Body

New hope for malaria treatment as drug resistance found unable to spread for the first time

Resistance to a key anti-malarial drug cannot be passed on by mosquitoes in a breakthrough scientists believe could drastically improve the way we battle the disease.

The discovery could potentially shut down the avenue for mass drug resistance to spread, making malaria treatment significantly more effective for the 3.2 billion people at risk.

The international research project was led by the University of Melbourne and focused on the drug atovaquone.

Immune system cells linked to allergies also turn out to direct healing of mouse muscle wounds when paired with biologic "scaffolding" to support them, researchers from Johns Hopkins and the Kennedy Krieger Institute report. The finding, described in the April 15 issue of Science, adds to evidence that the immune system is key not just to fighting infectious and other diseases but also to kick-starting healing after an injury. They also indicate that so-called biomaterial scaffolds can more effectively spur healing if designed to "partner" with immune cells, the researchers say.

The increasing number of overweight/obese individuals has established obesity as one of the most relevant health problems for years to come. Subfertility or infertility are silent problems that overweight/obese men have to face. This is particularly relevant since there is an enormous increase of children, adolescents and young adult men who are overweight or obese. This is a health issue that should be carefully addressed and deserves attention from policymakers and the media.

DETROIT - Researchers at Wayne State University recently received a $2.5 million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health for a study that aims to shape the next generation of antibiotics for the treatment of multidrug-resistant diseases.

WASHINGTON (April 13, 2016)-- The Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine released a statement on the use of ultrasound screening for fetal microcephaly following Zika virus exposure.

Philadelphia, PA, April 14, 2016 - Water scarcity is a serious issue and a concern among the dairy industry, as declines in the availability of water could decrease food supply and increase food price. Water is necessary for many applications, including equipment cleaning, which can use 1 to 60 liters of water per kilogram of processed milk. Given the amount of water needed and concerns regarding resource scarcity, researchers from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln sought to find a method to recycle and reuse water from whey for clean-in-place systems.

Reston, VA - A recent study reported in the April issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine found that cervical cancer patients without enlarged lymph nodes could benefit from SPECT-MRI imaging of their sentinel lymph nodes (SLNs) to assess whether metastases are present.

You might not expect mice to tell us much about human speech disorders. But, in fact, a new study reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on April 14 shows that mice could teach us a lot about what makes people stutter, and perhaps also how to help them stop.

Mice carrying a mutation that has been linked to stuttering in humans show changes in the pattern of their calls, the new study shows.

Mutations accumulate in human mitochondrial DNA with age, reports a study published April 14 in Cell Stem Cell. The finding has implications for potential therapies using induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, which are generated from patient skin cells and may be used to repair damaged tissue or organs. IPS cells derived from an elderly patient's cells could contain faulty mitochondrial DNA that could undermine the iPS cells' therapeutic value.

HOUSTON - (April 14, 2016) - What started as a search for answers for patients suffering from a rare genetic condition called neonatal progeroid syndrome (NPS) that keeps the body from accumulating fat, among other symptoms, has now turned into a discovery that could potentially impact the lives of millions of people living with type 2 diabetes. The findings appear today in the journal Cell.

PORTLAND, Ore. - For the first time, scientists have confirmed the long-standing hypothesis that as people age, they accumulate gene mutations in their mitochondria -- cells' energy source.

A team led by Shoukhrat Mitalipov, Ph.D., director of the Center for Embryonic Cell and Gene Therapy at Oregon Health & Science University, has discovered that induced pluripotent stem, or iPS, cells, a type of stem cell derived from patients' skin or blood cells contain faulty mitochondrial DNA. The study was published today in the journal Cell Stem Cell.

ANN ARBOR--Most cancer drugs today work by attacking tumor growth. Researchers at the University of Michigan Life Sciences Institute, however, are taking aim at a different piece of the cancer puzzle--preventing its ability to spread to new parts of the body, known as metastasis, which is the cause of most cancer deaths.

Scientists in the lab of LSI faculty member John Tesmer focused on an enzyme known as P-Rex1, which has been strongly linked to cancer progression and metastasis in breast, prostate and skin cancer--making it an attractive target for new drugs.

HOUSTON - (April 14, 2016) - One in 5,000 babies is born missing a small amount of genetic material from the tip of chromosome 1, a region called 1p36. Missing genes in the 1p36 region is a relatively common cause of intellectual disability. These children may also have delayed development, seizures, heart and kidney defects, and problems with vision and hearing. The number and severity of these medical conditions varies greatly among children with 1p36 deletions.

The concentration of the hormone prolactin in the blood is controlled by dopamine. However, the system can be thrown off balance by certain drugs, especially antipsychotics, which can result in sexual side effects. A new study from Sweden's Karolinska Institutet in rats, published in the journal Cell Reports, shows how dopamine can regulate itself and provides new knowledge about how the side effects arise.

Colorectal cancers heavily bedecked with tumor-related proteins called neoantigens are likely to be permeated with disease-fighting white blood cells, researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard report in a new study. Because such an influx of white blood cells often signifies an immune system attack on cancer, the discovery will sharpen research into therapies that make tumors more vulnerable to such an attack.