Bio and Medicine
A preclinical study found a new nasal spray vaccine to provide complete protection against a major botulism toxin, according to a study published today in the Nature journal Gene Therapy.
Recent animal studies have shown that clioquinol -- an 80-year old drug once used to treat diarrhea and other gastrointestinal disorders -- can reverse the progression of Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases.
Stem cells are the body's primal cells, retaining the youthful ability to develop into more specialized types of cells over many cycles of cell division. How do they do it? Scientists at the Carnegie Institution have identified a gene, named "scrawny", that appears to be a key factor in keeping a variety of stem cells in their undifferentiated state.
Obstructive sleep apnea decreases blood flow to the brain, elevates blood pressure within the brain and eventually harms the brain’s ability to modulate these changes and prevent damage to itself, according to a new study published by The American Physiological Society. The findings may help explain why people with sleep apnea are more likely to suffer strokes and to die in their sleep.
Women who smoke during pregnancy risk delivering aggressive kids, according to a new Canada-Netherlands study published in the journal Development and Psychopathology.
A recent international study fails to support the common belief that the number of calories burned in physical activity is a key factor in rising rates of obesity.
A new report in the January 2009 issue of The FASEB Journal explains for the first time how humans keep up with microbes by rearranging the genes that make antibodies to foreign invaders.
A new epidemiological study has found that among women who have never used menopausal hormone therapy, obese women are at an increased risk of developing ovarian cancer compared with women of normal weight.
Adults with diabetes experience a slowdown in several types of mental processing, which appears early in the disease and persists into old age, according to new research.
In a finding that could significantly influence the way type 1 diabetes is treated, researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have developed a technique for transplanting insulin-producing pancreatic cells that causes only a minimal immune response in recipients.
An extract from grape seeds forces laboratory leukemia cells to commit cell suicide, according to researchers from the University of Kentucky.
When researchers look inside human cancer cells for the whereabouts of an important tumor-suppressor, they often catch the protein playing hooky, lolling around in cellular broth instead of muscling its way out to the cells’ membranes and foiling cancer growth. This phenomenon of delinquency puzzled scientists for a long time — until a cell biologist felt compelled to genetically grab the protein by the tail and then watched as it got back to work at tamping down disease.
By mixing and matching a contemporary flu virus with the "Spanish flu" — a virus that killed between 20 and 50 million people 90 years ago in history's most devastating outbreak of infectious disease — researchers have identified a set of three genes that helped underpin the extraordinary virulence of the 1918 virus.
Moderate drinkers often have lower risks of Alzheimer's disease and other cognitive loss, according to researchers who reviewed 44 studies.
In more than half of the studies, published since the 1990s, moderate drinkers of wine, beer and liquor had lower dementia risks than nondrinkers. In only a few studies were there increased risks.
Scientists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have succeeded in reversing brain birth defects in animal models, using stem cells to replace defective brain cells.
