The drug, olanzapine (trade name Zyprexa), belongs to a relatively new family of medications called atypical antipsychotics, which are used to treat schizophrenia, paranoia and manic-depressive disorders. Other drugs in this class include clozapine,