A medical team of the Basque Country has discovered a new technique to detect cardiac fibrosis. After a research carried out during several years, it has been discovered that serum leves of PIP peptide is an indicator of increased myocardial fibrosis.

Fibrosis is formed when scar tissue is accumulated in heart. As a consequence it causes stiffening of the heart and often heart failure. In order to fight against such disease, researchers started looking for an indicator substance in blood.

Scientists at the Royal Liverpool University Hospitals in the UK have found a way of testing whether certain abnormalities in a woman’s breast are likely to go on to develop into breast cancer, the 3rd European Breast Cancer Conference in Barcelona heard today (Wednesday 20 March).

Armed with information from the test, doctors could then consider whether the at-risk women should be offered prophylactic anti-oestrogen treatment such as tamoxifen or more frequent screening.

However, D

Research from the Cancer Registry of Norway has revealed that a higher proportion of women who discover they have breast cancer between mammographic screenings have also used HRT (hormone replacement therapy) at some point in their lives, the 3rd European Breast Cancer Conference heard today (Wednesday 20 March). In addition, these women tend to have denser breasts, and this may be why their tumours were not detected during screening.

Mrs Hege Wang, a researcher at the Cancer Registry of Nor

European clinical trials are under way in Denmark and the UK testing a new breast cancer vaccine targeted against the HER-2 growth factor.

HER-2 is overexpressed in about a quarter of all breast cancers and has become a key target for new treatments, such as the monoclonal antibody therapy Herceptin.

But, the development of a vaccine by Danish pharmaceutical company Pharmexa represents an entirely novel treatment paradigm, according to Pharmexa’s manager of preclinical development a

New drug could soon thwart smallpox outbreaks

An anti-smallpox pill could be on the way if a new compound that shows promise in animal tests proves safe and effective in humans. Such a pill could provide the best method for controlling an unforeseen smallpox outbreak, its developers claim.

The need for new ways to treat smallpox has only become an issue in recent years as the threat of a deliberate release of the virus intensifies. Smallpox – a highly contagious and often let

Tooth decay could soon be detected without resorting to potentially harmful X-rays – by using a novel electrical technique developed by dental researchers at the University of Dundee in an unusual partnership with textile experts at Heriot Watt University.

Laboratory tests show the device, which measures the electrical resistance of teeth, is twice as accurate as current examination techniques and detects decay in its earliest stages when preventive treatment is still possible.

Know

Grant Supports Young Researchers in Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland Heidelberg, Germany – The European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) announces that the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) has joined the organization in supporting young scientists from Central Europe, namely the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. The HHMI provides $ 2 Mio for the next four years to the EMBO Young Investigator Programme. Each year six scientists can be supported with Euro 30 000 per year for a durat

Action to prevent non-insulin dependent diabetes and heart disease in South Asian people may need to begin during childhood, finds a study in this week’s BMJ.
Researchers in London identified 3,415 white and 227 South Asian children aged 8 to 11 years from primary schools in 10 British towns. Blood samples were taken from 1,287 white and 73 South Asian children.

An early stage in the development of diabetes and heart disease risk is insulin resistance, when insulin levels are increased.

Weakened polio borrows genes to gain strength for outbreak

Genetic sleuthing has revealed how a dose of oral polio vaccine (OPV) can revert to the deadly poliovirus and cause an outbreak. The research highlights problems that global health organizations face completing their eradication of polio, and the urgency of that effort 1 .

“It reminds us that we need to be very careful in our development of a post-eradication policy,” says Bruce Aylward, leader of the

Formidable catalogue puts army of ants online.

After four years of cooperation and tenacity worthy of their quarry, ant experts have completed Antbase, a centralized, online information resource cataloguing all 11,000 known species of ant.

Its creators hope that Antbase will one day become the ant equivalent of GenBank, the public database of genetic sequence data, and a boon not just for ant specialists, but for entomologists and ecologists of every kind.

Ant ta

Fusion may explain adult stem-cell morphing.

The hyped ability of adult stem cells to sprout replacement tissue types is being called into question. They may instead be fusing with existing cells, say two new reports, creating genetically mixed-up tissues with unknown health effects.

Recent studies have shown that adult stem cells transplanted from one tissue, such as blood, can spawn the cell types of another, such as nerves. The findings have stirred intense interest in st

Pancreatic cancer is notoriously difficult to treat, largely because of the location of the pancreas close to major arteries and vital organs, and the effects of a poorly functioning pancreas on the rest of the body. It is one of the top 10 leading causes of death from cancer worldwide, and in the UK kills around 6500 people every year.

Doctors gave intravenous photosensitising agent (meso-tetrahydroxyphenyl chlorin) to 16 patients with inoperable pancreatic cancer. Three days later they ins

It may be possible to find the causes for autism in over a third of cases, suggests research in the Journal of Medical Genetics. And these are likely to include a range of factors.

Autism is a chronic and severe disorder that takes the form of severely impaired language and social skills, delayed development, and repetitive behaviours. Three times as many boys as girls are affected, and three quarters of those with autism will have a mental disability. It is thought that a combination of a g

Chemists copy from cells to make a tunnel for salt

Chemists have finally achieved what every human cell can do. They have designed and built from scratch a gate for electrically charged chlorine atoms to pass through 1 .

George Gokel and colleagues at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, based their gate on biological proteins that transport chloride ions from one side of our cell membranes to the other. Like these, the synthetic channel can be opene

Many chemicals commonly used in medications such as over-the-counter painkillers or birth control pills end up far from their intended destination – in American streams. According to a new report, published online today by the journal Environmental Science and Technology, a number of the waterways contain complex cocktails of compounds.

The 30-state study, conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey, tested 139 streams for 95 organic contaminants – ranging from medications and hormones to inse

An inventive breakthrough from the Applied Optics Group at the University of Kent at Canterbury (UKC) is set to revolutionise current methods of eye examinations.

Professor David Jackson, Dr Adrian Podoleanu and Dr John Rogers, who gained his doctorate at Kent, have developed an instrument known as an Optical Dual Channel Tomograph. The instrument blends together two imaging technologies. Although in its early stages, it is already being used by ophthalmologists and researchers at New York`