Severe breathing disorders during sleep are associated with an increased risk of dying from any cause according to research published this week in the open access journal PLoS Medicine. The study finds that the increased risk of dying is most apparent in men between 40 and 70 years of age with severe sleep-disordered breathing, and suggests a specific link between this condition and death from coronary heart disease in men.
Body
The walls of blood vessels contain muscle cells known as vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs). These cells contract and relax to modulate blood pressure and distribute blood to the areas of the body that need it most. However, some environmental signals, many of which are associated with human disease, cause VSMCs to switch from being contractile in nature to being dividing cells that produce large amounts of the proteins that form tissue matrix.
Crosstalk between cells lining the lung (epithelial cells) and airway smooth muscle cells is important in lung development. However, it has also been shown to contribute to several lung diseases, including asthma and pulmonary hypertension. A team of researchers, at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, has now molecularly characterized one crosstalk pathway in mice, providing potential new therapeutic targets for treating individuals with lung diseases, such as asthma and pulmonary hypertension, which are caused, at least in part, by affects on airway smooth muscle cells.
New research led by scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine has found a drug target that suggests a potent way to kill colon cancers that resist current drugs aimed at blocking a molecule found on the surface of cells.
Drugs that target the epidermal growth factor receptor, or EGFR, have been used for a number of cancers. But these drugs called EGFR inhibitors, such as cetuximab, have not been very effective against colon cancer.
Contrary to a belief widely held by obstetricians, inducing labor does not need to increase a woman's risk for cesarean section delivery in childbirth, scientists at the University of California, San Francisco and the Stanford University School of Medicine have found.
In a new approach to an effective "electronic tongue" that mimics human taste, scientists in Illinois are reporting development of a small, inexpensive, lab-on-a-chip sensor that quickly and accurately identifies sweetness — one of the five primary tastes. It can identify with 100 percent accuracy the full sweep of natural and artificial sweet substances, including 14 common sweeteners, using easy-to-read color markers.
Antioxidant supplements do not appear to be associated with an increased risk of melanoma, according to a report in the August issue of Archives of Dermatology.
Most melanomas detected in a general-practice dermatology clinic were found by dermatologists during full-body skin examinations of patients who had come to the clinic for different complaints, according to a report in the Archives of Dermatology. In addition, cancers detected by dermatologists were thinner and more likely to be in situ (only on the outer layer of skin) than were cancers detected by patients.
A preliminary study suggests that a negative, inhibited personality type (type D personality) appears to predict an increased risk of death over four years among patients with peripheral arterial disease (PAD), according to a report in Archives of Surgery.
Corticosteroid injections appear to offer an alternative to surgery for treating polyps on the vocal cords, according to a report in the August issue of Archives of Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery.
Patients with head and neck cancer who experience a higher level of post-treatment pain appear to have a lower survival rate than those who experience little or no post-treatment pain, according to a report in the August issue of Archives of Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery.
A new study shows that elderly patients who underwent endoscopy within one day of presentation for peptic ulcer bleeding had a two-day shorter hospital stay and were less likely to require upper gastrointestinal surgery than patients who did not receive endoscopy within the first day of presentation. Researchers from University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland, Ohio, note that unless specific contraindications exist, the data supports the routine use of early endoscopy for upper gastrointestinal bleeding. The study appears in Gastrointestinal Endoscopy.
Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have found a link, in mice and in human brain tissue, between high blood pressure and multiple sclerosis. Their findings suggest that a safe, inexpensive drug already in wide use for high blood pressure may have therapeutic value in multiple sclerosis, as well. The paper will be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In a study to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), researchers at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, in Portugal, show that an anti-oxidant drug can protect against the development of deadly forms of malaria. These findings have direct implications for the treatment of this devastating disease, caused by the parasite Plasmodium, and still one of the main causes of death worldwide.
With the help of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and molecular engineering, researchers have designed synthetic protein-like mimics convincing enough to interrupt unwanted biological conversations between cells.