Health News

Psoriasis drug shows promise in diabetes trial

Date: Sep-23-2013
A drug previously used to treat psoriasis has shown positive results in a phase II trial assessing its effectiveness at treating type 1 diabetes, according to a study published in The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology. The drug, alefacept, is an immune-suppressing drug that has been used to treat psoriasis, a common skin condition, for around a decade. According to the team of US researchers, there have been trials in the 1980s and 1990s that explored the use of immune-suppressing drugs to treat type 1 diabetes...

Statin use may raise cataract risk

Date: Sep-23-2013
New research suggests that use of statins, a class of drugs taken by millions of Americans with high cholesterol, is linked to a higher risk for developing cataracts. Dr. Jessica Leuschen, of the San Antonio Military Medical Center, Texas, and colleagues report their findings in a paper published online in JAMA Ophthalmology. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), cataracts, a predominantly age-related condition where the lens of the eye becomes cloudy, is the leading cause of vision loss in the US...

Universal flu vaccine closer, study of natural immunity

Date: Sep-23-2013
UK scientists believe they have taken a significant step closer to a universal flu vaccine that would protect against all strains of seasonal flu and curb future pandemics. The team, led by researchers at Imperial College London, reports the achievement in Nature Medicine. Lead investigator Professor Ajit Lalvani, from the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial, says: "New strains of flu are continuously emerging, some of which are deadly, and so the Holy Grail is to create a universal vaccine that would be effective against all strains of flu...

Biomarker identified for smoker's lung cancer

Date: Sep-23-2013
Mayo Clinic researchers have shown that a specific protein pair may be a successful prognostic biomarker for identifying smoking-related lung cancers. The protein - ASCL1 - is associated with increased expression of the RET oncogene, a particular cancer-causing gene called RET. The findings appear in the online issue of the journal Oncogene.  "This is exciting because we've found what we believe to be a 'drugable target' here," says George Vasmatzis, Ph.D., a Mayo Clinic molecular medicine researcher and senior author on the study. "It's a clear biomarker for aggressive adenocarcinomas...

Better treatments likely with new models of drug-resistant breast cancer

Date: Sep-23-2013
Breast cancer that spreads to other organs is extremely difficult to treat. Doctors can buy patients time, but a cure remains elusive. Now, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have shown that human breast tumors transplanted into mice are excellent models of metastatic cancer and could be valuable tools in the search for better treatments. According to new research published in Cell Reports, these transplanted tumors maintain the genetic errors that caused the original cancer, even though they are growing in mice...

New research on inherited herpesvirus may have implications for transplantation

Date: Sep-23-2013
Up to half a million people in Britain today may not know it, but in their genetic material they carry a particular form of herpesvirus 6 inherited from a parent. The study from the world-renowned Department of Genetics at the University of Leicester, is funded principally by the Medical Research Council (MRC), and published in the journal Nucleic Acids Research. The research led by Dr Nicola Royle, Senior Lecturer in Genetics, has identified a mechanism by which the inherited herpesvirus 6 can escape from the chromosome and may be able to reactivate under certain conditions...

Diagnosing early liver cancer with new test

Date: Sep-23-2013
Researchers have found a way to make early liver cancer show its true colors. They have developed a test that will help pathologists clearly distinguish early liver cancer cells from nearly identical normal liver cells by giving them a distinctive red-brown hue. The inability to definitively tell the difference often means the disease is detected late when treatment options are less effective, said Dr. Ravindra Kolhe, pathologist and Medical Director of the Georgia Esoteric, Molecular Labs, LLC, at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University...

Exercise endurance in the heat improved by paracetamol

Date: Sep-23-2013
Paracetamol has a significant effect on exercise performance and the body's ability to cope with the thermal challenge of exercise in the heat, shows a study published in Experimental Physiology. The research team have previously shown that paracetamol can improve endurance performance through a reduction in exercise-induced pain. This study suggests, for the first time, that paracetamol can also improve the length of time someone can exercise for in hot conditions...

Hope for better cancer treatment offered by new protein knowledge

Date: Sep-23-2013
When the pharmaceutical industry develops new medicines- for example for cancer treatment - it is important to have detailed knowledge of the body's molecular response to the medicine. "With a better knowledge of the many complex processes which are activated in connection with illness and medication, the better the possibility of developing new drugs. We have now moved closer to targeting and treating certain cancers using the so-called PARP inhibitors - medical inhibitors used in the latest types of cancer treatment...

Effective preeclampsia treatment, prevention may be possible using carbon monoxide

Date: Sep-23-2013
Preeclampsia (PE) is a high blood pressure disorder that occurs during pregnancy and which can cause illness or death for the fetus and mother-to-be. There is currently no cure except to deliver the fetus, perhaps prematurely, or remove the placenta, a key organ that binds the pair. Women who smoke during pregnancy have been found to have as much as a 33 percent lower rate of preeclampsia for reasons that are unclear...