With snow comes shoveling, and with shoveling can come heart attacks. Shutterstock
Body
Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest forms of the disease. The American Cancer Society's most recent estimates for 2014 show that over 46,000 people will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and more than 39,000 will die from it. Now, research led by Timothy J. Yen, PhD, Professor at Fox Chase Cancer Center, reveals that one reason this deadly form of cancer can be so challenging to treat is because its cells have found a way to sidestep chemotherapy.
Breast and lung cancer patients who have low levels of a protein called tristetraprolin (TTP) have more aggressive tumors and a poorer prognosis than those with high levels of the protein. Their study was published in the Dec. 26 issue of PLoS One.
Copy number variations (deletions or duplications of large chunks of the genome) are a major cause of birth defects, intellectual disability, autism spectrum disorder and other developmental disorders. Still, geneticists can definitively say how a CNV, once discovered in someone's DNA, leads to one of these conditions in just a fraction of cases.
complex interplay of molecular components governs almost all aspects of biological sciences - healthy organism development, disease progression, and drug efficacy are all dependent on the way life's molecules interact in the body. Understanding these bio-molecular interactions is critical for the discovery of new, more effective therapeutics and diagnostics to treat cancer and other diseases, but currently requires scientists to have access to expensive and elaborate laboratory equipment.
Researchers at the BBSRC-supported Babraham Institute have mapped the physical structure of the nuclear landscape in unprecedented detail to understand changes in genomic interactions occurring in cell senescence and aging. Their findings have allowed them to reconcile the contradictory observations of two current models of aging: cellular senescence of connective tissue cells called fibroblasts and cellular models of an accelerated aging syndrome.
Research led by Nicolas Bazan, MD, PhD, Boyd Professor, Ernest C. and Yvette C. Villere Chair of Retinal Degeneration Research, and Director of the Neuroscience Center of Excellence at LSU Health New Orleans, has discovered gene interactions that determine whether cells live or die in such conditions as age-related macular degeneration and ischemic stroke. These common molecular mechanisms in vision and brain integrity can prevent blindness and also promote recovery from a stroke.
Researchers have linked trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) - a gut metabolite formed during the digestion of eggs, red meat or dairy-derived nutrients choline and carnitine - to chronic kidney disease.
TMAO has been linked to heart disease already, with blood levels shown to be a powerful tool for predicting future heart attacks, stroke and death. TMAO forms in the gut during digestion of choline and carnitine, nutrients that are abundant in animal products such as red meat and liver. Choline is also abundant in egg yolk and high-fat dairy products.
In a study published in Molecular Metabolism, a SLU researcher has found that adropin, a hormone that regulates whether the body burns fat or sugar during feeding and fasting cycles, can improve insulin action in obese, diabetic mice, suggesting that it may work as a therapy for type 2 diabetes.
Recent studies have shown that added sugars, particularly those containing fructose, are a principal driver of diabetes and pre-diabetes, even more so than other carbohydrates. Clinical experts writing in Mayo Clinic Proceedings challenge current dietary guidelines that allow up to 25% of total daily calories as added sugars, and propose drastic reductions in the amount of added sugar, and especially added fructose, people consume.
Researchers at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW), in collaboration with other colleagues of the Genetic Epidemiology of Lung Cancer Consortium (GELCC), have identified a gene that is associated with lung cancer.
The findings are published in American Journal of Human Genetics. Through whole exome sequencing, researchers identified a link between a mutation in PARK2, a gene associated with early-onset Parkinson's disease, and familial lung cancer.
Almost 2,500 women of child-bearing age in the UK are at risk of transmitting mitochondrial disease to their children, according to the most recent estimates published today in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The research offers the most recent evidence yet of how many families could potentially be helped by new IVF techniques to prevent mitochondrial disease, which would be permitted by new regulations on which a vote in parliament is imminent.
Preventing inflammation in obese fat tissue may hold the key to preventing or even reversing type 2 diabetes, new research has found.
Researchers from Melbourne's Walter and Eliza Hall Institute and the RIKEN Institute, Japan found they could 'reverse' type 2 diabetes in laboratory models by dampening the inflammatory response in fat tissue.
Girls who frequently consume sugary drinks tend to start their menstrual periods earlier than girls who do not, according to new research published in Human Reproduction.
Both weight gain and weight loss in older (postmenopausal) women are associated with increased incidence of fracture, but at different anatomical sites, finds a study published in The BMJ this week.
The findings also challenge the traditional view that weight gain protects against fractures.