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 Back to Eurekalert Medical and Health News Archives
Eurekalert Medical and Health News: 09-24-2004
Scientists have discovered a DNA sequence that is involved in controlling the timing of DNA replication. Because alterations in DNA replication timing are associated with cancer, this discovery may lead to improved methods for cancer detection.
Computer-generated images of a crucial anthrax bacterium enzyme are helping to solve the mystery of how slight mutations in the shape of this protein can make it resistant to the antibiotics called sulfa drugs. These findings, by scientists at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, appear in the September issue of Structure.
Children with the bone tumor osteosarcoma are more likely to experience a recurrence of the cancer after treatment and less likely to survive if the cancer cells are expressing the telomerase gene. This finding, from investigators at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, appears in the current issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO).
Limited, low-dose infusions of a widely used anesthetic drug may relieve the often intolerable and debilitating pain of Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS), a Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center researcher found.
New research shows that there may be a physiological disposition in females to overindulge in sweets. Though exercise reduces overeating in both genders, females receive less of an appetite-reducing benefit than males.
The recent FDA proposal to force antidepressants to carry warnings about increased suicide risk is the subject of a pair of articles by leading experts in The Annals of Pharmacotherapy. According to "Antidepressants, Suicide, and the FDA: A Loose Association," the FDA proposal is premature and may be counterproductive. The companion piece "Antidepressants: an Avoidable and Solvable Controversy" cautions the warnings simply don't address the fundamental problem.
Asian countries must adopt strategies to slow the spread of HIV among injecting drug users, urge researchers in this week's BMJ.
Routine physiotherapy for mild to moderate low back pain is no more effective than a single advice session with a physiotherapist, finds a study in this week's BMJ.
Dogs can be trained to detect bladder cancer by 'smelling' urine, concludes new research published in this week's BMJ.
Mesothelioma is an aggressive cancer of the chest cavity that kills about 2000 people a year in the United States. It has been proposed that simian virus 40 (SV40), a contaminant in some polio vaccines administered in the 1950's and 1960's, might be a cause.
The malaria gene pfcrt may be a "master" gene that controls the parasite's resistance to a variety of antimalarial drugs, according to new research by Stephen Ward and colleagues.
This issue of the Journal of Neuroscience contains articles about ethanol and its channel targets and opiate-induced sensitization of the locus ceruleus.
Drinking a glass of red wine a day may cut a man's risk of prostate cancer in half, and the protective effect appears to be strongest against themost aggressive forms of the disease.
A naturally occurring chemical that may repel yellow fever mosquitoes can now be made in the laboratory, Indiana University Bloomington scientists report.
Harvard University scientists have found that ultra-thin silicon wires can be used to electrically detect the presence of single viruses, in real time, with near-perfect selectivity. These nanowire detectors can also differentiate among viruses with great precision, suggesting that the technique could be scaled up to create miniature arrays easily capable of sensing thousands of different viruses.
The compound in marijuana that produces a high may help block the spread of cancer-causing herpes viruses.
New research by UCLA microbiologists published in Nature may lead to an effective alternative to antibiotic drugs for treating bacterial diseases.
Transplant surgeons at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphiahave found that a new combination of drugs -- including a monoclonalantibody -- results in fewer incidences of rejection in liver transplantpatients than do current treatments. The results, they say, could change thestandard of care for liver transplantation.
Scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women's Hospital have prolonged the lives of mice with a rare blood disorder by using an experimental drug that blocks signals promoting runaway growth of blood cells. The researchers also tested the drug, PKC412, in a patient with the hard-to-treat disease, called Myeloproliferative Disease (MPD), and saw her symptoms improve.
The University of Illinois at Chicago unveiled today the world's most powerful magnetic resonance imaging machine for human studies, capable of imaging not just the anatomy but metabolism within the brain.
The eradication of brain tumors in mice following treatment with a novel drug suggests that certain cancers might one day be cured without the use of toxic chemotherapy and radiation. This finding, by investigators at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, is published in the current issue of Cancer Cell.
The highly evolved pathogen Burkholderia mallei - which causes the horse disease glanders and has been used as a biowarfare agent - shows a highly regulated set of virulence genes and an unstable genome that may explain the bacterium's ability to thwart the immune responses of its host animals.
Broken bones often mean lifelong disability in the developing world, due to a lack of access to simple, inexpensive initial treatment, says the director of the University of Toronto's international surgery program.
In addition to its popular role in flavoring ice cream, fudge and cake frosting, vanilla may have a future use as a medicine. Recent laboratory research in mice has strengthened the possibility that a form of vanilla may become a drug to treat sickle cell disease.
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine report a novel strategy for stimulating the production of utrophin - an important muscle protein in young mice - for muscular dystrophy therapy. The investigators gave mdx mice (the mouse model for Duchenne's muscular dystrophy) heregulin, a small molecule to turn on the production of utrophin in their muscles. Utrophin improved muscle function in the mdx mice.
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