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Best practice standards for coordinator-based fracture liaison services
Date: Aug-29-2013Implementation of effective coordinator-based FLS services worldwide can reduce treatment gap by ensuring that fracture patients are identified and treated to reduce future fracture risk An influential report published in the journal 'Osteoporosis International', recommends 13 best practice standards in the implementation of coordinator-based fracture liaison services (FLS)...
Healthy metabolic status in some obese people likely explained by low inflammation
Date: Aug-29-2013Reduced levels of inflammation may explain how some obese people are able to remain metabolically healthy, according to a recent study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM). Obesity generally is linked to a higher risk of diabetes and heart disease. Some people who are obese, however, do not develop high blood pressure and unfavorable cholesterol profiles - factors that increase the risk of metabolic diseases. This phenomenon is described as metabolically healthy obesity...
Heart disease risk reduced by early diabetes interventions
Date: Aug-29-2013Two treatments that slow the development of diabetes also may protect people from heart disease, according to a recent study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM). Researchers examined the effect that making intensive lifestyle changes or taking the medication metformin had on cholesterol and triglyceride levels...
Some HIV-infected patients with certain gene at increased risk for fungal disease
Date: Aug-29-2013HIV-infected people who carry a gene for a specific protein face a 20-fold greater risk of contracting cryptococcal disease, according to a study published in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology. Cryptococcus neoformans is the most common cause of fungal meningitis among HIV-infected individuals. While the disease is a risk for everyone with HIV who has a very low level of CD4+ T cells, researchers have discovered that those with the gene for the protein FCGR3A 158V have an immune cell receptor that binds tightly to antibody-bound C...
Microarray-based gene expression profiling reveals 3 subtypes of gastric cancer
Date: Aug-29-2013Stomach cancer, one of the leading causes of cancer death worldwide, actually falls into three broad subtypes that respond differently to currently available therapies, according to researchers at Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore. The finding could greatly improve patient care with the development of a genetic test to classify tumors and match them to the therapies that offer the best outcomes...
Special challenges and opportunities of cyanobacteria for the emerging field of synthetic biology
Date: Aug-29-2013Development of a redesigned strain of light-harvesting cyanobacteria is a realistic goal that will have many applications in biotechnology, reports a review in Frontiers in Microbiology. The emerging field of synthetic biology has already successfully used genes from naturally occurring organisms to build safe and nonpolluting strains of microbes that can take photographs or produce antimalarial drugs...
New treatments better than standard ones just over half the time
Date: Aug-29-2013USF Distinguished Professor Benjamin Djulbegovic, MD, PhD, has studied the ethics of randomized clinical trials and their effectiveness in evaluating the outcomes of new treatments for decades. Now, in a paper published in the top journal Nature, Dr. Djulbegovic and colleagues report that on average new treatments work better than existing ones just over half the time. On scientific and ethical grounds, they say, the randomized controlled trial (RCT) system's little more than 50-50 success rate over the past half century is evidence that the system is working as intended...
Kidney stone removal breakthrough combines robotic surgery with new cooling technique
Date: Aug-29-2013A first-ever technique using ice slush and minimally invasive robotic surgery to remove a particularly large type of kidney stone has been reported by urologists at Henry Ford Hospital. Dubbed RANL, for robotic anatrophic nephrolithotomy, the technique was devised to remove staghorn calculi - large kidney stones with sharp, craggy branches - that can cause disease and sometimes death if left untreated...
Some stem cells are more susceptible to cancer than others
Date: Aug-29-2013Cells in the body wear down over time and die. In many organs, like the small intestine, adult stem cells play a vital role in maintaining function by replacing old cells with new ones. Learning about the nature of tissue stem cells can help scientists understand exactly how our organs are built, and why some organs generate cancer frequently, but others only rarely. New work from Carnegie's Alexis Marianes and Allan Spradling used some of the most experimentally accessible tissue stem cells, the adult stem cells in the midsection of the fruit fly gut, with surprising results...
Halting the development of leukemia cells, demonstrating the potential viability of RUNX1 as a therapeutic target
Date: Aug-29-2013New research in the Journal of Clinical Investigation suggests that blocking a protein normally credited with suppressing leukemia may be a promising therapeutic strategy for an aggressive form of the disease called acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Researchers from Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center report their results in a study posted online by the journal. The protein scientists targeted is a transcription factor known as RUNX1, which also plays an important role in helping regulate the normal development of blood cells...
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