Health News

Gut Bacteria Altered By Western Diet Which Triggers Colitis In Those With Genetic Predisposition

Date: Jun-15-2012
Certain saturated fats that are common in the modern Western diet can initiate a chain of events leading to complex immune disorders such as inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) in people with a genetic predisposition, according to a study published early online in the journal Nature. The finding helps explain why once-rare immune-mediated diseases have become more common in westernized societies in the last half century...

Implantable Fuel Cell Built At MIT Could Power Neural Prosthetics That Help Patients Regain Control Of Limbs

Date: Jun-15-2012
MIT engineers have developed a fuel cell that runs on the same sugar that powers human cells: glucose. This glucose fuel cell could be used to drive highly efficient brain implants of the future, which could help paralyzed patients move their arms and legs again. The fuel cell, described in the journal PLoS ONE, strips electrons from glucose molecules to create a small electric current...

Single-Leg Casts Best For Youngest Hip And Thigh Fracture Patients

Date: Jun-15-2012
Challenging a longstanding practice of casting both legs in children with hip and thigh fractures, a new Johns Hopkins Children's Center study shows that such fractures heal just as well in single-leg casts, while giving children greater comfort and mobility. The findings of the study, which involved 52 Johns Hopkins patients ages 2 through 6, are published online in The Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery...

Mechanism Behind ALS-Like Disease Revealed By Fruit Flies

Date: Jun-15-2012
Studying how nerve cells send and receive messages, Johns Hopkins scientists have discovered new ways that genetic mutations can disrupt functions in neurons and lead to neurodegenerative disease, including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). In a report published in Neuron, the research team says it has discovered that a mutation responsible for a rare, hereditary motor neuron disease called hereditary motor neuropathy 7B (HMN7B) disrupts the link between molecular motors and the nerve cell tip where they reside...

New Drug-Screening Method Yields Long-Sought Anti-HIV Compounds

Date: Jun-15-2012
Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute have used a powerful new chemical-screening method to find compounds that inhibit the activity of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the virus that causes AIDS. Unlike existing anti-HIV drugs, the compounds bind to a protein called "nucelocapsid," which is unlikely to mutate into drug-resistant forms...

Findings Suggest A Potentially Favorable Time To Harvest Stem Cells For Therapy And May Reveal Genes Crucial To Tissue Production

Date: Jun-15-2012
With their potential to treat a wide range of diseases and uncover fundamental processes that lead to those diseases, embryonic stem (ES) cells hold great promise for biomedical science. A number of hurdles, both scientific and non-scientific, however, have precluded scientists from reaching the holy grail of using these special cells to treat heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's and other diseases...

Patients With Lou Gehrig's Disease May Benefit From Cisplatin

Date: Jun-15-2012
A long-used anti-cancer drug could be a starting point to develop new treatments for the incurable nerve disease known as Lou Gehrig's disease or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), scientists are reporting. Their research showing how the drug prevents clumping of an enzyme linked to ALS appears in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Lucia Banci, Ivano Bertini and colleagues explain that ALS causes a progressive loss of muscle control as the nerves that control body movements wither and die...

Successful With New Immune Approach To Fighting Some Cancers

Date: Jun-15-2012
A national research collaboration of senior researchers, including a researcher from Moffitt Cancer Center, has found that 20 to 25 percent of "heavily pre-treated" patients with a variety of cancers who enrolled in a clinical trial had "objective and durable" responses to a treatment with BMS-936558, an antibody that specifically blocks programmed cell death 1 (PD-1). PD-1 is a key immune "checkpoint" receptor expressed by activated immune cells (T-cells) and is involved in the suppression of immunity...

Management Program To Find Overlooked Employee Talents, Improve Hospital's MRSA Infection Rate

Date: Jun-15-2012
A better way to improve organizations using overlooked employee talent has taken a top award from a notable management group. Marguerite Schneider, an associate professor in NJIT School of Management, is the co-author of "Leadership a Complex Adaptive System: Insights from Positive Deviance." Curt Lindberg, of Complexity Partners, Bordentown, NJ, was her co-author. The paper received the 2012 Best Paper Award from the Organization Development and Change Division of the Academy of Management...

New Group Of Proteins Identified In The Brains Of Alzheimer's Patients

Date: Jun-15-2012
Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) have identified a novel group of proteins that accumulate in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease. These findings, which appear online in the Journal of Neuroscience, may open up novel approaches to diagnose and stage the progression likelihood of the disease in Alzheimer patients. Alzheimer's disease is presumed to be caused by the accumulation of β-amyloid, which then induces aggregation of a neuronal protein, called tau, and neurodegeneration ensues...