Health News

Parasite-induced behavior changes persist after Toxoplasma clearance

Date: Sep-20-2013
Chronic infection with the parasite Toxoplasma gondii can make mice lose their innate, hard-wired fear of cats. This loss of their innate fear may persist after the parasite is no longer detectable in their brains, suggesting that initial infection may cause permanent changes in the mechanisms underlying their fear of predators. The results are published in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Wendy Ingram and colleagues from the University of California, Berkeley...

Researchers identify ten categories of smell

Date: Sep-20-2013
Taste can be classified into five flavors that we sense, but how many odors can we smell? There are likely about 10 basic categories of odor, according to research published in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Jason Castro from Bates College, Chakra Chennubhotla from the University of Pittsburgh, and Arvind Ramanathan from Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The researchers used advanced statistical techniques to develop an approach for systematically describing smells...

Removing one protein from adult cells enables them to efficiently turn back the clock to a stem-cell-like state

Date: Sep-20-2013
Embryonic stem cells have the enormous potential to treat and cure many medical problems. That is why the discovery that induced embryonic-like stem cells can be created from skin cells (iPS cells) was rewarded with a Nobel Prize in 2012. But the process has remained frustratingly slow and inefficient, and the resulting stem cells are not yet ready for medical use. Research in the lab of the Weizmann Institute's Dr...

Researcher reveals new details about the receptor mechanisms of estrogen's role in memory

Date: Sep-20-2013
The loss of estrogens at menopause increases a woman's risk of dementia and Alzheimer's disease, yet hormone replacement therapy can cause harmful side effects. Knowing the exact mechanism of estrogen activation in the brain could lead to new targets for drug development that would provide middle-aged women the cognitive benefits of hormone replacement therapy without increasing their risk for cardiovascular disease or breast cancer...

Decompression surgery for 'arthritis of the spine' prevents paralysis

Date: Sep-20-2013
In a world-first, decompression surgery has been shown to be an effective procedure to treat cervical spondylotic myelopathy (CSM) - a common progressive, degenerative disease of the spine that can lead to paralysis - according to the results of a multi-centre clinical trial just published. The study, with its use of multiple outcome measures to determine patient improvement, is the first research of its kind to show that decompression surgery has a significant improvement in both the symptoms and quality of life of CSM patients at all levels of severity...

One important way in which EGFR may derail the body's cancer-fighting autophagy machinery to increase tumor growth

Date: Sep-20-2013
Overactivity of a protein that normally cues cells to divide sabotages the body's natural cellular recycling process, leading to heightened cancer growth and chemotherapy resistance, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have found. The epidermal growth factor receptor, or EGFR, is found at abnormally high levels on the surface of many types of cancer cells. The study, led by Dr. Beth Levine and published in Cell, revealed that EGFR turns off autophagy, a process by which cells recycle unneeded parts, by binding to a protein, Beclin 1, which normally turns on the process...

Findings provide insights for new, targeted myeloma therapies in clinical trials

Date: Sep-20-2013
Researchers have discovered why multiple myeloma, a difficult to cure cancer of the bone marrow, frequently recurs after an initially effective treatment that can keep the disease at bay for up to several years. Working in collaboration with colleagues at Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto, researchers from Mayo Clinic in Arizona and the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) in Phoenix were part of the team that conducted the study published in the journal Cancer Cell...

2-foot blood clot successfully 'vacuumed' out of patient's heart

Date: Sep-20-2013
Todd Dunlap, 62, arrived at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center's emergency room on Aug. 8 suffering from shortness of breath, fatigue and extreme cold. When a CT scan revealed a 24-inch clot stretching from his legs into his heart, doctors feared the mass could break loose and lodge in his lungs, blocking oxygen and killing him instantly. Dr. John Moriarty gave his patient a choice. Dunlap could have open-heart surgery or undergo a new minimally invasive procedure using a device called AngioVac to vacuum the massive clot out of his heart...

Research reveals longer therapy window for children with neurodevelopmental disorders

Date: Sep-20-2013
The development of fine motor control - the ability to use your fingertips to manipulate objects - takes longer than previously believed, and isn't entirely the result of brain development, according to a pair of complementary studies...

Different risks for heart attack and stroke posed by different hormone therapy formulations

Date: Sep-20-2013
Post-menopausal women whose doctors prescribe hormone replacement therapy for severe hot flashes and other menopause symptoms may want to consider taking low doses of Food and Drug Administration-approved bioidentical forms of estrogen or getting their hormones via a transdermal patch. A new observational study shows bioidentical hormones in transdermal patches may be associated with a lower risk of heart attack and FDA-approved products -- not compounded hormones -- may be associated with a slightly lower risk of stroke compared to synthetic hormones in pill form...