Health News

"Virtual house calls" for Parkinson's patients

Date: Dec-06-2013
A new study shows that a neurologist in an office thousands of miles away can deliver effective specialized care to people with Parkinson's disease. For individuals with the condition - many of whom have never seen a specialist - these "virtual house calls" could allow them to live independently while effectively manage the symptoms of the disease."The idea that we can provide care to individuals with Parkinson disease regardless of where they live is both a simple and revolutionary concept," said University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) neurologist Ray Dorsey, M.D., M.B.A.

New understanding of chlamydial disease

Date: Dec-06-2013
Investigators at the Institute for Genome Sciences at the University of Maryland School of Medicine have developed a new technique that can track the activity of a disease-causing microbe and the host cell response to that pathogen simultaneously. Using the new method to examine Chlamydia trachomatis infection, the study team observed how the response of the infected cell contributes to one of the hallmark outcomes of chlamydial disease -- tissue scarring. Their findings appear in the journal PLOS One.

Identification of unusual items more difficult as commonly found objects likely crowd them out

Date: Dec-06-2013
A smartphone app that turns gamers into airport baggage screeners is showing that finding weapons and other illegal items isn't all that easy, even when you're looking for them.Duke University researchers analyzed data from searches of 20 million virtual suitcases in the game Airport Scanner created by Kedlin Co. and found that users failed in most cases to identify objects that occurred only rarely."We're seeing that people are really bad at finding items that are not likely to appear," said Stephen Mitroff, Ph.D.

Counting tumor-attacking immune cells to predict ovarian cancer survival

Date: Dec-06-2013
One way to predict survival of many types of cancer is by counting the number of tumor-attacking immune cells that have migrated into the tumor in an effort to eradicate it - a sign of the body's immune response to the cancer. However, quantifying these armies of immune cells has been difficult - until now.Scientists at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center have developed a new method for counting a special class of cancer-fighting cells - called tumor-infiltrating T lymphocytes, or TILs - reliably, quickly and cheaply in patients with early stage and advanced ovarian cancer.

Relationships may suffer when parents work odd shifts

Date: Dec-06-2013
Research from North Carolina State University shows that working a job that doesn't keep 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. hours can hurt the relationships between parents and adolescents, increasing the likelihood that children will engage in delinquent behaviors. However, the researchers found that in some circumstances, an unconventional work schedule can be a benefit for children.To determine the impact of "nonstandard" work schedules on child-parent relationships and delinquency, the researchers looked at nationally representative data from 1,986 adolescents aged 10-17.

Enzyme activity bolstered by gene therapy to combat Alzheimer's disease in mice

Date: Dec-06-2013
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital scientists have identified an enzyme that can halt or possibly even reverse the build-up of toxic protein fragments known as plaques in the brains of mice with Alzheimer's disease. The research appeared in a recent edition of the scientific journal Nature Communications.Plaques decreased substantially in mice treated with gene therapy to increase activity of the enzyme neuraminidase 1 (NEU1) in a region of the brain involved in learning and memory.

What tongue twister-induced speech errors may tell us about our brains

Date: Dec-06-2013
Tongue twisters are not just fun to say; it turns out that these sound-related slip-ups can also open windows into the brain's speech-planning processes. A team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) reported new insights gleaned from a comparison of two types of tongue twisters at the 166th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), being held Dec. 2-6, 2013, in San Francisco, Calif.Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel, an MIT psychologist who presented this work, studies speech errors as a way of understanding normal brain functions.

Ultrafast recycling of neurotransmitter-filled bubbles keep our nerves firing

Date: Dec-06-2013
University of Utah and German biologists discovered how nerve cells recycle tiny bubbles or "vesicles" that send chemical nerve signals from one cell to the next. The process is much faster and different than two previously proposed mechanisms for recycling the bubbles.Researchers photographed mouse brain cells using an electron microscope after flash-freezing the cells in the act of firing nerve signals.

Cancer mutation likely trigger of scleroderma

Date: Dec-05-2013
Johns Hopkins scientists have found evidence that cancer triggers the autoimmune disease scleroderma, which causes thickening and hardening of the skin and widespread organ damage.A report on the discovery, published in the Dec. 5 issue of Science, also suggests that a normal immune system is critical for preventing the development of common types of cancer.According to researchers, patients with scleroderma often make immune proteins or antibodies to another protein, called RPC1.

Singapore scientists engineer human stem cells and move closer to mastering regenerative medicine

Date: Dec-05-2013
In an important scientific breakthrough in regenerative medicine, researchers at A*STAR's Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS) have successfully converted human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) cultured in the laboratory to a state that is closer to the cells found in the human blastocyst. This means that scientists are one step closer to cultivating stem cells for research and potential therapeutic purposes, as well as understanding the processes of early human development. These findings are published in the current issue of the prestigious science journal Cell Stem Cell.