A UCSF analysis of published studies on the relationship between Alzheimer's disease and smoking indicates that smoking cigarettes is a significant risk factor for the disease. After controlling for study design, quality of the journals, time of publication, and tobacco industry affiliation of the authors, the UCSF research team also found an association between tobacco industry affiliation and the conclusions of individual studies.
Body
Researchers at Uppsala University and the SwedishUniversity of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) havefound several genes that lead to increased riskfor an SLE-like autoimmune disorder in dogs. Thisis the first time scientists have found genesbehind such a complex disease. The study is beingpublished today in the Web edition of Nature Genetics.
In the new Swedish-Finnish study, published in Nature Genetics, the researchers identified five loci that predispose to an SLE-related disease in Nova Scotia duck tolling retrievers. The study indicates that the homogeneity of strong genetic risk factors within dog breeds make dogs an excellent model in which to identify pathways involved in human complex diseases. The results of the study also open the door for further studies of specific T-cell activation pathways in human populations.
Understanding how aged and damaged mother cells manage to form new and undamaged daughter cells is one of the toughest riddles of ageing, but scientists now know how yeast cells do it. In a groundbreaking study researchers from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, show how the daughter cell uses a mechanical "conveyor belt" to dump damaged proteins in the mother cell.
"This ensures that the daughter cell is born without age-related damage," says professor Thomas Nyström from the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology.
A study published online on February 1 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine (www.jem.org) shows that antiviral proteins called type I interferons (IFNs) are needed to fend off infection with an exotic mosquito-borne virus called Chikungunya virus. This pathogen, which causes high fevers and severe joint pain, triggered a recent epidemic in Southeast Asia, infecting more than 30% of the population in some areas.
Cells missegregate a chromosome approximately once every hundred divisions. But don't be too alarmed: new research in the Journal of Cell Biology shows that the tumor suppressor p53 limits the growth of cells with incorrect numbers of chromosomes and prevents their progression toward cancer. The study appears online February 1 (www.jcb.org).
Two studies published online on February 1 in the Journal of Experimental Medicine (www.jem.org) reveal that patients with a rare autoimmune disease produce antibodies that attack microbe-fighting immune proteins called cytokines. These findings may help explain why these patients suffer recurrent yeast infections.
There remains a lack of consensus amongst the medical and scientific communities about any cancer risk from low level radiation, particularly low-dose radiation delivered from computed tomography (CT) scans. However, the study of epigenetics may play a role in determining whether or not future trends of diseases can in fact be linked to utilization of CT, according to an article in the February issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology (JACR).
WESTCHESTER, Ill. — A study in the Feb. 1 issue of the journal SLEEP suggests that healthy older adults without sleep disorders can expect to have a reduced "sleep need" and to be less sleepy during the day than healthy young adults.
Decaying corpses are usually the domain of forensic scientists, but palaeontologists have discovered that studying rotting fish sheds new light on our earliest ancestry.
Palo Alto, CA—Scientists have created a new computational model that can be used to predict gene function of uncharacterized plant genes with unprecedented speed and accuracy. The network, dubbed AraNet, has over 19,600 genes associated to each other by over 1 million links and can increase the discovery rate of new genes affiliated with a given trait tenfold. It is a huge boost to fundamental plant biology and agricultural research.
Researchers have made a breakthrough in HIV research that had eluded scientists for over 20 years, potentially leading to better treatments for HIV, in a study published today in the journal Nature.
The researchers, from Imperial College London and Harvard University, have grown a crystal that reveals the structure of an enzyme called integrase, which is found in retroviruses like HIV. When HIV infects someone, it uses integrase to paste a copy of its genetic information into their DNA.
Over a two and half year period, beginning in 2005 when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's oncology drug product's office began reviewing marketing applications, a total of 60 new oncology and hematology drugs were reviewed, of which 53 were approved, according to a new article published online January 29 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
Dr. Robert P. Anderson, Associate Professor of Biology at The City College of New York, and Ph.D. student Eliécer E. Gutiérrez have reported the existence of a new species of spiny pocket mouse, from Venezuela, Heteromys catopterius.
The name derives from the Greek katoptêrios, which means a "height that commands a view." It was chosen for the new species in reference to its presence on four wet, mountainous forest regions of the rugged and steep-sided Cordillera de la Costa along the country's northern coast.
Hanover, N.H., U.S.A. – Investigators from Dartmouth Medical School (DMS) have reported results of a clinical trial showing that a new vaccine against tuberculosis, Mycobacterium vaccae (MV), is effective in preventing tuberculosis in people with HIV infection. The DarDar Health Study, named for Dartmouth and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, found that MV immunization reduced the rate of definite tuberculosis by 39 percent among 2,000 HIV-infected patients in Tanzania.