Body

In a recent study of girls and women diagnosed with at least one autoimmune disease, vaccination against human papillomavirus (HPV) did not increase the risk of developing another autoimmune disease. In fact, being vaccinated was associated with a slightly reduced risk compared with not being vaccinated.

The study included all 70,265 girls and women between 10 and 30 years of age in Sweden in 2006 to 2010 diagnosed with an autoimmune disease.

In a perfect grocery-shopping world, the supermarket where you usually shop would have an online presence that perfectly mirrored its bricks-and-mortar store, with the same selection of products and a minimal online-offline price difference. According to new research that's forthcoming in the September issue of the Journal of Retailing, grocery retailers that make an effort to create such a site and do the analytics necessary to find and retain customers will come out winners in this increasingly competitive market.

Before online shopping, if a store didn't carry the item you wanted it could take days or weeks to get it, if the store would even make a special order. That was then. Now, there's no reason for retailers not to take advantage of the unlimited retail space online and offer everything they sell. Recent research supports this approach: the more products offered online, the greater the revenue for the retailer.

A new research report appearing in the August 2016 issue of the Journal of Leukocyte Biology reveals a potentially new therapeutic target for preventing or stopping preterm labor. Specifically, using mice, researchers from the United States show that blocking specific cell signaling pathways may reduce the risk of preterm labor caused by the immune system or inflammation, or stop it altogether. This discovery is important because according to the U.S.

A new study by a team of scientists from the University of Malta and the Institut de Génétique Moléculaire de Montpellier (CNRS/Université de Montpellier) could help develop treatment strategies for a crippling disorder that was the focus of the Ice Bucket Challenge, the world's largest global social media phenomenon. The findings uncover a mechanism that explains how motor neuron disease develops.

A study released in the July 2016 issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology found that biphenotypic primary liver carcinoma (also called hepatocholangiocarcinoma) may be misclassified as hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) if interpretation is based on major imaging features alone.

A recent analysis indicates that more than 1700 liver transplantations are performed annually in Brazil. While Brazil performs more liver transplant surgeries than anywhere else in Latin America and is third worldwide in absolute terms, the country averages only 5 to 10 liver transplants per million population due to its increasing population and inadequate donor organ supply.

Investigators also found that access to liver transplantation in the underprivileged North, Midwest, and Northeast regions of Brazil is scarce.

SILVER SPRING, Md. - A team of researchers, led by Drs. Merlin Robb and Jintanat Ananworanich of the U.S. Military HIV Research Program (MHRP) at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, has found that when antiretroviral therapy (ART) is initiated during early acute HIV infection, it can significantly reduce total HIV DNA levels in the body, which may have implications for the goal of achieving long-term HIV remission.

August 1, 2016 - Should children be considered for facial transplantation? While there are some special ethical and psychological concerns, these shouldn't rule out the possibility of performing face transplant in carefully selected children, according to an expert review in the August issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery®, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS).

August 1, 2016 - African American women undergoing mastectomy for breast cancer are more likely than white women to undergo autologous breast reconstruction using their own tissue, rather than implant-based reconstruction, reports a study in the August issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery®, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS).

DURHAM, N.C. -- One of the main mysteries confounding development of an HIV vaccine is why some people infected with the virus make the desired antibodies after several years, but a vaccine can't seem to induce the same response.

A research team led by scientists at the Duke Human Vaccine Institute has been unraveling that mystery, detailing new insights in a study published July 29 in the journal Science Immunology.

Scientists have revealed for the first time the molecular steps that turn on bacteria's pathogenic genes. Using an array of high-powered X-ray imaging techniques, the researchers at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) showed that histone-like proteins that bind to DNA are related to the physical twisting of the genetic strand, and that the supercoiling of the chromosome can trigger the expression of genes that make a microbe invasive.

People living with HIV who naturally produce broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs) that may help suppress the virus have different immunological profiles than people who do not, researchers report. While bNAbs cannot completely clear HIV infections in people who have already acquired the virus, many scientists believe a successful preventive HIV vaccine must induce bNAbs. The new findings indicate that bNAb production may be associated with specific variations in individual immune functions that may be triggered by unchecked HIV infection.

In their mission to design new biomaterials that promote tissue regeneration, Drexel University researchers have identified how inflammation, when precisely controlled, is crucial to bone repair.

Their findings, published this week in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, show that a new type of ceramic scaffold causes inflammatory cells to behave in a way that is more regenerative than scaffolds that are currently used clinically.

In a study of more than 5,000 people, investigators from Brigham and Women's Hospital have found that greater intake of nuts was associated with lower levels of biomarkers of inflammation, a finding that may help explain the health benefits of nuts. The results of the study appear July 27 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.