Health News

Alzheimer's trial disappointing but yields new ideas

Date: Jan-24-2014
A new study in the New England Journal of Medicine documents the high-profile failure of a promising drug, bapineuzumab, to slow cognitive decline in dementia patients. Dr. Stephen Salloway, the study's lead author, says researchers have learned key lessons that they are eager to apply in new attempts to find effective treatments for Alzheimer's disease. Dr. Stephen Salloway pulls no punches in describing the results of two clinical trials of the Alzheimer's drug bapineuzumab that he helped to lead.

Gene therapy restored muscle function and prolonged lives in animals with a condition similar to X-linked myotubular myopathy in children

Date: Jan-24-2014
Preclinical studies show that gene therapy can improve muscle strength in small- and large-animal models of a fatal congenital pediatric disease known as X-linked myotubular myopathy. The results, appearing in Science Translational Medicine, also demonstrate the feasibility of future clinical trials of gene therapy for this devastating disease.

How does the brain link different memories?

Date: Jan-24-2014
Neuroscientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology believe they have discovered two neural circuits that coordinate how time-linked memories are formed and stored in the brain.Scientists already know that memories of events (called "episodic memories") are created in the hippocampus area of the brain. The hippocampus receives information from the entorhinal cortex (a region of the central cortex), which processes sensory information.

Computer model simulates blood vessel growth

Date: Jan-24-2014
University of Utah bioengineers showed that tiny blood vessels grow better in the laboratory if the tissue surrounding them is less dense. Then the researchers created a computer simulation to predict such growth accurately - an early step toward treatments to provide blood supply to tissues damaged by diabetes and heart attacks and to skin grafts and implanted ligaments and tendons.

Tuberculosis control in gold mines not improved by Major South African trial

Date: Jan-24-2014
A major trial aiming to cut the rate of tuberculosis (TB) among South Africa's gold miners did not reduce the number of cases or deaths from the disease, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.Researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine say that the results demonstrate the scale of the TB problem in South African gold mines, and highlight the need for a "combination prevention" approach to improve TB control. The TB epidemic in South Africa's gold mines worsened with the advent of the HIV epidemic in the 1990s.

Novel biosensor developed to target salmonella

Date: Jan-24-2014
An array of tiny diving boards can perform the Olympian feat of identifying many strains of salmonella at once.The novel biosensor developed by scientists at Rice University in collaboration with colleagues in Thailand and Ireland may make the detection of pathogens much faster and easier for food-manufacturing plants.A study on the discovery appears online this month in the American Chemical Society journal Analytical Chemistry.The process appears to easily outperform tests that are now standard in the food industry.

Breast cancer drug improves outcomes for some bladder cancer patients

Date: Jan-24-2014
Researchers at Mayo Clinic have found amplification of HER2, a known driver of some breast cancers, in a type of bladder cancer called micropapillary urothelial carcinoma (MPUC) and have shown that the presence of HER2 amplification is associated with particularly aggressive tumors. These findings suggest that administering trastuzumab to MPUC patients with HER2 amplification could improve outcomes, just as it has for breast cancer. The study is published in this month's Modern Pathology.

Window into living cells provided by 3-D imaging, no dye required

Date: Jan-24-2014
Living cells are ready for their close-ups, thanks to a new imaging technique that needs no dyes or other chemicals, yet renders high-resolution, three-dimensional, quantitative imagery of cells and their internal structures - all with conventional microscopes and white light.Called white-light diffraction tomography (WDT), the imaging technique opens a window into the life of a cell without disturbing it and could allow cellular biologists unprecedented insight into cellular processes, drug effects and stem cell differentiation.

Boosting weight loss by exposing our bodies to cold temperatures

Date: Jan-24-2014
Regular exposure to mild cold may be a healthy and sustainable way to help people lose weight, according to researchers writing in the Cell Press publication Trends in Endocrinology & Metabolism. On the flip side, that means our warm and cozy homes and offices might be partly responsible for our expanding waistlines."Since most of us are exposed to indoor conditions 90 percent of the time, it is worth exploring health aspects of ambient temperatures," said first author of the article Wouter van Marken Lichtenbelt of Maastricht University Medical Center in The Netherlands.

Outcome in HPV-related oral cancers not necessarily predicted by number of cancer stem cells

Date: Jan-24-2014
New research from The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center - Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC - James) suggests that it may be the quality of cancer stem cells rather than their quantity that leads to better survival in certain patients with oral cancer. The researchers investigated cancer stem cell numbers in oral cancers associated with human papillomavirus (HPV) and in oral cancers not associated with the virus.