Body

Pericardial window operation, a procedure, where abnormal quantity of malignant fluid, or malignant pericardial effusion (MPE), surrounding the heart, is drained into the neighbouring chest cavity through a surgically placed tube, is commonly applied to patients diagnosed with cancer.

Lymphocytes serve as patrolling police officers of the body. They look for invading pathogens and abnormal cells (that may arise any time in our body) by patrolling continuously throughout the body by way of the blood vessels and lymphatics. On their way, they always enter lymph nodes to look for such invaders, because the lymph node is a place where foreign antigens wander in from peripheral tissues. Once lymphocytes find such invaders within the lymph node, they destroy them in collaboration with other types of immune cells.

New research has uncovered a link between being married and living longer among cancer patients, with the beneficial effect of marriage differing by race/ethnicity and place of birth. Published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the findings have important public health implications, given the rising numbers of unmarried individuals in the United States in addition to the growing aging population.

Researchers have developed a light-activated tool to show how drugs need to be adapted to combat type 2 diabetes.

The study, published in Angewandte Chemie, provides insight into the signalling process of receptors in cells.

The team behind the research believe their findings could pave the way for a new generation of anti-diabetic drugs that are activated by the presence of either blue or ultra-violet light.

New simulations by researchers at the University of Warwick and UCL's Institute of Archaeology of plant evolution over the last 3000 years have revealed an unexpected limit to how far useful crops can be pushed to adapt before they suffer population collapse. The result has significant implications for how growers, breeders and scientists help agriculture and horticulture respond to quickening climate change.

In a new study, a research team at Basel University Hospital in Switzerland investigates the biochemical and physiological characteristics of orbicularis oculi, a group of facial muscles that control the eyelids and are selectively spared or involved in different neuromuscular disorders. What they found also helps to explain why another set of muscles--the extraocular muscles that control the movement of the eye--are not affected by Duchenne muscular dystrophy, congenital muscular dystrophy, and aging.

Researchers led by Martin Fussenegger, Professor of Biotechnology and Bioengineering at ETH Zurich's Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering in Basel, have performed a feat that many specialists had until now held to be impossible: they have extracted stem cells from a 50-year-old test subject's fatty tissue and applied genetic reprogramming to make them mature into functional beta cells.

Epalinges, April 11 2016- Mymetics Corporation (OTCQB: MYMX), a pioneer in the research and development of virosome-based vaccines to prevent transmission of human infectious diseases across mucosal membranes, announced today that its innovative HIV vaccine candidate has shown to generate significant protection in groups of twelve female monkeys against repeated AIDS virus exposures during part of the preclinical study.

Previous studies have shown that married patients with cancer fare better than unmarried cancer patients, surviving more often and longer. In a new study, published April 11 in the journal Cancer, researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine report that the benefits of being married vary by race and ethnicity, with male non-Hispanic white bachelors experiencing the worst outcome. This group had a 24 percent higher mortality rate than their married counterparts.

Teachers and students of Department of Real Estate and Construction of the University of Hong Kong (HKU) discovered a long forgotten boundary marker stone from the very earliest days of the British presence in Hong Kong. This B.O. No4, boundary stone, is located in the Lei Yue Mun Park and Holiday Village in Sai Wan Shan.

A new study suggests that Neanderthals across Europe may well have been infected with diseases carried out of Africa by waves of anatomically modern humans, or Homo sapiens. As both were species of hominin, it would have been easier for pathogens to jump populations, say researchers. This might have contributed to the demise of Neanderthals.

New study backs up observations in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) patients showing reduced effectiveness of symptom-reliever medication (β2-adrenoceptor agonists) in flare-ups linked to cigarette smoking and infection with viruses such as influenza.

Research suggests a need for new drugs to treat COPD patients in these categories and a model that could be used to test new medications.

By spending less than $5 per person on essential health care services such as contraception, medication for serious illnesses and nutritional supplements, millions of maternal and child lives could be saved every year, according to a new analysis led by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The findings, published April 9 in The Lancet, suggest it is possible to save many lives by broadly expanding basic services in the 74 low- and middle-income countries where more than 95 percent of the world's maternal and child deaths occur annually.

• Average yearly investment equivalent to US$4.7 per person

Avoidable maternal and child deaths could be greatly reduced in a generation by rapid expansion of essential, highly-cost effective health interventions and services, according to some of the world's top maternal and child health experts writing in The Lancet. The research is being presented at the Consortium of Universities for Global Health conference in San Francisco on April 9, 2016.

Newcastle scientists and medics have developed a new type of genetic blood test that diagnoses scarring in the liver - even before someone may feel ill.

It is the first time an epigenetic signature in blood has been discovered which is diagnostic of the severity of fibrosis for people with Non-alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD).

NAFLD, caused by being overweight or having diabetes, affects one in three people in the UK and may progress to cirrhosis and liver failure, requiring a transplant.

Scientific breakthrough