A recent study confirms that the standard hepatitis C (HCV) therapy, pegylated interferon and ribavirin, is significantly less effective in urban minority patients treated in an ordinary clinical practice setting compared with results produced during clinical trials. Results of this study appear in the April issue of Hepatology, a journal published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases.
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In the '80s, Spanish researchers found the first fossils of Cloudina in Spain, a small fossil of tubular appearance and one of the first animals that developed an external skeleton between 550 and 543 million years ago. Now palaeontologists from the University of Extremadura have discovered a new species, Cloudina carinata, the fossil of which has preserved its tridimensional shape.
LOS ANGELES (March 24, 2010) – Physician-scientists at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute have found that a genetic variation is associated with lower risk of sudden cardiac arrest, a disorder that gives little warning and is fatal in about 95 percent of cases. Findings will be published tomorrow by the Public Library of Science (PloS One).
Barcelona, Spain: Women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer believe the risk of the disease occurring in their unaffected breast is as much as ten times higher than it actually is. As a result, they are choosing to have prophylactic mastectomies based on a false perception of increased risk, according to new research.
Barcelona, Spain: An international team of researchers has discovered a new way of detecting which breast cancer patients are going to respond best to chemotherapy that includes anthracycline antibiotics*.
The research, presented at the seventh European Breast Cancer Conference (EBCC7) in Barcelona today (Thursday), is important because, until now, there was conflicting evidence about the best way of predicting response to anthracyclines and it was unclear whether any of the known biomarkers, such as the genes HER2 and TOP2A, were accurate indicators of response to these drugs.
LONDON, UK (25 March 2010)—A report to be released at a pivotal global meeting on agriculture finds that transforming the agriculture agenda to meet the challenges of a warmer, environmentally-degraded world of 9 billion people will require changes "as radical as those that occurred during industrial and agricultural revolutions of the 19th and 20th centuries."
A study of UK schoolchildren has revealed that Black Africans, Indians and Bangladeshis have a similar or lower prevalence of asthma than White children, while Black Caribbean and Mixed Black Caribbean/White boys are more likely to have asthma. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Pediatrics studied the occurrence of asthma, investigating ethnic differences in risk factors.
Research at the University of Leeds could pave the way to a new generation of painkillers by providing a new theory of how inflammation causes pain.
An international group of scientists led by Dr Nikita Gamper of the University's Faculty of Biological Sciences has discovered how two proteins play a key role in the way we feel pain, offering new targets on which drug development can be focused. The findings are published online today (March 24) in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.
The occurrence of an unusual type of fracture of the femur, or the thigh bone, is very low in patients with osteoporosis, including those treated with the drug family known as bisphosphonates, according to a new study led by a team of UCSF epidemiologists.
While millions of Americans make individual contributions weekly at their places of worship, a new study by a Rice University sociologist finds private foundations have a disproportionate influence on the religious sector -- despite the fact that their contributions constitute only a fraction of all philanthropy to religion.
In many cancers, octreotide acetate (Sandostatin) has been reported to control the diarrhea that can accompany chemotherapy. However, for patients receiving combined chemotherapy and radiation for anal or rectal cancers, the drug proved no better than a placebo in a randomized trial that was published online March 24 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
Over the last week, the path that Tropical Storm Imani, formerly tropical cyclone 21S, is making in the Southern Indian Ocean resembles a question mark. However, there is no question in the minds of forecasters that Imani is headed south to finish out the "question mark" shape.
Researchers at National Jewish Health have discovered a fundamental step in the development of the immune system, one that allows B cells to mature and fight disease by producing effective antibodies. Immunologist Roberta Pelanda, PhD, and her colleagues have demonstrated that immature B cells in the bone marrow must receive a positive signal before they can migrate to the spleen where they mature and are activated. In the March 15, 2010 issue of The Journal of Experimental Medicine, the researchers also reported that a protein known as Erk helps deliver that positive signal.
SAN FRANCISCO, March 24, 2010 — Motorists will be driving on the world's first "green" tires within the next five years, scientists predicted here today, thanks to a revolutionary new technology that produces a key tire ingredient from renewable feedstocks rather than petroleum-derived feedstocks. The technology, described at the 239th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS), stands to reduce the tire industry's reliance on crude oil — seven gallons of which now go into each of the approximately one billion tires produced each year worldwide.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - A Purdue University scientist was part of a global team that has demonstrated a specialized mapping technique that could speed work in genomic fields by quickly finding genetic associations that shape an organism's observable characteristics.