The transplant community was largely unaware of sub-standard transportation practices for donor organs until a number of fatal air crashes took the lives of transplant personnel, calling attention to procurement aviation safety. A new report highlighting the need for improved safety measures in organ procurement travel appears in the December issue of Liver Transplantation, a peer-reviewed journal published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD).
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OAKLAND, Calif. – Compared to women never on hormone therapy, those taking hormone therapy only at midlife had a 26 percent decreased risk of dementia; while women taking HT only in late life had a 48 percent increased risk of dementia, according to Kaiser Permanente researchers.
Women taking HT at both midlife (mean age 48.7 years) and late life had a similar risk of dementia as women not on HT, according to the study which appears in the Annals of Neurology. The study was funded in part by the National Institutes of Health.
Researchers funded by the BBSRC Crop Science Initiative have made a discovery that could instigate a paradigm shift in breeding resistance to late blight – a devastating disease of potatoes and tomatoes costing the industry £5-6 billion a year worldwide. They will share this research with industry at an event in London later today (18 November).
Like gangsters running a protection racket, drongos in the Kalahari Desert act as lookouts for other birds in order to steal a cut of their food catch. The behaviour, revealed in research funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) published in Evolution and reported in Nature's Research Highlights today (18 November), may represent a rare example of two species evolving from a parasitic to a mutualistic relationship.
University of Alberta researchers have unearthed a mysterious link between bones of an ancient lizard found in Africa and the biggest, baddest modern-day lizard of them all, the Komodo dragon, half a world away in Indonesia.
Biologists Alison Murray and Rob Holmes say the unique shape of the vertebrae links the 33-million-year-old African lizard fossil with its cousin the Komodo, which has only been around for some 700,000 years.
Several leading medical journals have come together to urge health professionals everywhere to put health at the heart of climate change negotiations.
An editorial published simultaneously in the BMJ, the Lancet and the Finnish Medical Journal today, warns that the links between climate policy and health policy must not be overlooked. The editorial has also been made available for publication in all peer reviewed medical journals worldwide through the World Association of Medical Editors.
A new anti-cancer drug aimed at vitamin D receptors on cancer cells has prompted encouraging responses in the levels of PSA (prostate specific antigen) in men with prostate cancer that has become resistant to hormonal therapies.
A new drug that targets proteins responsible for helping cancer cells to repair damage to their DNA has shown promising anti-tumour activity in its first trial in humans. Some patients with a range of solid tumours, many of whom had been treated unsuccessfully for their cancer with other therapies, have seen their tumours shrink or stabilise for periods of between 46 days to more than a year. The research will be presented at the 22nd EORTC-NCI-AACR [1] Symposium on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics in Berlin today (Thursday).
NEW YORK, November, 17, 2010 — An international, multi-center study has revealed the discovery of a novel oncogene that is associated with uveal melanoma, the most common form of eye cancer. Researchers have isolated an oncogene called GNA11 and have found that it is present in more than 40 percent of tumor samples taken from patients with uveal melanoma. The findings are being published early online November 17, 2010 in the New England Journal of Medicine and will appear in the December 2, 2010, print issue.
WHAT:In a review article appearing in the New England Journal of Medicine, scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, examine research under way to address the limitations of currently available influenza vaccines and develop more efficient and reliable strategies to make vaccines to protect against seasonal as well as pandemic influenza.
Birmingham, Ala. – An investigational drug targeting a defective protein that causes cystic fibrosis has been shown to improve lung function in a small study of CF patients, according to findings published Nov. 18, 2010, in the New England Journal of Medicine. The investigational drug, VX-770, appeared to improve function of what is known as CFTR--the faulty protein responsible for CF. It is among the first compounds being developed for CF that specifically targets the root cause of cystic fibrosis.
Physicians caring for patients with sepsis may soon have a new safe and cost-effective treatment for this life-threatening illness. Research led by Dr. Karel Tyml and his colleagues at The University of Western Ontario and Lawson Health Research Institute have found that vitamin C can not only prevent the onset of sepsis, but can reverse the disease.
KINGSTON, ON – Researchers at Queen's University have discovered the method for studying oxygen in large molecular systems. The findings will help in the study of proteins, DNA, RNA and other molecular structures.
Biological molecules make up all living creatures on earth and contain four major elements – hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen. But until now scientists were only able to use nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to study three out of the four elements in the molecule puzzle because oxygen wavelengths were difficult to detect.
DURHAM, N.C. -- Heart tissue and stem cells spring into action to begin repairing muscle damaged in a heart attack, and researchers at Duke University School of Medicine found that a protein naturally produced in the body may potentially play a role in accelerating heart muscle repair. Giving the right dose of this protein named secreted frizzled related protein 2 (sfrp2) in studies of rats helped to prevent heart failure and reduce collagen layering that can form thick scar tissue after a heart attack (also called MI, or myocardial infarction).
Madison WI November 17 2010 – There is considerable amount of uncertainty concerning the environmental impacts that animal hormones have on surface water. Higher concentrations of hormones in waterways have been found to cause physiological and sexual impairment in fish and other aquatic species. However, a study from the University of Delaware that examined estrogen concentrations runoff from agricultural fields fertilized with chicken manure found that it is as much about the application of the manure as it is about the measurement of the types of estrogen.