Bats tend to have a bad reputation. They sleep all day, party at night, and are commonly thought to be riddled with rabies. A study by University of Calgary researchers has confirmed that bats are not as disease-ridden as the stigma suggests.
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The endothelium is the inner lining of our blood vessels and normal functions of endothelial cells include enabling coagulation, platelet adhesion and immune function. Endothelial dysfunction is associated with reduced anticoagulant properties and the inability of arteries and arterioles to dilate fully.
The recalled Sprint Fidelis implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) leads (Medtronic) failed more often in younger patients, women, and individuals with hereditary heart disease, according to a multicenter study published online Jan. 17 in Circulation. The researchers found that lead failure was not associated with death or serious injuries.
Iron overload is a common and serious problem in thalassemic major patients. As iron accumulation is toxic in the body's tissues, accurate estimation of iron stores is of great importance in these patients to prevent iron overload by an appropriate iron chelating therapy. Liver biopsy is the gold standard for evaluating iron stores but it is an invasive method which is not easily repeatable in patients. Introduction of other more applicable methods seems to be necessary.
The presence of introns in genes requires cells to process "messenger RNA" molecules before synthesizing proteins, a process that is costly and often error-prone. It was long believed that this was simply part of the price organisms paid for the flexibility to create new types of protein but recent work has made it clear that introns themselves have a number of important functions. And so attention is gradually shifting to asking why some organisms have so few introns and others so many.
The next big thing in medical diagnostics could be minutes particles of rust, iron oxide, coated with the material from which sand is formed, silicon dioxide. These magnetic nanoparticles, a mere 29 to 230 nanometers across, can be used to trap antibodies to the virus that causes cervical cancer and to the bacteria that causes potentially lethal diarrhea.
Research by the University of Exeter has revealed that ants have a big impact on their local environment as a result of their activity as 'ecosystem engineers' and predators.
The study, published in the Journal of Animal Ecology, found that ants have two distinct effects on their local environment.
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the fifth most common malignancy in the world and is estimated to cause approximately half a million deaths annually. Undoubtedly, the best available treatment for all liver tumors is complete surgical resection. However, the synthetic somatostatin analogue octreotide has been found effective in inhibiting tumor growth in a variety of experimental models. It has been reported that octreotide inhibits the proliferation and induces apoptosis of different HCC cell lines in vitro. The mechanisms of apoptosis induction however are not well understood.
T-regulatory lymphocytes (Tregs) are a subset of T lymphocytes that are involved in the mechanism of immunotolerance to self- and allo-antigens. Activity of these cells is one of the mechanisms of immune evasion of tumors, which inhibits the antitumor activity of effector cells. Tregs are among the tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes and circulate in the peripheral blood. In various cancer types, increased prevalence of Tregs has been observed, and in some studies, this has been reported as a prognostic factor.
Sphincter of Oddi dysfunction (SOD) is a pathological syndrome that is usually classified into the biliary type or the pancreatic type according to the Milwaukee criteria. However, this classification has some drawbacks in clinical practice, some of which result in flawed classification and failure to properly guide diagnosis and treatment.
Patients undergoing liver surgery have long been considered to be at low risk of venous thromboembolism. However, pulmonary embolism has recently emerged as an increasingly frequent and potentially fatal complication following liver resections.
A research article published on January 21, 2011 in the World Journal of Gastroenterology addresses this question. The authors shed a new light on this discrepancy by reporting two patients who developed thrombi in their hepatic veins following hepatectomy.
E2F5 is a member of the E2F transcription factor family, and plays a key role in cell growth and proliferation. Overexpression of E2F5 has been reported in various human cancers, but not in liver cancer, and its biological implication is largely unknown. It is not known whether E2F5 plays a tumor suppressor role or an oncogenic role. Furthermore, there has been no report on the expression profile of E2F5 in HCC and its biological implications on hepatocarcinogenesis.
The current check for kidney disease is a simple blood test for serum creatinine, but it can take longer than two days for this metabolite to accumulate to levels that are significant enough to indicate kidney damage - and by then it may be too late to intervene.
A large-scale UC Davis experiment with ants, lizards and seaweed on a dozen Caribbean islands shows that predicting the effects of environmental change on complex natural ecosystems requires a large laboratory.
The study, which was led by UC Davis ecologist Jonah Piovia-Scott, is described in today's issue of the journal Science.
LA JOLLA, CA – Scripps Research Institute scientists have converted adult skin cells directly into beating heart cells efficiently without having to first go through the laborious process of generating embryonic-like stem cells. The powerful general technology platform could lead to new treatments for a range of diseases and injuries involving cell loss or damage, such as heart disease, Parkinson's, and Alzheimer's disease.
The work was published January 30, 2011, in an advance, online issue of Nature Cell Biology.