Health News

Tracking And Preventing Deadly Infections In Nursing Homes

Date: Sep-20-2012
The Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have each released new tools and information to help track deadly healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) in nursing homes and other long-term care settings. Potentially deadly HAIs strike volumes of nursing home residents each year, with best estimates suggesting that up to 2.8 million infections can occur in this population annually...

World's First Mother To Daughter Womb Transplant

Date: Sep-20-2012
On 15 to 16 September, a team of researchers, doctors and specialists at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, carried out the world's first mother-to-daughter womb transplant, where two Swedish women received new wombs donated by their mothers. One of the women to receive a new womb in the pioneering procedure had to have her uterus removed many years ago because of cervical cancer. The other woman was born without a womb...

Researchers Clarify Catalysis Mechanism Of Cell Growth Protein Ras

Date: Sep-20-2012
PNAS: Proteins bring tension to the phosphate chain Proteins accelerate certain chemical reactions in cells by several orders of magnitude. The molecular mechanism by which the Ras protein accelerates the cleavage of the molecule GTP and thus slows cell growth is described by biophysicists at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum led by Prof. Dr. Klaus Gerwert in the Online Early Edition of the journal PNAS...

Gene Discovery Has Potential For Development Of New Medicines To Prevent The Most Common Fractures

Date: Sep-20-2012
A big international study has identified a special gene that regulates bone density and bone strength. The gene can be used as a risk marker for fractures and opens up opportunities for preventive medicine against fractures. The study, led by the Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, was published in the journal PLoS Genetics...

New Findings On Protein Misfolding

Date: Sep-20-2012
Misfolded proteins can cause various neurodegenerative diseases such as spinocerebellar ataxias (SCAs) or Huntington's disease, which are characterized by a progressive loss of neurons in the brain. Researchers of the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch, Germany, together with their colleagues of the Université Paris Diderot, Paris, France, have now identified 21 proteins that specifically bind to a protein called ataxin-1...

Funding For Medical Research And Science Programs Faces Draconian Cuts

Date: Sep-20-2012
A new report from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is a stark reminder of the perilous situation facing the medical research and scientific communities unless Congress and the President take action to prevent the pending sequestration. Set in motion by the Budget Control Act of 2011, sequestration would impose automatic cuts on federal funding starting on January 2, 2013. According to OMB, the budget for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) would be reduced by $2...

Research Could Provide New Insights Into Tuberculosis And Other Diseases

Date: Sep-20-2012
Researchers Patricia A. Champion and Matthew Champion from the University of Notre Dame's Eck Institute for Global Health have developed a method to directly detect bacterial protein secretion, which could provide new insights into a variety of diseases including tuberculosis. The Champions point out that bacteria use a variety of secretion systems to transport proteins beyond their cell membrane in order to interact with their environment. For bacterial pathogens like TB these systems transport bacterial proteins that promote interaction with host cells, leading to virulent disease...

Discovering That Thigh Size Is A Reason Why Hip Implants Fail May Lead To Better Design

Date: Sep-20-2012
University of Iowa researchers have determined that thigh size in obese people is a reason their hip implants are more likely to fail. In a study, the team simulated hip dislocations as they occur in humans and determined that increased thigh girth creates hip instability in morbidly obese patients (those with a body mass index (BMI) greater than 40). The researchers propose that surgeons modify surgical procedures to minimize the chance of dislocation in obese patients and consider other designs for hip replacement implants...

Contamination Led To Erroneous Link Between XMRV And Prostate Cancer

Date: Sep-20-2012
A once-promising discovery linking prostate cancer to an obscure retrovirus derived from mice was the result of an inadvertent laboratory contamination, a forensic analysis of tissue samples and lab experiments - some dating back nearly a decade - has confirmed. The connection, which scientists have questioned repeatedly over the last couple years, was first proposed more than six years ago, when the telltale signature of the virus, known as XMRV, was detected in genetic material derived from tissue samples taken from men with prostate cancer...

Biochemistry Of Inflammation Detected By Nanoparticles

Date: Sep-20-2012
Inflammation is the hallmark of many human diseases, from infection to neurodegeneration. The chemical balance within a tissue is disturbed, resulting in the accumulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) such as hydrogen peroxide, which can cause oxidative stress and associated toxic effects. Although some ROS are important in cell signaling and the body's defense mechanisms, these chemicals also contribute to and are indicators of many diseases, including cardiovascular dysfunction...