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Fighting Flu Virus Using Powerful New Approach
Date: May-28-2012An international research team has manufactured a new protein that can combat deadly flu epidemics. The paper, featured on the cover of the current issue of Nature Biotechnology, demonstrates ways to use manufactured genes as antivirals, which disable key functions of the flu virus, said Tim Whitehead, assistant professor of chemical engineering and materials science at Michigan State University. "Our most potent design has proven effective on the vulnerable sites on many pandemic influenza viruses, including several H1N1 (Spanish flu, Swine flu) and H5N1 (Avian flu) subtypes," said Whitehead,...
Jet-Injected Drugs Could Improve Patient Compliance, Reduce Accidental Needle Sticks
Date: May-28-2012Getting a shot at the doctor's office may become less painful in the not-too-distant future. MIT researchers have engineered a device that delivers a tiny, high-pressure jet of medicine through the skin without the use of a hypodermic needle. The device can be programmed to deliver a range of doses to various depths - an improvement over similar jet-injection systems that are now commercially available. The researchers say that among other benefits, the technology may help reduce the potential for needle-stick injuries; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that...
Genetic Mutation Can Lead To Too Much Or Too Little Growth
Date: May-28-2012A gene previously linked to too much growth in patients has now also been linked to growth restriction. Different forms of the gene can lead to very different conditions, according to research published in the journal Nature Genetics. IMAGe* syndrome is a rare developmental disorder which can affect foetal growth, resulting in smaller than average body and organ size. Without treatment, the disorder can have potentially life-threatening consequences from adrenal gland failure. The condition was first identified twenty years ago by Eric Vilain, then a researcher in France. Now, Professor Vilain...
Coveting May Be Hardwired In Brain
Date: May-28-2012Coveting, or wanting what others have, may be hardwired in the brain, according to new research from France. We see it in children at play, the toy the other child is enjoying is more desirable. We do it with fashion items, accessories, cars, "keeping up with the Joneses", where the value assigned to an object increases when it is desired by others. Now a team from INSERM in Paris has shown that this tendency is not just psychological, but due to specific brain mechanisms that are essential for what has long been known as "mimetic desire", a characteristic first described by French philosopher...
Diabetes Deaths Drop Substantially, US
Date: May-28-2012In the decade leading up to 2006, the US saw a substantial drop in deaths for people with diabetes, especially in connection with heart disease and stroke, according to a new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Published online this month in the journal Diabetes Care, the researchers report that although American adults with diabetes are still more likely to die younger than those without diabetes, the gap is getting smaller. However, they also conclude that: "These encouraging findings ... suggest that diabetes...
Low Vitamin D In Diet Increases Stroke Risk In Japanese-Americans
Date: May-28-2012Japanese-American men who did not eat foods rich in vitamin D had a higher risk of stroke later in life, according to results of a 34-year study reported in Stroke, an American Heart Association journal. "Our study confirms that eating foods rich in vitamin D might be beneficial for stroke prevention," said Gotaro Kojima, M.D., lead author of the study and geriatric medicine fellow at the John A. Burns School of Medicine at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu. Vitamin D is an essential nutrient that helps prevent rickets in children and severe bone loss in adults, and researchers believe it...
Distress Of Child War And Sex Abuse Victims Halved By New Trauma Intervention
Date: May-28-2012A new psychological intervention has been shown to more than halve the trauma experienced by child victims of war, rape and sexual abuse. Researchers at Queen's University Belfast pioneered the intervention in conjunction with the international NGO, World Vision as part of a wider programme to treat psychological distress in child victims of war and sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Eastern Congo has the world's highest rate of sexual violence. Known as 'the rape capital of the world', it is estimated that girls and women in the eastern DRC are 134 times more likely to...
Chronic Pain Is Relieved By Cell Transplantation In Lab Study
Date: May-28-2012Chronic pain, by definition, is difficult to manage, but a new study by UCSF scientists shows how a cell therapy might one day be used not only to quell some common types of persistent and difficult-to-treat pain, but also to cure the conditions that give rise to them. The researchers, working with mice, focused on treating chronic pain that arises from nerve injury -- so-called neuropathic pain. In their study, published in the March 24, 2012 issue of Neuron, the scientists transplanted immature embryonic nerve cells that arise in the brain during development and used them to make up for a...
A Boost In MicroRNA May Protect Against Sepsis And Other Inflammatory Diseases
Date: May-28-2012Acute inflammatory diseases, such as sepsis, as well as chronic inflammatory diseases like diabetes and arthritis, develop as a result of sustained inflammation of the blood vessel wall. Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) have discovered that a microRNA (small, non-coding RNA molecule) called miR-181b can reduce the inflammatory response that is responsible for such diseases. The findings, by researchers led by Mark Feinberg, MD from BWH and Harvard Medical School, will pave the way for new targets in the development of anti-inflammatory therapies. The study is published in the...
Marked For Destruction: Newly Developed Compound Triggers Cancer Cell Death
Date: May-28-2012The BCL-2 protein family plays a large role in determining whether cancer cells survive in response to therapy or undergo a form of cell death known as apoptosis. Cells are pressured toward apoptosis by expression of pro-apoptotic BCL-2 proteins. However, cancer cells respond to therapy by increasing expression of anti-apoptotic proteins, which bind and neutralize pro-apoptotic family members and mediate therapeutic resistance. Therefore, development of therapeutic strategies to neutralize resistance to apoptosis will be critical to clinical improvements. A research group from the Dana-Farber...
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