Body

In a recent placebo-controlled study, long acting testosterone undecanoate (an ester of testosterone) improved erectile function, intercourse satisfaction, and sexual desire scores in type 2 diabetic men with severe hypogonadism, a condition in which the body doesn't produce enough testosterone. Only sexual desire improved significantly with testosterone replacement therapy in those with mild hypogonadism.

How did birds get their wings? Bacteria may provide a clue, say scientists

The evolution of major novel traits - characteristics such as wings, flowers, horns or limbs - has long been known to play a key role in allowing organisms to exploit new opportunities in their surroundings.

What's still up for debate, though, is how these important augmentations come about from a genetic point of view.

Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) affects hundreds of thousands of people each year, many of them children. Those with this life threatening condition have severely injured and wet lungs, and are treated with mechanical ventilation. Now, a study led by Professor Kanwaljeet Anand published in Frontiers in Pediatrics, investigates the effects of a new steroid treatment on children suffering from ARDS.

Researchers have found that the rates of surgical operations for gastro-esophageal reflux disease (GERD) in the United States have fallen rapidly in recent years, from 0.062 percent in 2009 to 0.047 percent in 2013. The numbers of overweight and obese patients having this surgery have increased, however. Also, women are more likely than men to have surgery for GERD.

Importantly, surgery was not found to bring complete relief from GERD symptoms: 80% of patients who had surgery were still being treated with a proton pump inhibitor.

In modern microelectronics, nanobiotechnology, nanorobots increasingly have being used both organic biomacromolecules and fragments, as nucleotides, peptides, DNA, and inorganic elements, like as metallic nanoparticles, carbon nanotubes. The charge transfer in such heterogeneous systems to a large extent has to determined by the conformational changes of biological fragments. In studying the properties of these complex nanoparticles one of the effective tool is a hybrid method of molecular dynamics simulation, combining molecular-mechanical and quantum-mechanical approaches.

May 6, 2016-- (BRONX, NY)--For the first time, scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine have developed a technology allowing them to "see" single molecules of messenger RNA as they are translated into proteins in living mammalian cells. Initial findings using this technology that may shed light on neurological diseases as well as cancer were published online today in Science.

New research suggests that synthetic peptides called minihepcidins may potentially treat two serious genetic blood diseases in children and adults. Although those diseases, beta-thalassemia and polycythemia vera, have opposite effects on red blood cell production, treating animals with minihepcidin helps to restore normal levels of red blood cells and reduces spleen enlargement. It also controls the accumulation of excess levels of iron in beta-thalassemia that often causes severe toxic effects.

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- A new paper-based test developed at MIT and other institutions can diagnose Zika virus infection within a few hours. The test, which distinguishes Zika from the very similar dengue virus, can be stored at room temperature and read with a simple electronic reader, making it potentially practical for widespread use.

TEMPE, Ariz. -- May 5, 2016 -- Any kid who pulls on a lizard tail knows it can drop off to avoid capture, but how they regrow a new tail remains a mystery. Now, researchers at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) and Arizona State University (ASU) have identified tiny RNA switches, known as microRNAs, which may hold the keys to regenerating muscles, cartilage and spinal columns.

May 6, 2016 - For highly trained Paralympic athletes with cerebral palsy (CP), bone mineral density and other measures of body composition are similar to those of able-bodied adults of similar age, reports a study in the American Journal of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, the official journal of the Association of Academic Physiatrists. The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer.

Misty mountains, glistening forests and blue-green lakes make Cameroon, the wettest part of Africa, a tropical wonderland for amphibians.

The country holds more than half the species living on the continent, including dozens of endemic frogs -- an animal that has been under attack across the world by the pervasive chytrid fungus (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis). Africa has been mostly spared from the deadly and rampant pathogen that wiped out entire species in Australia, Madagascar and Panama, until now.

More than 10 percent of pregnant women develop serious complications during pregnancy. The underlying cause is often a poorly functioning placenta, the organ that nourishes and maintains the fetus.

Genetic regulation of the various types of blood cells in zebrafish and humans is highly similar, making it relatively easy and cost-effective to perform genetic, chemical, imaging and other molecular studies on this invaluable model organism to study normal hematopoetic development in humans as well as blood disorders and malignancies, as described in a Review article in Human Gene Therapy.

PHILADELPHIA -- Colorectal cancer is the second highest cause of cancer death in the United States, expected to claim the lives of an estimated 49,190 people in 2016. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) aimed to increase access to CRC screening by not holding patients responsible for all costs of the procedure, yet current Medicare insurance beneficiaries lacking supplemental insurance may not be able to afford colon cancer screening and treatment.

Nowhere today is the biodiversity of corals and reef-inhabiting fish higher than in the tropical waters around Indonesia and its neighbouring countries in Southeast Asia.