Health News

How identical cells differentiate: Turing's theory of morphogenesis validated 60 years after his death

Date: Mar-14-2014
British mathematician Alan Turing's accomplishments in computer science are well known - he's the man who cracked the German Enigma code, expediting the Allies' victory in World War II. He also had a tremendous impact on biology and chemistry. In his only paper in biology, Turing proposed a theory of morphogenesis, or how identical copies of a single cell differentiate, for example, into an organism with arms and legs, a head and tail.

Potential to halt cancer metastasis through protein that is key to cell motility

Date: Mar-14-2014
"Cell movement is the basic recipe of life, and all cells have the capacity to move," says Roberto Dominguez, PhD, professor of Physiology at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. Motility - albeit on a cellular spatial scale - is necessary for wound healing, clotting, fetal development, nerve connections, and the immune response, among other functions. On the other hand, cell movement can be deleterious when cancer cells break away from tumors and migrate to set up shop in other tissues during cancer metastasis.

New rehabilitation methods suggested for amputees and stroke patients

Date: Mar-14-2014
When use of a dominant hand is lost by amputation or stroke, a patient is forced to compensate by using the nondominant hand exclusively for precision tasks like writing or drawing. Presently, the behavioral and neurological effects of chronic, forced use of the nondominant hand are largely understudied and unknown. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri have shed light on ways in which a patient compensates when losing a dominant hand and suggest new and improved rehabilitation techniques for those suffering from amputation or stroke.

Text-messaging program good option for keeping teen girls healthy

Date: Mar-14-2014
Megan Ranney, MD, MPH, an emergency medicine attending physician at Hasbro Children's Hospital, recently led a study that found a text-message program may be an effective violence prevention tool for at-risk teen girls. The study has been published online in the Journal of Adolescent Health."Mobile health, or 'mHealth,' is increasingly being used as a way to improve people's health, via text-messaging or phone-based applications," said Ranney.

Blocking microRNA miR-25 halts progression of heart failure, improves cardiac function, and may increase survival

Date: Mar-14-2014
A team of cardiovascular researchers from Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford-Burnham), the Cardiovascular Research Center at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and the University of California, San Diego have identified a small but powerful new player in the onset and progression of heart failure. Their findings, published in the journal Nature, also show how they successfully blocked the newly discovered culprit to halt the debilitating and chronic life-threatening condition in its tracks.

Key to independence for high schoolers with autism may be superior visual thinking

Date: Mar-14-2014
Researchers at UNC's Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG) and UNC's School of Education report that teaching independence to adolescents with autism can provide a crucial boost to their chances for success after high school."We explored many factors that contribute to the poor outcomes people with autism often experience," said Kara Hume, co-principal investigator of FPG's Center on Secondary Education for Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders (CSESA).

A potential treatment target for multiple sclerosis offered by PD-L1

Date: Mar-14-2014
Experimental allergic encephalomyelitis is a mouse model of human multiple sclerosis with similar pathology and pathogenesis. Th1 cells play an important role in the pathogenesis of experimental allergic encephalomyelitis. Therefore, Qun Xue, Fanli Dong and co-workers from the First Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University in China speculated that programmed cell death 1 ligand 1 (PD-L1) plays an important role in the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis. A recent study by these researchers published in Neural Regeneration Research (Vol. 8, No.

Nerve growth factor-containing fibrin glue membrane enables peripheral nerve regeneration

Date: Mar-14-2014
Complete regeneration is usually very difficult following peripheral nerve damage, though microsurgical techniques have vastly increased the success rate of surgery to repair the injured nerve. This occurs possibly because of a lack of neurotrophic factors and extracellular matrix in the injured region, which results in a microenvironment that is not optimal for peripheral nerve regeneration. Nerve growth factor (NGF) was the first neurotrophic factor identified in a class of molecules responsible for neuronal survival and differentiation.

In diabetic peripheral neuropathy, iron overload is a risk factor

Date: Mar-14-2014
Iron overload can lead to cytotoxicity, and it is a risk factor for diabetic peripheral neuropathy. However, the underlying mechanism remains unclear. Prof. Shi Zhao and team conjectured that iron overload-induced neurotoxicity might be associated with oxidative stress and the NF-E2-related factor 2 (Nrf2)/ARE signaling pathway. As an in vitro cellular model of diabetic peripheral neuropathy, PC12 cells exposed to high glucose concentration were used in this study. PC12 cells were cultured with ferric ammonium citrate at different concentrations to create iron overload.

Parasites in humans influence each other via shared food sources

Date: Mar-14-2014
Humans are often infected by parasites, sometimes even several species at a time. Such co-infections are more difficult to treat if the parasites interact with each other. An ecologist from the University of Zurich and his international team have compiled a list of the numerous possibilities as to how parasites can interact: They are most likely to do so indirectly via the food source they share.Over 1,400 species of parasites - viruses, bacteria, fungi, intestinal worms and protozoa - are able to infect humans. In most cases, the right medicine against a parasite cures the patient.