UAE
Bahrain
Jordan
Kuwait
Oman
Qatar
Saudi ArabiaHealth News
How and why metformin needs to interact with insulin to be effective
Date: Nov-06-2013About 120 million people around the world with Type 2 diabetes - and two million in Canada - take the drug metformin to control their disease. While doctors know metformin needs to interact with insulin to be effective, and that it can't lower blood sugar on its own, no one has been able to explain how and why this happens. Researchers at McMaster University are the first to unlock that mystery with their discovery metformin works on fat in the liver. Their research is published in the journal Nature Medicine...
Surprising degree of variation found among genomes of individual neurons from the same brain
Date: Nov-06-2013It was once thought that each cell in a person's body possesses the same DNA code and that the particular way the genome is read imparts cell function and defines the individual. For many cell types in our bodies, however, that is an oversimplification. Studies of neuronal genomes published in the past decade have turned up extra or missing chromosomes, or pieces of DNA that can copy and paste themselves throughout the genomes...
Bringing needed immune cells to inflamed tissue to treat gum disease
Date: Nov-06-2013The red, swollen and painful gums and bone destruction of periodontal disease could be effectively treated by beckoning the right kind of immune system cells to the inflamed tissues, according to a new animal study conducted by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh. Their findings, published this week in the early online version of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, offer a new therapeutic paradigm for a condition that afflicts 78 million people in the U.S. alone...
Atherosclerosis progression and changes in periodontal health
Date: Nov-06-2013Taking care of your gums by brushing, flossing, and regular dental visits could help hold heart disease at bay. Researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health have shown for the first time that as gum health improves, progression of atherosclerosis slows to a clinically significant degree. Findings appear online in the Journal of the American Heart Association. Artherosclerosis, or the narrowing of arteries through the build-up of plaque, is a major risk factor for heart disease, stroke, and death...
Photo therapy may someday cure brain diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's
Date: Nov-06-2013Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, together with researchers at the Polish Wroclaw University of Technology, have made a discovery that may lead to the curing of diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (the so called mad cow disease) through photo therapy. The researchers discovered, as they show in the journal Nature Photonics, that it is possible to distinguish aggregations of the proteins, believed to cause the diseases, from the the well-functioning proteins in the body by using multi-photon laser technique...
New genetic technique will accelerate personalized medicine
Date: Nov-06-2013A new technique successfully takes on a longstanding challenge in DNA sequencing - determining whether a particular genetic sequence comes from an individual's mother or father. The method, described in a Ludwig Cancer Research study in Nature Biotechnology, promises to accelerate studies of how genes contribute to disease, improve the process of matching donors with organs and help scientists better understand human migration patterns. "The technique will enable clinicians to better assess a person's individual risk for disease...
Molecular secrets of bile duct cancers
Date: Nov-06-2013A team of scientists from the National Cancer Centre Singapore, Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore, Fundeni Clinical Institute (Romania) and Koen Kaen University (Thailand), have made a seminal breakthrough in understanding the molecular basis of bile duct cancer or cholangiocarcinoma, a rare but highly lethal form of liver cancer. The team, led by Professors Teh Bin Tean, Patrick Tan, Steve Rozen, Irinel Popescu and Vajaraphongsa Bhudhisawasdi, used advanced DNA sequencing technologies to map the complete repertoire of human genes disrupted in cholangiocarcinoma...
Molecular link between gut microbes and intestinal health
Date: Nov-06-2013It's well established that humans maintain a symbiotic relationship with the trillions of beneficial microbes that colonize their bodies. These organisms, collectively called the microbiota, help digest food, maintain the immune system, fend off pathogens, and more. There exists a long and growing list of diseases associated with changes in the composition or diversity of these bacterial populations, including cancer, diabetes, obesity, asthma, and even autism...
Nanotube-based medical implants inserted under the skin effective for a year
Date: Nov-06-2013Nitric oxide (NO) is one of the most important signaling molecules in living cells, carrying messages within the brain and coordinating immune system functions. In many cancerous cells, levels are perturbed, but very little is known about how NO behaves in both healthy and cancerous cells. "Nitric oxide has contradictory roles in cancer progression, and we need new tools in order to better understand it," says Michael Strano, the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT...
Broader definition of ADHD risks "unnecessary and possibly harmful treatment" warn experts
Date: Nov-06-2013A broader definition of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has contributed to a steep rise in diagnosis and prescriptions, particularly among children, warn experts on bmj.com. Rae Thomas, a senior researcher at Bond University in Australia, and colleagues say that this may mean "unnecessary and possibly harmful medical treatment" for some individuals, with others estimating drug costs of up to $500m in the US alone...
Stay Connected
