A stem cell capable of regenerating both bone and cartilage has been identified in bone marrow of mice. The discovery by researchers at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) is reported today in the online issue of the journal Cell.
Body
A new study demonstrates that vitamin D can protect some people with colorectal cancer by perking up the immune system's vigilance against tumor cells.
The research, published today by the journal Gut, represents the first time that a link between vitamin D and the immune response to cancer has been shown in a large human population. The finding adds to a growing body of research showing that vitamin D - known as the "sunshine vitamin" because it is produced by the body in response to sunlight exposure - plays a key role in cancer prevention.
Consuming a healthy diet was associated with reduced risk for type 2 diabetes among women in all racial and ethnic groups but conferred an even greater benefit for Asian, Hispanic, and black women, according to a new study by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Brigham and Women's Hospital.
Episiotomies have a place in maternity care but should not be routinely performed. Paul Curto, CC BY-NC-SA
How is it that people can sometimes show such empathy when other times our ability to feel compassion seems to be in such short supply? A study published in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on January 15 shows that stress is a major factor.
A drug that blocks stress hormones increases the ability of college students and mice to "feel" the pain of a stranger, the study shows. That phenomenon, known as "emotional contagion of pain," is one form of empathy. In even better news, a shared round of the video game Rock Band worked just as well as the drugs among those undergrads.
In the majority of cases, the onset of cancer is characterized by a minor change in a person's genetic material. A cell's DNA mutates in a particular area to the extent that the cell no longer divides in a controlled manner, but begins to grow uncontrollably. In many cases, this type of genetic mutation involves chemical changes to individual building blocks of DNA.
One in five cases of Lassa fever - a disease that kills around 5,000 people a year in West Africa - could be due to human-to-human transmission, with a large proportion of these cases caused by 'super-spreaders', according to a new paper.
A new epidemiology paper says that randomized controlled trials (the gold standard method of evaluation) show that few currently available screening tests for major diseases where death is a common outcome have documented reductions in disease-specific mortality. Screening for disease is a key component of modern healthcare. However, several popular screening tests have met with controversy, with breast cancer screening for women aged 40-49 and prostate cancer screening in healthy men losing their endorsement in the United States.
With the dawn of the modern era of new chemotherapeutic and biologic agents available for managing their disease, patients with metastatic colorectal cancer are undergoing less surgery for the removal of their primary tumors, according to research from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
This year's flu shot is not a good match against this year's influenza strain. That is not news by now, nor is the fact that this has happened before.
But now researchers at McMaster University and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York say that a universal flu vaccine may be on the horizon, thanks to the recent discovery of a new class of antibodies that are capable of neutralizing a wide range of influenza A viruses.
A brisk 20 minute walk each day could be enough to reduce an individual's risk of early death, according to new research published today. The study of over 334,000 European men and women found that twice as many deaths may be attributable to lack of physical activity compared with the number of deaths attributable to obesity, but that just a modest increase in physical activity could have significant health benefits.
Case Western Reserve and University Hospitals (UH) Case Medical Center researchers and physicians have discovered that the molecule known as coenzyme A plays a key role in cell metabolism by regulating the actions of nitric oxide. Cell metabolism is the ongoing process of chemical transformations within the body's cells that sustains life, and alterations in metabolism are a common cause of human disease, including cancer and heart disease.
At some doses, the medication lisdexamfetamine dimesylate, a drug approved to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, was effective compared with placebo in decreasing binge-eating (BE) days in patients with binge-eating disorder (BED), a public health problem associated symptoms of mental illness and obesity and for which there are no approved medications, according to a new study.
Emerging data on the role of inflammation and the immune system in the development, growth, and spread of breast tumors have focused increased attention on the role cytokines such as interleukin and transforming growth factor-β play in breast cancer initiation, protection, and metastasis.
A comprehensive overview of this new knowledge and its potential to lead to novel therapeutic approaches is presented in a Review article in Journal of Interferon & Cytokine Research.
Between 2006 and 2012 in the U.S., there was a decline in rates of episiotomy, a surgical procedure for widening the outlet of the birth canal to make it easier for the mother to give birth, according to a study in the January 13 issue of JAMA.