Malaria is a mosquito-borne parasitic disease that kills approximately 600,000 people every year. Several different parasite species cause malaria and in some settings, such as Papua New Guinea, two species, Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax, are responsible for the majority of malaria infections. However, the two species respond differently to currently available anti-malarial drugs.
Body
Nature and nurture have found a new companion -- historical context.
A new study has produced the best evidence yet that the role of genetics in complex traits, including obesity, varies over time. Both the era in which scientific research is conducted and the era in which subjects were born may have an impact on the degree to which genetic factors are present in scientific data.
The outbreak of the Ebola virus disease occurring in West Africa may have originated from contact between humans and virus-infected bats, suggests a study led by researchers from the Robert Koch-Institute in Berlin, Germany. The report, published in EMBO Molecular Medicine, identifies insectivorous free-tailed bats as plausible reservoirs and expands the range of possible Ebola virus sources to this type of bats. The results also reveal that larger wildlife are not the source of infection.
Three years after a small number of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) were treated with high-dose immunosuppressive therapy (HDIT) and then transplanted with their own hematopoietic stem cells, most of the patients sustained remission of active relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS) and had improvements in neurological function, according to a study in JAMA Neurology, doi:10.1001/jamaneurol.2014.3780.
While people who eat a lot of red meat are known to be at higher risk for certain cancers, other carnivores are not, prompting researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine to investigate the possible tumor-forming role of a sugar called Neu5Gc, which is naturally found in most mammals but not in humans.
An international research team has shown how changes in a flu virus that has plagued Chinese poultry farms for decades helped create the novel avian H7N9 influenza A virus that has sickened more than 375 people since 2013.
Mice that are already infected with the pathogen that causes Lyme disease also appear to facilitate the spread of a lesser-known but emerging disease, babesiosis, into new areas. according to research led by the Yale School of Public Health and published in PLOS ONE.
A new study describes a never-before-seen mechanism by which a bacterial toxin leads to severe inflammation in asthma and other acute and chronic pulmonary diseases. The researchers say the discovery could result in development of therapeutic strategies that improve health in individuals who suffer from airway diseases.
In 1982, the gene TRK was shown to cause a small percentage of colon cancers but by 2013 and 2014, sequencing of tumor samples found fusions of the TRK family of genes in at least 11 tumor types, including lung, breast, melanoma and more.
A recent article in the journal Cancer Discovery describes clinical trials at the University of Colorado Cancer Center and elsewhere that match drugs to this long-overlooked oncogene, offering targeted treatment options for cancers that harbor these gene abnormalities. See ClinicalTrials.gov #NCT02122913.
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) and metabolic syndrome are major public health problems in the USA and worldwide. A new paper finds that Yoga, a popular mind-body practice, has value in improving cardio-metabolic health.
Recovery of blinking function is a critical but easily overlooked outcome after facial transplantation and in a new study surgeon Eduardo DeJesus Rodriguez, MD, DDS, and colleagues highlight the need for careful surgical planning and technique to achieve optimal voluntary and reflex blinking--essential to protect long-term visual outcomes--in facial transplant recipients.
he body has evolved ways to get rid of faulty stem cells and a new study shows that one of these ways is a "program" that makes stem cells damaged by radiation differentiate into other cells that can no longer survive forever. Radiation makes a stem cell lose its "stemness." That makes sense: you don't want damaged stem cells sticking around to crank out damaged cells.
Estradiol, a type of estrogen, enhances the levels and activity in mice of an enzyme that drives life-threatening allergic reactions, according to researchers from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). The results may help explain why women frequently experience more severe allergic reactions compared to men.
Already known to cut proteins, the enzyme SPPL3 turns out to have additional talents: it works without cutting proteins to activate T cells, the immune system's foot soldiers. Because its structure is similar to that of presenilin enzymes, which have been implicated in Alzheimer's disease, the researchers believe their findings could shed more light on presenilin functions, in addition to providing new insight into how the immune system is controlled.
Binge drinking in young, healthy adults significantly disrupts the immune system, according to a new epidemiology paper.