Body

The Longitudinal Assessment of Bariatric Surgery (LABS-1) study was funded by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), part of the National Institutes of Health. Results are reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Less than 1 percent (0.3 percent) of patients died within 30 days of surgery, further supporting the short-term safety of bariatric surgery as a treatment for patients with extreme obesity.

Scientists have joined forces in a groundbreaking assessment on the status of marine fisheries and ecosystems.

The two-year study, led by Boris Worm of Dalhousie University and Ray Hilborn of the University of Washington and including an international team of 19 co-authors, shows that steps taken to curb overfishing are beginning to succeed in five of the 10 large marine ecosystems that they examined.

In a new report from researchers at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Center for Systems Biology, directed by Ralph Weissleder, MD, PhD, the team reports how they discovered an unexpected reservoir of the immune cells called monocytes in the spleen. Published in the journal Science, they went on to show that these cells are essential to recovery of cardiac tissue in an animal heart attack model.

The body's nanomachines that read our genes don't run as smoothly as previously thought, according to a new study by University of California, Berkeley, scientists.

When these nanoscale protein machines encounter obstacles as they move along the DNA, they stall, often for minutes, and even backtrack as they transcribe DNA that is tightly wound to fit inside the cell's nucleus.

Now, a new study finds that administration of a small molecule that effectively disrupts a key bacterial communication process protects an animal host from infection. The research, published by Cell Press in the journal Molecular Cell, may lead to more effective treatments for bacterial infection that won't increase treatment-resistant bacteria.

Tiny particles carrying a killer gene can effectively suppress ovarian tumor growth in mice, according to a team of researchers from MIT and the Lankenau Institute.

The findings could lead to a new treatment for ovarian cancer, which now causes more than 15,000 deaths each year in the United States. Because it is usually diagnosed at a relatively late stage, ovarian cancer is one of the most deadly forms of the disease.

University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have discovered that the RNA degradation, which, when improperly regulated can lead to cancer and other diseases, can be launched in an unexpected location.

"We've been seeing only half the picture," says Vladimir Spiegelman, lead author on the new study and associate professor of dermatology at the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health.

The Wisconsin team also found that CRD-BP, a protein activated in colorectal and other cancers, can prevent RNA from degrading in the newly identified spot.

Americans spent $33.9 billion out-of-pocket on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) over the previous 12 months, according to a 2007 government survey1. CAM is a group of diverse medical and health care systems, practices, and products such as herbal supplements, meditation, chiropractic, and acupuncture that are not generally considered to be part of conventional medicine.

Brussels - Numerous pathogens contain an 'internal time bomb', a deadly mechanism that can be used against them. After years of work, VIB researchers at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) were able to determine the structure and operating mechanism of the proteins involved. This clears the road for finding ways to set the clock on this internal time bomb and, hopefully, in the process developing a new class of antibiotics. The research was accepted for publication by top journal Molecular Cell, with congratulations from the editorial board.

It's in the genes

St. Louis, July 30, 2009 — Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified a substance in the liver that helps process fat and glucose. That substance is a component of the common food additive lecithin, and researchers speculate it may one day be possible to use lecithin products to control blood lipids and reduce risk for diabetes, hypertension or cardiovascular disease using treatments delivered in food rather than medication.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A virus discovered last year in a rare form of skin cancer has also been found in people with the second most common form of skin cancer among Americans, according to researchers at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center - James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute.

The researchers examined tissue samples from 58 people with squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), a highly curable form of skin cancer that is expected to affect more than 200,000 Americans this year.

In this week's New England Journal of Medicine, scientists in Singapore, The Netherlands and France report that they have developed a novel immunization method that will induce fast and effective protection in humans against the life-threatening malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, which infects 350 to 500 million people world-wide and kills over one million people each year.

Researchers at the University of Leicester have paved the way for the first ever use in Europe of an insect (biocontrol) to combat an invasive plant species in Britain.

University of Leicester biologists established that the Japanese Knotweed in Britain was one the biggest females in the world- a clone of cuttings brought into Britain in the 1850s. Costs of controlling it in Britain have been put at £1.5 billion.

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is a dynamic process with variable biochemical, virological and histological profiles at different stages of the infection, depending on host and viral factors. Furthermore, this profile may change at a variable pace over time. The correlation between detection of T-cell response and HBV load in chronic HBV infection remains unknown. In each of the clinical stages of chronic HBV infection, whether the composition of T-cell subpopulations is different and relates to viral load.

Laboratory studies at Kansas State University and the work of a K-State researcher are making headway in the effort to control the pandemic H1N1 virus.

Juergen Richt is a Regents Distinguished Professor at K-State's College of Veterinary Medicine and is a Kansas Bioscience Authority Eminent Scholar. His work at K-State and with outside collaborators is revealing the characteristics of the pandemic H1N1 virus.