Health News

Scientists identify key protein that modulates organismal aging

Date: Aug-10-2013
Scientists at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute have identified a key factor that regulates the autophagy process, a kind of cleansing mechanism for cells in which waste material and cellular debris is gobbled up to protect cells from damage, and in turn, modulates aging. The findings, published in Nature Communications, could lead to the development of new therapies for age-related disorders that are characterized by a breakdown in this process. Malene Hansen, Ph.D., associate professor in Sanford-Burnham's Del E...

Steep rise in number of children ingesting magnets

Date: Aug-10-2013
It is fairly common for young children to swallow foreign objects. But according to a new study, children seem to be increasingly attracted to ingesting magnets. The study, published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine, revealed that cases involving children swallowing magnets has increased more than five times over a 10-year period. The researchers say that over this period, ingestion of magnets has generally resulted in more serious outcomes, including emergency surgery...

'Big breakfast healthier than a big dinner'

Date: Aug-10-2013
Researchers have found that eating a big breakfast of 700 calories promotes weight loss and reduces risks for diabetes, heart disease and high cholesterol. The study, recently published in Obesity comes from Tel Aviv University, where Prof. Daniela Jakubowicz and colleagues studied the impact of different caloric intake at varying times of day. What they found is that the time of day we eat has a significant impact on how our bodies process food...

Trial finds eteplirsen improves walking performance for Duchenne muscular dystrophy patients

Date: Aug-10-2013
Results from a clinical trial of eteplirsen, a drug designed to treat Duchenne muscular dystrophy, suggest that the therapy allows participants to walk farther than people treated with placebo and dramatically increases production of a protein vital to muscle growth and health. The study, led by a team in The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital, is the first of its kind to show these results from an exon-skipping drug - a class of therapeutics that allows cells to skip over missing parts of the gene and produce protein naturally...

High glucose levels linked to dementia

Date: Aug-10-2013
Researchers have discovered that those with a high blood sugar level, even if they do not have diabetes, may have an increased risk of developing dementia compared with those who have a normal blood sugar level. The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, analyzed 2,067 participants without dementia aged 65 and over, from a study called Adult Changes in Thought (ACT)...

In glioblastoma multiforme, cell maturity pathway is deleted or weak

Date: Aug-10-2013
A program that pushes immature cells to grow up and fulfill their destiny as useful, dedicated cells is short-circuited in the most common and deadly form of brain tumor, scientists at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center report this week in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Stuck in what amounts to cellular adolescence, these precursor cells accumulate, contributing to the variability among glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) cells that make it so difficult to treat, said first author Jian Hu, Ph.D., instructor of Genomic Medicine...

Retired NFL players may not suffer unique cognitive disorder

Date: Aug-10-2013
The media have widely reported that retired NFL players are at risk for a neurodegenerative disorder called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which causes symptoms such as aggression, depression, suicidality and progressive dementia. But a study of retired NFL players, led by Christopher Randolph, PhD, of Loyola University Medical Center, has found no evidence to support this theory. Randolph and colleagues report their findings in the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society...

Understanding how neurons move sheds light on how cancer cells invade healthy tissues

Date: Aug-10-2013
The invasion of brain-tumor cells into surrounding tissue requires the same protein molecule that neurons need to migrate into position as they differentiate and mature, according to new research from the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine and published in the online journal PLOS ONE. The researchers investigated similarities between the transition of neural stem cells into neurons and the process whereby cancer cells invade surrounding tissues...

Drug developed by UCSF researcher strikingly effective in type 1 diabetes clinical trial

Date: Aug-10-2013
An experimental drug designed to block the advance of type 1 diabetes in its earliest stages has proven strikingly effective over two years in about half of the patients who participated in the phase 2 clinical trial. Patients who benefited most were those who still had relatively good control of their blood sugar levels and only a moderate need for insulin injections when the trial began. With the experimental drug, teplizumab, they were able to maintain their level of insulin production for the full two years -- longer than with most other drugs tested against the disease...

Seeking out cellular targets with DNA nanorobots

Date: Aug-10-2013
Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center, working with their collaborators at the Hospital for Special Surgery, have created a fleet of molecular "robots" that can home in on specific human cells and mark them for drug therapy or destruction. The nanorobots - a collection of DNA molecules, some attached to antibodies - were designed to seek a specific set of human blood cells and attach a fluorescent tag to the cell surfaces. Details of the system were published recently in the online edition of Nature Nanotechnology...