Body

Bottom Line: Improved cancer detection and treatment efforts, combined with demographic trends, are creating larger numbers of older cancer survivors who are likely to have other health conditions that impact care and well-being.

Journal in Which the Study was Published: Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Author: Shirley M. Bluethmann, PhD, MPH, a cancer prevention fellow at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland.

MADISON, Wis. -- Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have confirmed that a benign bacterium called Wolbachia pipientis can completely block transmission of Zika virus in Aedes aegypti, the mosquito species responsible for passing the virus to humans.

Matthew Aliota, a scientist at the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine (SVM) and first author of the paper -- published today (July 1, 2016) in the journal Scientific Reports -- says the bacteria could present a "novel biological control mechanism," aiding efforts to stop the spread of Zika virus.

In making tough, life-changing decisions, people often weigh the risks associated with the options before them and choose accordingly. Now researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on June 30 have found that pea plants also make choices about how to grow based on an assessment of risk.

Most adults carry multiple herpesviruses. Following the initial acute infection, these viruses establish life-long infections in their hosts and cause cold sores, keratitis, genital herpes, shingles, infectious mononucleosis, and other diseases. Some herpesviruses can cause cancer in man. During the latent phase of infection, the viruses remain dormant for long periods of time, but retain the capacity to cause occasional reactivations, that may lead to disease.

Aedes aegypti mosquitoes transmit dengue, chikungunya, and zika viruses. A study published in PLOS NTDs reports a new technique that could make one approach to mosquito control--using Wolbachia bacteria that reduce the mosquitos' ability to transmit viral pathogens--a whole lot easier and cheaper to implement and evaluate.

Highlights

Regenerative therapies, based on cell replacement, hold promise for a wide range of age-related diseases, but efforts to bring the therapies to patients have not been very successful - in large part because the newly-derived replacement cells can't integrate efficiently into tissues affected by the ravages of aging. Publishing in Science, researchers at the Buck Institute harnessed a naturally-occurring and evolutionarily ancient anti-inflammatory mechanism that repaired the eye and significantly enhanced the success of retinal regenerative therapies in mice.

PHILADELPHIA--In a study with potentially major implications for the future treatment of autoimmunity and related conditions, scientists from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have found a way to remove the subset of antibody-making cells that cause an autoimmune disease, without harming the rest of the immune system. The autoimmune disease the team studied is called pemphigus vulgaris (PV), a condition in which a patient's own immune cells attack a protein called desmoglein-3 (Dsg3) that normally adheres skin cells.

CINCINNATI - Researchers report in the journal Cell Reports a targeted molecular therapy that dramatically reduces the initial development of Non Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD) in laboratory mouse models of the disease.

Scientists, led by Dr Jaroslaw Krzywinski, Head of the Vector Molecular Biology group at The Pirbright Institute have isolated a gene, which determines maleness in the species of mosquito that is responsible for transmitting malaria.

After persisting for decades, the hole in the ozone over the Antarctic has begun to "heal," exhibiting an ozone increase, a new study reports. The results suggest that an historic agreement signed nearly three decades prior is having positive returns, not only in terms of slowing the rate of ozone depletion in Earth's second major atmospheric layer (the stratosphere) but also in terms of creating an identifiable ozone increase.

Researchers have engineered T cells to target and kill a malfunctioning component of the immune system responsible for autoimmune disease, while sparing healthy immune cells that still protect the body. The work brings scientists closer to targeting only the disease-causing cells in autoimmune diseases, which isn't possible now. Some autoimmune diseases occur when a subset of B cells, which respond to specific signatures of pathogens, incorrectly see a person's own tissue as foreign, prompting the rest of the immune system to attack.

An international team of scientists from Oxford University, UK, and Tel-Hai College, Israel, has shown that pea plants can demonstrate sensitivity to risk - namely, that they can make adaptive choices that take into account environmental variance, an ability previously unknown outside the animal kingdom.

In the study, published in the journal Current Biology, pea plants were grown with their roots split between two pots, thus facing the decision of which pot to prioritise.

Woman admitted to intensive care after infection from pet dog

An elderly woman was admitted to intensive care due to organ failure following a rare, yet potentially life-threatening infection believed to be transmitted by her household pet, an Italian greyhound.

Writing in the online journal BMJ Case Reports, doctors who treated the 70-year-old patient explain that she developed acute kidney failure after a few days of being admitted to hospital.

CHICAGO: For the majority of patients with large or difficult to remove colorectal polyps (growths in the colon), the incidence of cancer is actually lower than previously thought, and using more advanced endoscopic techniques that spare the colon may be a better, safer alternative to a traditional operation in certain cases, according to study results published online in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons in advance of print publication.