Barcelona, Spain: Cardiomyopathy, or a deterioration of the ability of the heart muscle to contract, generally leads to progressive heart failure. It is frequently inherited, and, because approximately 40% of children born with it are likely to die within five years of diagnosis, being able to identify its genetic basis is particularly important. Now, an international team of researchers has identified a new disease gene which is implicated in the development of severe paediatric cardiomyopathies. The gene is probably also involved in a milder, adult-onset form of the condition.
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High arginine levels are often observed in asthmatic individuals and may support increased production of nitric oxide, which is known to worsen airway inflammation. Medications that reduce arginine availability do not effectively treat asthma, suggesting that other aspects of this condition are linked to elevated arginine metabolism. In this month's issue of the JCI, research led by Serpil Erzurum at the Cleveland Clinic indicates that increased arginine levels in asthmatic individuals may support metabolic pathways that counteract airway inflammation.
Boston, MA -- Women with elevated levels of common types of flame retardant chemicals in their blood may be at a higher risk for thyroid disease--and the risk may be significantly higher among post-menopausal women, according to a new study from researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Synthetic proteins based on those found in a variety of squid species' ring teeth may lead the way to self-healing polymers carefully constructed for specific toughness and stretchability that might have applications in textiles, cosmetics and medicine, according to Penn State researchers.
"We looked at what is common among squid teeth proteins for all species of squid we studied," said Abdon Pena-Francesch, graduate student in engineering science and mechanics. "We observed which properties changed dramatically for each set of proteins."
Men with blood cells that do not carry the Y chromosome are at greater risk of being diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. This is in addition to an increased risk of death from other causes, including many cancers. These new findings by researchers at Uppsala University could lead to a simple test to identify those at risk of developing Alzheimer's disease.
The results are presented today in American Journal of Human Genetics.
Tuna fishers who network with their competition may be able to stop thousands of sharks a year from being accidentally captured and killed in the Pacific Ocean.
Researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University and the University of Hawaii found if fishers communicated more with their rivals, it could lead to more sustainable fishing practices.
"Forty-six thousand sharks could have been saved if information about avoiding sharks was shared freely between fishing groups," says lead author Michele Barnes.
A new study, the largest of its kind, has systematically examined International Monetary Fund (IMF) policies over the past three decades. It found that--despite claims to have reformed their practices following the global financial crisis--the IMF has in fact ramped up the number of conditions imposed on borrower nations to pre-crisis levels.
AMHERST, Mass. - Though research on protein folding has progressed over the past few decades toward better understanding of human metabolism and the diseases associated with misfolding, important discoveries are still being made by teams who can bring special techniques and tools to bear on these complex cellular processes.
It took nearly a half trillion tries before researchers at The University of Texas at Austin witnessed a rare event and perhaps solved an evolutionary puzzle about how introns, non-coding sequences of DNA located within genes, multiply in a genome. The results, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, address fundamental questions about the evolution of new species and could expand our understanding of gene expression and the causes of diseases such as cancer.
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the main cause of death in the world, killing 17.5 million people every year according to WHO figures. Prevention strategies based on risk prediction are now a top public health priority, and there is great interest in developing new biomarkers of cardiovascular risk that allow a more accurate risk predication than classical risk factors such as high cholesterol, smoking, physical inactivity, and high blood pressure.
MIAMI, May 23, 2016 - A recent study by researchers at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine revealed that triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), which has generally been unresponsive to hormone receptor-targeted treatments, can indeed be treated using vitamin D and androgen receptor-targeted therapy. The discovery offers a new treatment option beyond chemotherapy for this aggressive type of breast cancer. The study was published in the journal Breast Cancer Research and Treatment.
For reasons that remain unclear at least in the smaller babies, both birthweight extremes appear to increase the likelihood of early development of dangerous fat around major organs in the abdomen that significantly increases these risks, said Dr. Brian Stansfield, neonatologist at the Children's Hospital of Georgia and the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University.
The National Cancer Moonshot initiative needs to move beyond genomics to target the proteins that are driving cancer, according to an Inova Health System and George Mason University collaborative paper published Thursday in the American Association for Cancer Research.
President Barack Obama announced the National Cancer Moonshot during his 2016 State of the Union Address. About $1 billion is expected next year to fund the initiative's goal of achieving a decade's worth of research in five years by focusing on immunotherapy, genomics and combination therapies.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- Researchers identified a single enzyme doing the work of a trio thought necessary to control a common cellular signaling process being pursued as a therapeutic target.
It's a win-win situation for the environment and the economy when it comes to introducing legumes into agricultural systems, says new research published in Frontiers in Plant Science, carried out by an international team of scientists as part of the European Union project, Legume Futures.
Currently Europe's crop production is highly specialized in only a small number of plant species, to the detriment of the environment. Cereal crops dominate, meaning Europe imports over 70% of its protein feed stocks to support the meat industry.