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New Saliva Gland Test For Parkinson's Promising
Date: Jan-12-2013Testing a part of a person's saliva gland may be a way to diagnose Parkinson's disease, according to new research by the Mayo Clinic that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's annual meeting in March. Parkinson's disease is a difficult disease to diagnose. Currently the only way to pinpoint the disease is to do a clinical exam to analyze a person's symptoms. To achieve a definitive answer, an autopsy is performed on the brain after a person has passed away. Charles Adler, M.D., Ph.D...
New Gene Identified With A Key Role In Obesity And Diabetes
Date: Jan-12-2013Scientists observed that blocking the expression of the gene TRIP-Br2 in mice protects them against obesity and insulin resistance. The study shows that the gene modulates fat storage by regulating energy expenditure and lipolysis, the process which transforms fat into lipids for the body's energy consumption. If the gene expression is blocked, the mice increase their lipolysis and their energy expenditure, thus reducing their obesity. Obesity is the result of an alteration in the processes that regulate food absorption and energy production...
Access To Electroconvulsive Therapy In Decline: A Clinical Choice Or An Economic One?
Date: Jan-12-2013Horrific images from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest notwithstanding, modern electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) remains one of the safest and most effective antidepressant treatments, particularly for patients who do not tolerate antidepressant medications or depression symptoms that have failed to respond to antidepressant medications. Since its introduction in the 1930s, ECT has evolved into a more refined, but more expensive and extensively regulated clinical procedure...
Low Muscular Strength In Teen Years Increases Suicide Risk And Risk Of Dying Early From Heart Disease
Date: Jan-12-2013Teenagers with a low muscular strength have a 30% higher risk of committing suicide before the age of 55 years, and a 65% higher risk of developing psychiatric diseases such as depression of schizophrenia. In addition, a low muscular strength during childhood and adolescence is a strong predictor of early death - i.e. before 55 years of age - from cardiovascular disease. A low muscular strength is as powerful a predictor as obesity and high blood pressure...
Findings On Heart Muscle Growth Could Lead To Novel Approaches For Treating Heart Failure In Children
Date: Jan-12-2013Researchers at Boston Children's Hospital have found, for the first time that young humans (infants, children and adolescents) are capable of generating new heart muscle cells. These findings refute the long-held belief that the human heart grows after birth exclusively by enlargement of existing cells, and raise the possibility that scientists could stimulate production of new cells to repair injured hearts...
The Understanding Of Action May Be Encoded On A Perceptual Level Rather Than On A Cognitive One
Date: Jan-12-2013We rely on our visual system more heavily than previously thought in determining the causality of events. A team of researchers has shown that, in making judgments about causality, we don't always need to use cognitive reasoning. In some cases, our visual brain - the brain areas that process what the eyes sense - can make these judgments rapidly and automatically. The study appears in the latest issue of the journal Current Biology...
Engineering The Schmallenberg Virus Genome To Understand How To Reduce Livestock Disease Caused By The Virus
Date: Jan-12-2013Researchers from the MRC Centre for Virus Research at the University of Glasgow in Scotland have developed methods to synthesize and change the genome of Schmallenberg virus (SBV). SBV is a recently discovered pathogen of livestock such as cattle, sheep and goats. The researchers have laid bare important ways by which this virus causes disease. The full report about the study is published in the Open Access journal, PLOS Pathogens. SBV is of great concern because it causes stillbirths, abortions and fetal defects in pregnant cows and ewes...
HIV Vaccine Findings Will Provide New Options For Vaccine Designers To Strengthen The Drug
Date: Jan-12-2013Four years ago, a potential HIV vaccine showed promise against the virus that causes AIDS, but it fell short of providing the broad protection necessary to stem the spread of disease. Now researchers -- led by Duke Medicine and including team members from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Military HIV Research Program and the Thailand Ministry of Health -- have gained additional insights into the workings of the vaccine that help explain why it benefited a third of recipients and left others vulnerable...
3D Imaging Increases Breast Cancer Detection
Date: Jan-12-2013Three-dimensional mammography combined with conventional breast imaging can increase breast cancer detection by 27%. The finding came from a team of experts at the University of Olso in Norway and was published in the journal Radiology. The researchers found that the detection rate for invasive and in situ cancers combined was 6.1 per 1,000 exams with traditional mammography, and with combined imaging, the rate was 8.0 per 1,000...
Flaw Discovered In The Standard Model For Brain Signaling
Date: Jan-12-2013A new study in the journal Science turns two decades of understanding about how brain cells communicate on its head. The study demonstrates that the tripartite synapse - a model long accepted by the scientific community and one in which multiple cells collaborate to move signals in the central nervous system - does not exist in the adult brain. "Our findings demonstrate that the tripartite synaptic model is incorrect," said Maiken Nedergaard, M.D., D.M.Sc., lead author of the study and co-director of the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) Center for Translational Neuromedicine...
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