Health News

Women have higher rate of spontaneous clearance of hepatitis C virus

Date: Sep-17-2013
A study of patients infected with acute hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection found that women had higher rates of spontaneous viral clearance - undetectable levels of the virus without initiating drug therapy. Findings published in Hepatology, a journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, indicate that the gene IL28B (rs12979860) and HCV genotype 1 are also independent predictors of spontaneous HCV clearance. In 2011, there were 1,229 cases of acute HCV reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Infection (CDC), which represents a 44% increase over 2010...

UNC researchers identify a new pathway that triggers septic shock

Date: Sep-17-2013
The body's immune system is set up much like a home security system; it has sensors on the outside of cells that act like motion detectors - floodlights - that click on when there's an intruder rustling in the bushes, bacteria that seem suspect. For over a decade researchers have known about one group of external sensors called Toll-like receptors that detect when bacteria are nearby. Now, researchers at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine have identified a sensor pathway inside cells...

Study finds 30 percent lower risk of dying for diabetics with bypass surgery vs. stent

Date: Sep-17-2013
People with diabetes have a 30 per cent less chance of dying if they undergo coronary artery bypass surgery rather than opening the artery through angioplasty and inserting a stent, a new study has found. The findings are significant and have public health implications because of the sheer size of the difference in outcomes, according to the researchers at St. Michael's Hospital. Heart disease is the No. 1 killer of people with diabetes, and diabetics represent one-quarter of all patients who undergo coronary artery procedures...

More than just type 1 or type 2: DiMelli study points to different forms of diabetes

Date: Sep-17-2013
The DiMelli study examines the different phenotypes of diabetes mellitus in relation to their immunological, metabolic and genetic profiles. Although the formation of autoantibodies is associated with specific clinical features such as metabolic markers, the various forms of diabetes cannot be clearly delineated on the basis of this association, and in many cases there is overlapping. The results of the study have now been published in the latest edition of the scientific journal PLOS ONE...

The UK is not investing enough in research into multi-drug resistant infections, say researchers

Date: Sep-17-2013
Although emergence of antimicrobial resistance severely threatens our future ability to treat many infections, the UK infection-research spend targeting this important area is still unacceptably small, say a team of researchers led by Michael Head of UCL (University College London). Their study is published online in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. This study is the first systematic analysis of research funding for infectious disease research, and for antimicrobial resistance, in the UK between 1997 and 2010...

Inner ear hair cell regeneration: A look from the past to the future

Date: Sep-17-2013
Since Moffat and Ramsden for the first time discovered the possibility of the auditory system in humans in 1977, over the last two decades, great progress has been made in physiopathological research on neurosensory hearing loss. Jorgensen and Mathiesen were the first authors to note the capacity for regeneration of the normal vestibular epithelium in adult Australian parrots. Later, Roberson et al studied the normal vestibular epithelium of 12-day-old white Leghorn chicks using tritiated thymidine and bromodeoxyuridine...

Novel vaccine reduces shedding of genital herpes virus

Date: Sep-17-2013
Sexually transmitted infection researchers potentially have reached a milestone in vaccine treatment for genital herpes, according to a report presented at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in Denver, Colo., on Sept. 12. Kenneth H. Fife, M.D., is the principal investigator for the IU School of Medicine clinical study of the vaccine for herpes simplex virus type 2 called GEN-003. According to an interim analysis, the experimental protein subunit vaccine made by Genocea Biosciences of Cambridge, Mass., effectively reduces viral shedding...

Protein essential for maintaining beta cell function identified

Date: Sep-17-2013
Researchers at the Pediatric Diabetes Research Center (PDRC) at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have shown that the pancreatic protein Nkx6.1 - a beta-cell enriched transcription factor - is essential to maintaining the functional state of beta cells.  Type 2 diabetes is characterized by impaired insulin secretion by pancreatic beta cells in response to a rise in blood glucose levels. The study, published in the September 26 edition of Cell Reports, shows that loss of Nkx6.1 in mice caused rapid onset diabetes...

A microbe's trick for staying young

Date: Sep-17-2013
Researchers have discovered a microbe that stays forever young by rejuvenating every time it reproduces. The findings, published in Current Biology, provide fundamental insights into the mechanisms of aging. While aging remains an inevitable fact of life, an international team involving researchers from the University of Bristol and the Max-Planck Institute for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Germany has found that this is not the case for a common species of yeast microbe which has evolved to stay young. The team has shown that, unlike other species, the yeast microbe called S...

Autism gene stunts neurons, but growth can be restored, in mice

Date: Sep-17-2013
Brown University researchers have traced a genetic deficiency implicated in autism in humans to specific molecular and cellular consequences that cause clear deficits in mice in how well neurons can grow the intricate branches that allow them to connect to brain circuits. The researchers also show in their study (online Sep. 12, 2013, in Neuron) that they could restore proper neuronal growth by compensating for the errant molecular mechanisms they identified. The study involves the gene that produces a protein called NHE6...