Body | Page 3784 | Science Codex

Protein study helps shape understanding of body forms

Scientists have shed light on why some people are apple-shaped and others are pear-shaped.

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh have pinpointed a protein that plays a part in how fat is stored in the body.

The latest findings give greater understanding of how the protein works, which could help development of medicines to treat obesity.

Levels of the protein – known as 11BetaHSD1 – tend to be higher in the presence of an unhealthy type of body fat which tends to be stored around the torso – typical of "apple-shapes".

Americans have higher rates of most chronic diseases than same-age counterparts in England

Researchers announced today in the American Journal of Epidemiology that despite the high level of spending on healthcare in the United States compared to England, Americans experience higher rates of chronic disease and markers of disease than their English counterparts at all ages.. Why health status differs so dramatically in these two countries, which share much in terms of history and culture, is a mystery.

Team uncovers dengue fever virus' molecular secrets

WASHINGTON, D.C. (March 8 2011) -- Researchers at the Instituto de Medicina Molecular in Lisbon, Portugal and the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, are making major strides toward understanding the life cycle of flaviviruses, which include some of the most virulent human pathogens: yellow fever virus, Dengue virus, and the West Nile Virus, among others.

Making viruses pass for 'safe'

WASHINGTON, D.C. (March 8 2011) -- Viruses can penetrate every part of the body, making them potentially good tools for gene therapy or drug delivery. But with our immune system primed to seek and destroy these foreign invaders, delivering therapies with viruses is currently inefficient and can pose a significant danger to patients.

Now scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have engineered a virus with potential to solve this problem. They describe the new virus today at the 55th Annual Biophysical Society Meeting in Baltimore, MD.

New instrument for analyzing viruses

WASHINGTON, D.C. (March 8, 2011) -- Scientists in Israel and California have developed an instrument for rapidly analyzing molecular interactions that take place viruses and the cells they infect. By helping to identify interactions between proteins made by viruses like HIV and hepatitis and proteins made by the human cells these viruses infect, the device may help scientists develop new ways of disrupting these interactions and find new drugs for treating those infections.

Improving risk/benefit estimates in new drug trials

It's all too familiar: researchers announce the discovery of a new drug that eradicates disease in animals. Then, a few years later, the drug bombs in human trials. In the latest issue of the journal PLoS Medicine, ethics experts Jonathan Kimmelman, associate professor at McGill's Biomedical Ethics Unit and Department of Social Studies of Medicine, and Alex John London, associate professor of philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University, argue that this pattern of boom and bust may be related to the way researchers predict outcomes of their work in early stages of drug development.

No link between economic growth and child undernutrition rates in India

Economic growth in India has no automatic connection to reducing undernutrition in Indian children and so further reductions in the prevalence of childhood undernutrition are likely to depend on direct investments in health and health-related programs. These are the conclusions of a large study by researchers at the Schools of Public Health at University of Michigan and Harvard University, that is published in this week's PLoS Medicine.

IRBs could use pre-clinical data better

In this week's PLoS Medicine, Jonathan Kimmelman from McGill University in Montreal, Canada and Alex London from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, USA argue that ethical reviewers and decision-makers pay insufficient attention to threats to validity in pre-clinical studies and consult too narrow a set of evidence.

Study: Receiving work-related communication at home takes greater toll on women

WASHINGTON, DC, March 3, 2011 — Communication technologies that help people stay connected to the workplace are often seen as solutions to balancing work and family life. However, a new study in the March issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior suggests there may be a "dark side" to the use of these technologies for workers' health—and these effects seem to differ for women and men.

Conflicts-of-interest in drug studies sneaking back into medical journals, say investigators

Hidden financial conflicts-of-interest are sneaking into published drug research through the back door, warns an international team of investigators, led by researchers from the Jewish General Hospital's Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research and McGill University in Montreal.

More and more, policy decisions and what medications doctors prescribe for their patients are being driven by large "studies of studies," called meta-analyses, which statistically combine results from many individual drug trials.

Collaborative care program reduces depression, anxiety in heart disease patients

Participants in the first hospital-initiated, low-intensity collaborative care program to treat depression in heart patients showed significant improvements in their depression, anxiety and emotional quality of life after 6 and 12 weeks, researchers report in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, an American Heart Association journal.

Depression is a common condition in cardiovascular disease (CVD) patients which can result in poor prognosis and quality of life.

Curbing cholesterol could help combat infections, study shows

Lowering cholesterol could help the body's immune system fight viral infections, researchers have found.

Scientists at the University of Edinburgh have shown a direct link between the workings of the immune system and cholesterol levels.

Researchers found that when the body succumbs to a viral infection a hormone in the immune system sends signals to blood cells, causing cholesterol levels to be lowered.

The foundations of empathy are found in the chicken

A study has gained new insight into the minds of domestic hens, discovering, for the first time, that domestic hens show a clear physiological and behavioural response when their chicks are mildly distressed.

The research by academics at the University of Bristol's Animal Welfare and Behaviour research group, and funded by the BBSRC Animal Welfare Initiative, is published online in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The sorry state of health of US medicine

New York, NY, March 8, 2011 – As the debate about healthcare in the United States rages, four insightful articles in the March 2011 issue of The American Journal of Medicine strive to add reasoned arguments and empirical research findings to the dialog.

Urinary metabolomic profile and gastric cancer

Metabolomics is a post-genomic research field for analysis of low molecular weight compounds in biological systems, and its approaches offer an analysis of metabolite level changes in biological samples. Recently, metabolomic method has shown great potentials in identifying the new diagnostic markers and therapeutic targets for cancers. However, metabolomic studies on cancer metastasis remain scarce.