Heparin plays a key role in allergic and inflammatory reactions driven by mast cells, scientists from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden shows in an international collaboration involving colleagues from Germany and Switzerland. The study is published in the recent issue of Immunity, and sheds some new light on the biological function of heparin.
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Whether doctors have knowledge of guidelines or not appears to be unsuitable as an indicator of how guidelines are being put into practice in the clinical routine.
Scientists at Trinity College Dublin have made an important discovery concerning how fledgling cancer cells self-destruct, which has the potential of impacting on future cancer therapies. The Trinity research group, led by Smurfit Professor of Medical Genetics, Professor Seamus Martin and funded by Science Foundation Ireland, has just published their findings in the internationally renowned journal, Molecular Cell.
COLUMBUS, Ohio – New research shows that a less-toxic combination of a targeted immune-based drug and a chemotherapy drug can produce long-term remissions in some chronic lymphocytic leukemia patients. And it does so without increasing the risk of later therapy-related myelodysplastic syndrome and acute myeloid leukemia, which can often occur with a three-drug combination used to treat these patients.
Spraying malaria-transmitting mosquitoes with a genetically modified fungus can kill the malaria parasite without harming the mosquito, potentially reducing malaria transmission to humans, according to a new study published in the journal Science. Funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, the study was led by Raymond J. St. Leger, Ph.D., of the University of Maryland, College Park.
MIAMI -- University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science faculty were part of an international scientific team to show that strong links between the corals reefs of the South China Sea, West Pacific and Coral Triangle hold the key to preserving fish and marine resources in the Asia-Pacific region.
An inexpensive and rapid testing method can effectively identify a sub-group of never-smoking lung cancer patients whose tumors express a molecule associated with increased risk of disease progression or recurrence, US researchers have found.
Dr Ping Yang from the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, USA, and colleagues, reported the findings at the European Multidisciplinary Conference in Thoracic Oncology (EMCTO), 24-26 February 2011, Lugano, Switzerland.
Spanish researchers have identified a gene whose expression level strongly predicts how well certain lung cancer patients will respond to treatment with the drug erlotinib.
Dr Rafael Rosell and colleagues reported their findings at the European Multidisciplinary Conference in Thoracic Oncology (EMCTO), 24-26 February 2011 in Lugano, Switzerland.
The researchers studied 55 patients with non-small cell lung cancer, whose tumors had mutations in the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) gene. All were being treated with the drug erlotinib, which acts on the EGFR molecule.
A drug that is currently used to help treat bone metastases in patients with lung cancer could also be useful at an earlier stage of treatment, to prevent the cancer from spreading in the first place, Italian researchers have found.
Dr Michela Quirino and colleagues from the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Rome have reported important new evidence that zoledronic acid may be able to prevent lung cancer metastases from recruiting the new blood vessels they need to survive. This process of recruiting new blood vessels is called angiogenesis.
LONGYEARBYEN, NORWAY (25 February 2011)—The Svalbard Global Seed Vault (SGSV) celebrated its third anniversary today with the arrival of seeds for rare lima beans, blight-resistant cantaloupe, and progenitors of antioxidant-rich red tomatoes from Peru and the Galapagos Islands. The arrival of these collections, including many drought- and flood-resistant varieties, comes at a time when natural and man-made risks to agriculture have reinforced the critical need to secure all the world's food crop varieties.
Women undergoing IVF or other assisted reproduction therapy can be reassured that emotional distress caused by their infertility or other life events will not prevent the treatment from working.
Infertility affects up to 15% of the childbearing population and over half of these individuals will seek medical advice in the hope of becoming a parent.
High radiation doses put a significant number of dialysis patients at increased risk of cancer, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society Nephrology (JASN). The results suggest that clinicians should consider scaling back on radiation for purposes of diagnosis in this patient population.
Despite significant advances in kidney care over the past 20 years, efforts to improve therapy for type 1 diabetes patients with kidney dysfunction remain unsuccessful, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society Nephrology (JASN). The results suggest that more effective therapies are needed for these patients.
Although untreated HIV infection eventually results in immunodeficiency (AIDS), a small group of people infected with the virus, called elite suppressors (0.5 percent of all HIV-infected individuals), are naturally able to control infection in the absence of antiretroviral therapy, or HAART. Elite suppressors and HIV- infected individuals treated with HAART have similar levels of virus in the blood stream.
A new finding from scientists at the National Institutes of Health could help efforts to design vaccines and other prevention tools to block HIV in the early stages of sexual transmission, before infection takes hold. Researchers at the NIH National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases have helped explain genetic differences that can distinguish some early-transmitting HIVs—viruses found in an infected individual within the first month after infection—from forms of HIV isolated later in infection. These genetic features help HIV bind tightly to a molecule called integrin α4β7.