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 Back to Eurekalert Medical and Health News Archives
Eurekalert Medical and Health News: 09-15-2004
The search-and-rescue dogs deployed following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have not suffered either immediate or short-term effects from exposure to the disaster sites. For the last three years, University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine researchers tracked the health of 97 of 212 identified dogs deployed at the 9/11 disaster sites. Neither the death rate nor the cancer rate among the deployed dogs is different from that of the control group.
Donald M. O'Rourke, M.D., Associate Professor of Neurosurgery at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and Gurpreet S. Kapoor, PhD, Research Associate in O'Rourke's laboratory, have discovered that two proteins sitting on the surface of cells are the interconnected switches for turning uncontrolled cell growth on or off in the brain and other tissues. These coupled proteins are the Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor (EGFR) and the Signal Regulatory Protein.1 (SIRP.1).
Although the prevalence of underage drinking has decreased since its peak in the late 1970s, drinking by youth has stabilized over the past decade at disturbingly high levels, according to a new analysis of youth drinking trends by NIH researchers.
Per capita social welfare spending for elders was four times greater than for children in 2000, compared with only a three-fold difference in 1980. The growing gap in expenditures was due primarily to higher per capita medical expenses
Researchers from VIB at Ghent University are joining the fight against chronic intestinal disease with a genetically modified bacterium (Lactococcus lactis). The modified bacterium is able to produce medication right in the intestine. The researchers have shown that the genetically modified bacterium is able to manufacture the potential medicine, Trefoil Factors, in the intestines of diseased mice.
Eliminating disparities in health care for minority children will take a concerted quality improvement effort throughout the fragmented U.S. health care system, best overseen by a national body housed within the Department of Health and Human Services, says an article in the September/October issue of Health Affairs.
Two separate research studies published in the September issue of Immunity provide significant new details about why immune cells attack the body's own healthy tissues in response to a harmless substance that the immune system mistakenly perceives as a threat. The results are likely to further research efforts designed to combat and hopefully prevent autoimmune disorders like celiac disease.
Other highlights in the September 15 JNCI include an examination of cancer risk among pesticide applicators exposed to atrazine, a study of alcohol consumption and the risk of bladder cancer, an assessment of how changes in tumor classification altered gastric cancer incidence, and an animal study of a potential breast cancer vaccine.
Non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) patients are no more likely than healthy people to have been exposed to or infected by simian virus 40 (SV40), a macaque polyomavirus that contaminated poliovirus vaccines in the mid-20th century, according to a new study in the September 15 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. SV40 has been suggested as a cause of human cancers, including NHL.
Five years after prostate cancer diagnosis, patients treated with radical prostatectomy continue to experience worse urinary incontinence and erectile dysfunction compared with those treated with radiotherapy. However, patients in both groups have similar overall sexual function, mostly because of declining function among radiotherapy patients between 2 and 5 years after diagnosis, according to a new study in the September 15 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
A new NMR technique developed at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory called slow-magic-angle spinning magnetic resonance spectroscopy, or "slow MAS" for short, has provided researchers a new glimpse inside living tissue and cells that other biomedical imaging methods cannot render.
A unique tail at one end of a protein called Ubc12 stabilizes a molecular workshop that assembles the "on-switch cells" used to accelerate cell replication. This finding, by investigators at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, is published online by the journal Nature Structual and Molecular Biology.
Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers have identified a telltale change in cellular machinery that could help clinicians predict whether prostate cancers are likely to spread or remain relatively harmless in the prostate. The researchers found that a cellular signaling molecule called Hedgehog, which drives normal development and regeneration of prostate tissue, is greatly activated in prostate cancers. This elevated activity distinguishes dangerous metastatic cancers - those that are likely to spread - from those that remain benign and localized to the prostate.
Highlights from the Tufts University September 2004 nutrition notes include vitamin E to prevent the common cold and Older women and women with diabetes: Eat fish for your heart.
Johns Hopkins researchers have discovered a possible way to distinguish lethal metastatic prostate cancers from those restricted to the walnut-size organ.
Scientists test insulin release from thermally-triggered microgel films.
An analysis of the gene expression patterns of 91 unrelated liver tumors revealed two distinctive subclasses highly associated with patient survival, according to a new study published in the September 2004 issue of Hepatology.
Growth of new blood vessels is critical in cancer because it increases blood supply to malignant tissue. Recently a similar pathogenic role of angiogenesis was established for such chronic inflammatory diseases as rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis and atherosclerosis. At an American Physiological Society meeting, researchers said increased vascularization is present in IBD: intestinal microvascularization of both CD and UC displays an angiogenic marker expression. Targeting this integrin could be a potential therapeutic approach for IBD.
A large number of diseases are the result of proteins that erroneously assume the wrong shape, causing them to stick to each other. This phenomenon is perceptible, but up to now it has been difficult to predict. Researchers from VIB at the VUB, in collaboration with a German research group, have developed TANGO - a statistical method that can predict the susceptibility of proteins to sticking together.
A study published in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences identified the molecule that binds to a receptor (a molecule on the cell surface that triggers a reaction within the cell) in the brain that is known to regulate blood pressure and release of insulin. Furthermore, the researchers discovered that this molecule acts as a neurotransmitter, in that it conveys messages throughout different regions of the brain.
Higher blood levels of homocysteine (HCY), an amino acid in the body, may be associated with changes in deep brain tissue in middle-aged men, according to an article in the September issue of The Archives of Neurology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Thickness of the cornea, the thin, transparent layer covering the eye, may be an important factor in considering treatment options for patients with glaucoma, according to an article appearing in the September issue of The Archives of Ophthalmology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
The quality of life for patients with irritable bowel syndrome is as related to non-gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms, including tiring easily and feeling tense, as it is to GI symptoms associated with the disorder, according to an article in the September 13 issue of The Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Patients who experience medical or neurological complications following stroke, such as pneumonia or brain swelling, are at a greater risk of dying in the hospital, according to an article in the September 13 issue of The Archives Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
About one-third of chronically ill adults who underuse medications because of the costs associated with buying the drugs, never tell their health care practitioners, according to an article in the September 13 issue of The Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
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