Health News

Protein measurements in the cell

Date: Jan-28-2014
A network of chemists at the University of Konstanz has developed an innovative method to study protein structures by means of magnetic labels. The ingenious thing about it is that the magnetic labels are directly incorporated inside the cell when the protein is naturally biosynthesized. The research results, that might have an impact on many areas of structural biology, have been published in the current issue of the renowned scientific journal Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Tocomin SupraBio® improves non-alcoholic fatty liver disease

Date: Jan-28-2014
A ground-breaking human clinical study shows supplementation with patented and bioenhanced natural full spectrum palm tocotrienol complex (Tocomin SupraBio®) at 400mg daily for one year improves fatty liver in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). NAFLD often coexists with metabolic syndrome especially type 2 diabetes and obesity. It is reported to be an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease and affects approximately 30% of the population in Western countries.

Do brain connections help shape religious beliefs?

Date: Jan-28-2014
Building on previous evidence showing that religious belief involves cognitive activity that can be mapped to specific brain regions, a new study has found that causal, directional connections between these brain networks can be linked to differences in religious thought. The article "Brain Networks Shaping Religious Belief" is published in Brain Connectivity, a bimonthly peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers, and is available free on the Brain Connectivity website.

Your childhood memories are probably less accurate than you think

Date: Jan-28-2014
How much detail can you reliably recall in your childhood memories? Actually very little, according to a new study with profound implications for our legal system.Writing in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, three UK-based psychologists asked 127 people to recall four of their earliest childhood memories about which they were absolutely certain. They were also asked questions about specific details.When the results were analysed, the researchers found that participants were much more likely to remember some sorts of details than others.

Cracks in the cellular transport system can be key to a new generation of cancer therapies

Date: Jan-28-2014
Researchers from Warwick Medical School have discovered a critical point of failure in the microscopic transport system that operates inside every cell in the human body.The study, published in Nature Communications, explains how this tiny 'railway' system is a key target for cancer drugs and, as such, how this new discovery reveals how better drugs might be made. The tracks of this so called 'railway' are tiny tubes, called microtubules, 1000 times thinner than a human hair.The research shows that a narrow seam that runs along the length of the microtubules is the weakest point.

Animate, inanimate, but also social

Date: Jan-28-2014
For our brain, animate and inanimate objects belong to different categories and any information about them is stored and processed by different networks. A study by Raffaella Rumiati from SISSA, Andrea Carnaghi from the University of Trieste, and others shows that there is also another category that is functionally distinct from the others, namely, the category of "social" groups. The study has just been published in the scientific journal Cognitive Neuroscience.It was research in the field of neuropsychology that revealed a functional distinction between some "macro-categories".

FDA approval for CliniMACS® CD34 Reagent System for prevention of graft-versus-host disease in the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia

Date: Jan-28-2014
Miltenyi Biotec has announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the company's CliniMACS CD34 Reagent System as a Humanitarian Use Device for the prevention of graft- versus-host disease (GVHD) in patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML) in first complete remission undergoing allogeneic stem cell transplantation (SCT) from a matched related donor.

Possible link identified between hereditary cancer genes and increased risk of cancer from alcohol

Date: Jan-28-2014
In laboratory experiments conducted on human cell lines at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, scientists have shown that people carrying certain mutations in two hereditary cancer genes, BRCA2 and PALB2, may have a higher than usual susceptibility to DNA damage caused by a byproduct of alcohol, called acetaldehyde.The scientists say they suspect that the two genes in their normal forms evolved to protect cells against the damaging effects of acetaldehyde, which can lead to cancer.

Childhood amnesia: psychologists document the age our earliest memories fade

Date: Jan-28-2014
Although infants use their memories to learn new information, few adults can remember events in their lives that happened prior to the age of three. Psychologists at Emory University have now documented that age seven is when these earliest memories tend to fade into oblivion, a phenomenon known as "childhood amnesia."The journal Memory published the research, which involved interviewing children about past events in their lives, starting at age three. Different subsets of the group of children were then tested for recall of these events at ages five, six, seven, eight and nine.

Large-scale analysis of over 20 tumor types increases catalog of cancer genes by 25 percent

Date: Jan-28-2014
A landmark study across many cancer types reveals that the universe of cancer mutations is much bigger than previously thought. By analyzing the genomes of thousands of patients' tumors, a Broad Institute-led research team has discovered many new cancer genes - expanding the list of known genes tied to these cancers by 25 percent. Moreover, the study shows that many key cancer genes still remain to be discovered.