Health News

Airborne Dispersion Of Superbugs Around Hospital Wards

Date: Oct-15-2012
Hospital superbugs can float on air currents and contaminate surfaces far from infected patients' beds, according to University of Leeds researchers. The results of the study, which was funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), may explain why, despite strict cleaning regimes and hygiene controls, some hospitals still struggle to prevent bacteria moving from patient to patient. It is already recognised that hospital superbugs, such as MRSA and C-difficile, can be spread through contact...

Research Team Scores Advance In Manipulating T-Cells

Date: Oct-15-2012
Until recently, medical researchers had little hope of experimentally manipulating naïve T cells to study their crucial roles in immune function, because they were largely impenetrable, says polymer scientist Gregory Tew of the University of Massachusetts Amherst: "So far off limits we could not readily get inside to investigate their workings...

Risk Of Serious Complications In Sarcoidosis May Be Identified By New Gene Test

Date: Oct-15-2012
Researchers at the University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System have identified a genetic signature that distinguishes patients with complicated sarcoidosis, an inflammatory lung disease that can be fatal, from patients with a more benign form of the disease. The gene signature could become the basis for a simple blood test. Their findings are reported online in the journal PLOS ONE. In sarcoidosis, tiny clumps of abnormal tissue form in organs of the body. These clusters of immune cells, called granulomas, cause inflammation...

New Insight Into Celiac Disease

Date: Oct-14-2012
For the first time, scientists have visualised an interaction between gluten and T-cells of the immune system, providing insight into how coeliac disease, which affects approximately 1 in 133 people, is triggered. Published today in Immunity, the discovery was led by Dr Hugh Reid and Professor Jamie Rossjohn of Monash University, Professor Frits Koning of the University of Leiden and Dr Bob Anderson of biotechnology company ImmusanT Inc, based in the US. An increasingly diagnosed chronic inflammatory disorder, coeliac disease affects the digestive process of the small intestine...

Patient Sexuality Training Recommended For All Healthcare Professionals

Date: Oct-14-2012
Providing healthcare staff with a one-day training course on dealing with the sexual needs of people with an acquired physical disability gave them greater understanding of the issues patients faced and enabled them to address intimate questions more comfortably and proactively. The findings were so encouraging that the authors of the study, published in the November issue of the Journal of Advanced Nursing, are calling for all healthcare practitioners to receive sexuality training, regardless of their role or the area of healthcare they work in...

Researchers Focus On Quorum Sensing To Better Understand Bacteria

Date: Oct-14-2012
The relatively new field in microbiology that focuses on quorum sensing has been making strides in understanding how bacteria communicate and cooperate. Quorum sensing describes the bacterial communication between cells that allows them to recognize and react to the size of their surrounding cell population. While a cell's output of extracellular products, or "public goods," is dependent on the size of its surrounding population, scientists have discovered that quorum sensing, a type of bacterial communication, controls when cells release these public goods into their environments...

Potential Weakness That Might Be Exploited In The Battle Against Leukemia

Date: Oct-14-2012
Researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have developed a novel method for determining how ready acute myeloid leukemia (AML) cells are to die, a discovery that may help cancer specialists to choose treatments option more effectively for their patients who have AML...

Identification Of Novel Mechanisms Underlying Major Childhood Neuromuscular Disease

Date: Oct-14-2012
A study by scientists from the Motor Neuron Center at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) suggests that spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a genetic neuromuscular disease in infants and children, results primarily from motor circuit dysfunction, not motor neuron or muscle cell dysfunction, as is commonly thought. In a second study, the researchers identified the molecular pathway in SMA that leads to problems with motor function...

AIDS Progression May Be Affected By Diverse Intestinal Viruses

Date: Oct-14-2012
In monkeys and humans with AIDS, damage to the gastrointestinal tract is common, contributing to activation of the immune system, progressive immune deficiency, and ultimately advanced AIDS. How this gastric damage occurs has remained a mystery, but now researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Cell provide new clues, implicating the presence of potentially pathogenic virus species other than the main virus that causes AIDS. The findings could provide an opportunity to explain and eventually intervene in the processes that lead to AIDS progression...

New Clues For Treating Eczema

Date: Oct-14-2012
More than 15% of children suffer with eczema, or atopic dermatitis, an inflammatory skin disease that in some cases can be debilitating and disfiguring. Researchers reporting in the October issue of Immunity have discovered a potential new target for the condition, demonstrating that by blocking it, they can lessen the disease in mice. In eczema, immune T cells invade the skin and secrete factors that drive an allergic response, making the skin itch. Dr...