Health News

Nanoscale Protein Containers Could Aid Drug, Vaccine Delivery

Date: Jun-03-2012
UCLA biochemists have designed specialized proteins that assemble themselves to form tiny molecular cages hundreds of times smaller than a single cell. The creation of these miniature structures may be the first step toward developing new methods of drug delivery or even designing artificial vaccines...

Improved Health And Performance With Less Training

Date: Jun-03-2012
The new 10-20-30 training concept can improve both a person's running performance and health, despite a significant reduction in the total amount of training. This is the conclusion of a study from University of Copenhagen researchers just published in the renowned scientific Journal of Applied of Physiology. Over the course of seven weeks, runners were able to improve performance on a 1500-metre run by 23 seconds and almost by a minute on a 5-km run - and this despite a 50 per cent reduction in their total amount of training...

Injection Offers Hope For Treating Autoimmune Disease

Date: Jun-03-2012
Australian researchers have uncovered a potential new way to regulate the body's natural immune response, offering hope of a simple and effective treatment for auto-immune diseases. Auto-immune diseases result from an overactive immune response that causes the body to attack itself. The new approach involves increasing good regulating cells in the body, unlike most current research which focuses on stopping "bad" or "effector" cells, says lead researcher Dr Suzanne Hodgkinson, from UNSW's Faculty of Medicine and Liverpool Hospital...

Genetic Cause Likely In Flies With Restless Legs Syndrome

Date: Jun-02-2012
When flies are made to lose a gene with links to Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS), they suffer the same sleep disturbances and restlessness that human patients do. The findings reported online on in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, strongly suggest a genetic basis for RLS, a condition in which patients complain of an irresistible urge to move that gets worse as they try to rest. "Although widely prevalent, RLS is a disorder whose pathophysiological basis remains very poorly understood," said Subhabrata Sanyal of Emory University School of Medicine...

Marriage And Happiness

Date: Jun-02-2012
Married people may be happier in the long run than those who aren't married, according to new research by Michigan State University scientists. Their study, online in the Journal of Research in Personality, finds that although matrimony does not make people happier than they were when they were single, it appears to protect against normal declines in happiness during adulthood. "Our study suggests that people on average are happier than they would have been if they didn't get married," said Stevie C.Y. Yap, a researcher in MSU's Department of Psychology...

Placebos And Ethics

Date: Jun-02-2012
The American Medical Association's Code of Ethics prohibits physicians from prescribing treatments that they consider to be placebos unless the patients know this and agree to take them anyway. But this policy is not clearly the best way to protect or benefit patients, concludes an The American Medical Association's Code of Ethics prohibits physicians from prescribing treatments that they consider to be placebos unless the patients know this and agree to take them anyway...

Understanding The Links Between Inflammation And Chronic Disease

Date: Jun-02-2012
American parents may want to think again about how much they want to protect their children from everyday germs. A new Northwestern University study done in lowland Ecuador remarkably finds no evidence of chronic low-grade inflammation associated with diseases of aging like cardiovascular disease, diabetes and dementia. In contrast, about one-third of adults in the United States have chronically elevated C-reactive protein (CRP)...

Are The Kidneys Damaged By Low-Carb Diets?

Date: Jun-02-2012
Low-carbohydrate, high-protein diets - like the Atkins diet - have been popular among dieters for years. For just as long, experts have worried that such diets might be harmful to the kidneys. A study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN) looks into these safety concerns...

New Treatment Directions Suggested By Alzheimer's Protein Structure

Date: Jun-02-2012
The molecular structure of a protein involved in Alzheimer's disease - and the surprising discovery that it binds cholesterol - could lead to new therapeutics for the disease, Vanderbilt University investigators report in the June 1 issue of the journal Science. Charles Sanders, Ph.D., professor of Biochemistry, and colleagues in the Center for Structural Biology determined the structure of part of the amyloid precursor protein (APP) - the source of amyloid-beta, which is believed to trigger Alzheimer's disease...

Neuroprosthetics And Robot Rehabilitation Wake Up The 'Spinal Brain' And Restore Voluntary Movement After Spinal Cord Injury

Date: Jun-02-2012
Rats with spinal cord injuries and severe paralysis are now walking (and running) thanks to researchers at EPFL. Published in the June 1, 2012 issue of Science, the results show that a severed section of the spinal cord can make a comeback when its own innate intelligence and regenerative capacity - what lead author Grégoire Courtine of EPFL calls the "spinal brain" - is awakened. The study, begun five years ago at the University of Zurich, points to a profound change in our understanding of the central nervous system...